HISTORICAL REAL ESTATE IN THE LIGHT OF LAW

In the wake of a lengthy discussion, on 23 July 2003 the Polish Sejm (Parliament) passed a statute based on a government project. Dealing with the protection and custody of monuments, it replaced the statute of 15 February 1962 on the protection of cultural property, becoming the first legal act to interpret the protection of historical monuments in Poland in a complex manner, and to comprise a foundation for pertinent legal regulations. The statute of 1962 was not adapted to the contemporary legal turnover, and contained numerous indefinite concepts; it also lacked certain fundamental definitions, such as that of historical real estate. The legislator distinguished duties encumbering public administration organs and the owners of historical monuments by employing two distinct concepts : “protection” and “custody”, which have been accurately defined. In comparison with the previous statute, the new legal act identified the object of protection and custody by dividing all historical monuments into immobile, portable, and archaeological. Furthermore, the legislator had expanded the object of protection by including non-material property, thus deciding that protection may encompass also the geographic, historical or traditional names of a building, a square, a street, or a settlement unit. The statute of 2003 rendered more precise principles concerning the inclusion and elimination of real estate in a register of historical monuments; it also contains a legal definition of the historical monument, including the immobile monument, the first such distinctness to appear in Polish legislation. In contrast to the previous statute, the new act has expanded the range of subjects which could be obligated to conduct conservation and are conceived as an objective element, essential in a sales contract, exchange, or lease of real estate listed in the register and constituting property of the State Treasury or a territorial self-government unit.The owners of historical real estate or real estate possessing the features of a historical monument have received new privileges, including the right to compensation for eventual losses incurred as a result of research involving the objects, based on principles defined in the civil code. The duties of the possessors of historical real estate, which stem from the contents of statute regulations about the protection and custody of monuments, basically do not differ from those which had been formulated upon the basis of the regulations of the previous statute. Greater sanctions have been imposed as regards neglect of the majority of those obligations. The most severe penalty is foreseen in article 108, excerpt 1, according to which all those who have destroyed or damaged a historical monument face imprisonment from three months to five years. On the other hand, article 100 introduces penal liability for the owners of those historical monument which have not been suitably protected against damage, destruction, loss or theft