Government pushes to close unfinished land reform
Estonia wants to complete the land reform that began in 1991 and has submitted proposals on how to end, in the coming years, the situation in which nearly 10,000 land parcels still have no owner.
"In view of the time that has passed since the start of the land reform and the deadlines set in the law, completing the land reform must become an independent objective," the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (MKM) states in the draft legislative intent. It notes, based on current practice, that if no intervention is made at the legislative level, the land reform may continue to drag on for a long time.
Estonian land reform, which began with the entry into force of the Land Reform Act on 1 November 1991, has aimed to reshape land‑ownership relations based on Soviet‑era state land ownership into relations based mainly on private land ownership. This must be done while respecting the continuity of the rights of former owners and the legally protected interests of current land users, creating conditions for more efficient land use, the law states.
Reform stalled for decades
The Ministry notes in its document that local municipalities and the Land and Spatial Agency, which were tasked with handling the land reform, do not have sufficient resources to complete the pending procedures quickly. Often, the cases left unfinished are the more complex ones, where the administrative authority would need to intervene more forcefully, but this could lead to disputes that in turn require resources. Amending the law would create conditions for completing the land reform regardless of whether institutions are ready to risk court disputes.
"The aim of the planned legislative amendment is to create a legal mechanism that allows pending and objectively stalled procedures to be concluded on the basis of the law, thereby reducing the long‑term administrative burden on both the state and local governments," the document explains.
It also recalls that amendments to the Land Reform Act entered into force in 2013, setting specific deadlines for carrying out reform actions, the latest being 30 June 2016, but despite this the land reform has still not been completed.
Legal clarity needed
The ministry also points out that the Supreme Court already found in 2020 that there is public interest in completing the land reform.
"In 2020, almost all unreformed land parcels received spatial shape and cadastral identifiers and were entered into the state real estate register as part of the land reform procedure, but their ownership type and extent will be determined definitively only after the land reform is completed," the ministry noted.
Since earlier solutions have not led to completion of the land reform, more effective and more fundamental measures should be applied, the ministry finds, adding that if the current approach continues, pending land‑reform procedures may continue for years, consuming societal resources and keeping legal uncertainty in place.
"The aim is to develop an efficient, legally secure and clear legal framework that helps achieve completion of the land reform within a reasonable time and with as little administrative burden as possible. The land reform for a specific land unit can be considered completed when the land has been entered into the land cadastre and land register and has received an owner," the new document states. The owner may be the state, a local government unit or a private legal person.
The ministry also explained why legal amendments are needed to resolve the situation: "Since the pending procedures are presumably more complex than average, and it is not possible to resolve the situation, for example, by creating uniform guidelines because each procedure has its own specific problems, non‑regulatory solution options cannot be considered effective in this case. Therefore, regulatory solutions must be preferred."
Two options proposed
The draft legislative intent presents two options for completing the land reform.
Under the first option, the current law would be amended to set deadlines after which land parcels that remain unreformed — except land units without independent use (so‑called strips) — would remain in state ownership. Land with buildings and land without buildings would be treated separately, giving land parcels with buildings a longer deadline to complete the procedure under the current rules.
As a second option, the ministry proposes adopting a separate Land Reform Completion Act and declaring the current Land Reform Act and the legal acts issued under it invalid.
For both options, the document outlines advantages, disadvantages and risks, and proposes possible solutions and mitigation measures.
In preparing the draft, MKM involved the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, local governments, the Land and Spatial Agency, and representatives of the University of Tartu and the Estonian University of Life Sciences, and now awaits stakeholder opinions during the coordination process.
The annex to the draft presents the number of unreformed land units based on data from the Estonian Topographic Database (ETAK), totalling 9,840. There are 1,963 land parcels without buildings, 2,695 with buildings, and 5,182 land units without independent use (so‑called strips).
The largest number of unreformed land units is in Ida‑Virumaa. Land parcels without buildings include 177 in Sillamäe, 129 in Kohtla‑Järve, 84 in Narva, 83 in Jõhvi rural municipality, 78 in Kastre rural municipality and 71 in Narva‑Jõesuu. Unreformed land parcels with buildings include 377 in Kohtla‑Järve, 262 in Narva‑Jõesuu, 200 in Jõhvi rural municipality, 116 in Valga rural municipality and 100 in Viljandi rural municipality.
The most strips are in Tallinn (267), but others are distributed fairly evenly across different municipalities in Estonia.
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Editor: Mait Ots, Argo Ideon
