Restitution Regimes in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: A Legal Analysis

When the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe collapsed at the end of the last decade, the opposition, which had been united in their goal to defeat Communism, quickly disintegrated into a variety of factions. One of their tasks was to decide on enacting a constitution, in order to stabilize and entrench the new democratic institutions. Apart from establishing the legal framework for democracy, politicians had to develop strategies to convert the state-run economy into a free-market economy. Such a transition required as a first step the privatization of state property. Legal reform of property rights raises the question: how should claims of former owners whose property was expropriated by the Communist state be settled? Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland have all considered the option of restitution in deciding who should be eligible to recover and how much should be returned . It is the objective of this thesis to analyze the different regimes under aspects of international law and under the constitutional law of the respective countries and examines the structure and content of the individual restitution laws