BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

Common Agricultural Policy. In 2013 large farms (agricultural holdings of 100 ha and more) made up only 3,1% of all farms in the EU, but they controlled 52,2% of farmland in Europe; by contrast, 76,2% of farms had the use of only 11,2% of the agricultural land. 40 Both, “foreignization” of the land, as well as generic land concentration, have been particularly problematic in Central and Eastern European (CEE) Member States, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Poland, but also Romania and Bulgaria are currently hotspots. Accession to the EU resulted in flooding their markets with subsidized agricultural products, which finally brought bankruptcy to many farmers in the new member states, leading to sales of farms and large parts of the land for low prices. Aware of the need to protect the agricultural structure from the consequences resulting from differences in land prices and other factors when compared to the rest of the European Union, the CEE States had already requested during the course of accession negotiations to maintain or to introduce moratoriums on acquisition of agricultural land (or forests) by foreigners. Consequently, a transitional period of 7 years was granted to the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia; and 12 years to Poland. However, restrictions on land sales failed to deliver. An example of such a failure in Hungary was the practice called “pocket-contracts”, denoting sales of land without a specified date of purchase, when the contract is held secret (in the pocket) until the moment when the restrictions on land sales are lifted. Understandably, such contracts could not be registered in the land register, thus the Hungarian seller remained officially the owner, while the land was in practice owned by a foreign person, circumventing in this way legal restrictions. Despite the fact that Hungarian legislation criminalized such practice by the new Criminal Code of 2012, “pocket-contracts” continue to constitute a problem, referring nowadays to contracts that in general aim to circumvent legal restrictions on land acquisitions. 41 Another typical way of circumventing the moratoriums included the use of substitute or “dummy” buyers. According to local sources in West Pomorania, Poland, some 200,000 ha of land in the region has been acquired by foreign companies by using “dummy” buyers. 42 40 European Parliament resolution of 27 April 2017 on the state of play of farmland concentration in the EU: how to facilitate the access to land for farmers (2016/2141(INI)) , p. 1; see also study entitled ‘Extent of Farmland Grabbing in the EU’ by the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, p. 24 (PE 540.369). 41 KAY, Silvia. Land Grabbing and Land Concentration in Europe: A Research Brief . Amsterdam: Transnational Institute for HOTL, December 2016, p. 8, available online at: https://www.tni.org/files/publication- downloads/landgrabbingeurope_a5-2.pdf (accessed 8 February 2018); see also: CIAIAN, Pavel, KANCS, D´Artis, SWINNEN, Jo at al. Sales Market Regulations for Agricultural Land in the EU Member States and Candidate Countries , Factor Markets Working Paper No. 14, February 2012, Brussels, CEPS, available online at: https://www.ceps.eu/system/files/book/2012/02/FM_WP14%20CEPS%20on%20 Sales%20Market%20Regulations_D15.1_Final.pdf; FIDRICH, Robert. The Return of the White Horse: Land Grabbing in Hungary, in: Land Concentration, Land Grabbing and People’s Struggles in Europe , edited by Jennifer FRANCO and Saturnino BORRAS, Amsterdam, Transnational Institute, 24 June 2013, pp. 128-145, available online at: https://www.tni.org/files/download/land_in_europe- jun2013.pdf (accessed 8 February 2018). 42 DOUWE VAN DER PLOEG, Jan, FRANCO, Jennifer C., BORRAS, Saturnino M. Land concentration and land grabbing in Europe: a preliminary analysis, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d’études du développement , Vol. 36, Issue 2, pp. 147-162 (153).

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