Fondul Proprietatea

Fondul Proprietatea is a joint-stock company established by the Romanian state, and is intended to become entirely private and independent from the state. Its specificity lies in the fact that its purpose and its operations are governed by special legislation. Shareholders are limited to those dispossessed owners of their property by the Romanian state during the Communist regime.

Origin

Romania is a country of the former Eastern Soviet bloc where a very large number of properties (factories, enterprises, houses, apartments, buildings, churches and lands) have been confiscated during the Communist Romania era. The state would appropriate illegally, using abusive decrees, the most important being decree nr 92 of 1950, or by means of coercion, more than 400,000 buildings which more than 150,000 have been destroyed. In 1995, under the presidency of Ion Iliescu, a law allowed tenants to buy from the Romanian State, at very low cost, real estates built before 1945 that did not belong to the State, and were confiscated, thus preventing the true owners to recover their property. The complex legal situation that has resulted has led to an attempt to compensate the former owners, victims of communism, who were denied a second time the restitution of their property. Proprietatea aimed initially at correcting this injustice. Figures between 150,000 and 250,000 concerned property owners - only for real estate - are frequently used by associations or newspapers but no verifiable official statistic is available.