10. Decăderea în dreptul la restituirea imobilelor preluate abuziv de statul român comunist
10. Forfeiture of the right to restitution of real estate wrongfully seized by the Romanian communist state

Summary/Abstract: The specificity of the right of ownership of real estate abusively seized by the Romanian communist state is that this right never left the patrimony of the dispossessed person, since the abusive nature of the seizures prevented the transfer of the property right to the patrimony of the communist state. The essence of the restitution laws is the establishment of deadlines within which the beneficiaries of this legislation were obliged to express their will and request the reconstitution of the property right, the restitution of the property or, as the case may be, compensation. These time limits are qualified as limitation periods, either directly by the legislator or by doctrine and case law. But how can an owner be deprived of his right to demand the return of a property which is the subject of a property right that has never left his patrimony? In reality, the right to restitution of property wrongfully seized by the communist Romanian state is a new right, born out of horizontal and vertical regulation, through the application of Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights: once legislation on the restoration of property rights is adopted, a new property right protected by Art. 1 Protocol 1 to the ECHR is created for persons who meet the conditions for restitution. Thus, balancing the need to ensure the principle of legal certainty and the temporal limitation of the right to restitution of property wrongfully seized by the Romanian communist state, both the European and the Constitutional Courts have decided that the state interference in this case is not disproportionate to the aim pursued.

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