Protected Tenants: The State Has Ignored the Constitutional Court’s Order for Years to Increase Eviction Compensation

Injustice cannot be corrected by another injustice, and how painful this can be is illustrated by the example of tenants in private apartments who have been stuck in this status due to historical circumstances over which they had no influence. Let us recall that in the former state, from its inception, tenants designated by the state were imposed on private owners who built or bought apartments to live off rent. This, of course, did not stop there.

Around the beginning of 1958, unlike all other countries that tried to carry out nationalization in secrecy, our former state announced it regarding apartments, and owners had the ‘choice’ to either wait for nationalization or sell their apartments for no money, mostly to those who were already inside.

This led to the number of apartments that were nationalized by the end of that year being far smaller than it would have otherwise been. Given that the threshold for nationalization was two larger or three smaller apartments, there were also apartments that became a problem for the state. In them, tenant rights were recognized as a kind of new right, but they remained owned by those who had been owners until then. And thus, a new state was welcomed.

Between Heaven and Earth

In the new state, the basic ‘struggle’ was fought regarding denationalization, and private apartments with tenant rights somehow remained ‘on the back burner’. Thus, in 1997, the Law on Apartment Rentals was passed quite unnoticed, which abolished tenant rights but did not touch the rights of tenants (tenants received a new name – renters), who continued to use other people’s apartments, which they felt were their own after living in them for years and often investing in maintenance and renovation. An attempt was made to intervene through the Constitutional Court, which, unfortunately, made one of the strangest decisions, of course negative.

Although in all ten books tenant rights are referred to as property rights, suddenly it loses that attribute and becomes some kind of classical obligatory right minimally stronger than classical rent. When the property component is denied, it is clear that there could be no talk of either rights or real rights, and just before, the situation was such that there was no talk of denying those components.

And so it went until 2015 when an amendment to the law was passed that practically concluded the protected tenants. It was stipulated that owners have the right to evict them from the apartment, and the state would provide them with some tragicomic compensation, according to some variant of accommodation in nursing homes. Fortunately, this time the Constitutional Court showed understanding and annulled certain articles of that amendment and ordered the Croatian Parliament to replace them with ‘enhanced’ compensation. Unfortunately, years have passed since then, and nothing has happened.

According to some calculations (and it is solely the state’s shame that there are no precise data), we are talking about two to three thousand apartments, whose protected tenants would mostly agree to leave the apartment for an average compensation of 70,000 euros. A larger number of such apartments is, for example, in Split, while in Zagreb there are still those unrealistic ones who expect the state to give them ownership and compensation to the owners, which is contrary to European policy and European courts, and this should be forgotten.

A Reasonable Proposal

In the end, the worst, the best, and a proposal. The worst is that apartments have been rapidly deteriorating for years, because why would an owner invest when they cannot take possession or when a tenant is waiting to be evicted. Therefore, it is high time to find both the means and the will and to ‘remove the issue of protected tenants from the agenda’. The best thing is that owners and tenants are actually on the same side, although not everyone realizes this.

The first proposal is, while waiting for the state to start seriously addressing the problem, to take advantage of the fact that the Constitutional Court is not bound by its decisions, to repeat that proposal regarding the law from 1997, and to point out everything that has happened and is happening in the meantime, which shows that protected tenants are for this court and this state citizens of no other, but who knows what order.

To avoid any doubt, the author of this text is for the owners, which is not surprising since the former state (his family) took away two and a half residential buildings in the best location in Split, and this one (the family) paid him about 100,000 euros in total, and not all at once, but the first installment of 25 percent, and the rest over thirty years. But that is not an argument for a new injustice. Allegedly, a law (actually a few articles from the law) has been written somewhere for years, so why not try with a fixed 50 percent of the value of ownership as an offer to the tenant for eviction.

It could be added 10 percent for accepting the offer in the first month. After two months, the percentage decreases to 40 percent and then to 30 percent. It is certain that after six months there would be no more than 500 apartments left, and that is no longer the same problem.