Constitutional Court considers the legality of farmland market opening in Ukraine

24 December 2019, 13:00

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The Grand Chamber of the Constitutional Court has begun the consideration of the submission of 46 MPs on the interpretation of the Basic Law regulating the right of ownership of land by the people, namely the first sentence of paragraph one of Art. 13 and paragraph one of Art. 14, Ukrinform reports.

At the beginning of the session, the reporting judge on this case Viktor Kolesnik stated that he had sent 14 requests to scientists, higher educational institutions and scientific establishments, in which he asked to express their position on the issues raised in the constitutional presentation.

As reported, one of the authors of the constitutional representation, MP Serhiy Vlasenko, made a statement during the oral hearing of the case that the need to interpret the above-mentioned articles of the Constitution appeared after the Verkhovna Rada voted in the first reading of the 3rd draft law, which defines the future of 72% of the Ukrainian land.

"It's not just about the option of selling land to foreigners. These laws provide for the possibility of unauthorized change of land use by the owner, removal of certain control functions of the state, in particular, crop rotation system observance. Our legal position is that such issues can be solved only by the Ukrainian people as the sole owner of all lands in Ukraine," he said.

According to the MP, the Parliament has no authority to make decisions regarding the sale of land. Serhiy Vlasenko believes that this issue should be decided at an all-Ukrainian referendum.

Representatives of the Verkhovna Rada and the President in the Constitutional Court, Olga Sovgirya and Fedor Venislavskyi, asked the Court to stop the proceedings in the case as there were no arguments for the need to interpret the Constitution in this part.

Previously the Presidential Commissioner for Land Affairs Roman Leshchenko stated that the land reform was implemented in the interests of small and medium agricultural producers in Ukraine.