Causa agrarian communities flares up again
Two and a half months before the state elections, community representatives let the permanent cause of agricultural communities flare up again. They were an ongoing topic of controversy until the Agriculture Act was passed in 2014. It is about real estate assets that are said to have been unconstitutionally transferred to agricultural communities many years ago. Surveys by the Association of Municipalities have now shown that – contrary to general belief – the question has by no means been resolved. The newly elected state parliament is under pressure to act.
At a joint press conference on Tuesday in Innsbruck, the Association of Tyrolean Municipalities (GVV) and the association “Gemeindeland in Gemeindehand” called for the confiscated property to be returned to the municipalities. This is possible through a simple state law, is the clear political demand of the representatives. “Politicians are stuck,” criticized club representative Leonhard Steiger, who at the same time complained that the topic had disappeared from public perception.
Billions of dollars in damage to communities
The damage caused was enormous, added the second club representative, Werner Lux, with reference to extensive, systematic surveys by the GVV in the years 2014 to 2016. This research had clarified the “dimensions of the property robbery”. Through regulatory processes in the 1950s and 1960s, commons were transferred to farming communities. Those regulations are subject to official secrecy and therefore cannot be viewed, complained Lux and Steiger. For them, however, one thing is certain: large parts of the real estate assets of 170 Tyrolean communities – assets worth billions – have been “transferred to around 400 agricultural communities without compensation” in the last 100 years “on behalf of the Tyrolean state politics dominated by the farmers’ association”. A fifth of the total area of the federal state is affected.
The two publics should be informed about these “scandalous conditions”, so die in unison. The association has therefore made the GVV research and background information available on a website specially set up for this purpose. “The good is stored on the net – it cannot disappear and is not subject to official secrecy,” commented Steiger on the decision. The club representatives rejected the fact that the timing was deliberately chosen shortly before the hot phase of the election campaign and the state elections on September 25th.
Schöpf: “Injustice does not become right through the passage of time”
Backing for the demands came from the President of the Association of Municipalities, Ernst Schöpf (ÖVP). He, too, saw politics as lagging behind: “The last step is missing,” commented Schöpf, who is not a member of the association himself, on the amendment to the Land Constitution Act (agricultural law) passed in 2014 with a black-green majority. The law had given the municipalities full access to and disposal of the profits of the agricultural communities, which came, for example, from hunting leases, gravel pits, motorway rest stops or the sale of building land.
However, “mistakes made” were not corrected by this, Schöpf stated and also pleaded for a law that should regulate a retransfer to the municipalities. “Injustice does not become right through the passage of time”, you have to “actively approach” the cause. Schöpf stressed that he was not opposing the ÖVP with his demand in the run-up to the election. But it’s about “tough communal interests” that the community association represents. The facts are clear.
Schöpf saw the unresolved agricultural question as a “commission to the then newly formed Tyrolean state parliament”. What does not go “beyond the political theory of colors” is, according to the president of the community association, “that things are simply suppressed and then you want to make people believe that everything is fine”.
ÖVP rejects retransfer
The competent provincial councilor Josef Geisler (ÖVP), whose sign is also the chairman of the farmers’ association, did not let the criticism sit down and referred the APA to the Constitutional Court (VfGH). He had “conclusively dealt with” the topic and “ruled out a retransfer,” explains the ÖVP politician, who, to a certain extent, ended the debate that flared up again.
As early as 1982, the Constitutional Court had described the transfer of ownership of communal property to agricultural communities as unlawful. However, this view did not initially fall on fertile ground in Tyrol. It was not until the municipality of Mieders went before the supreme judge and the Constitutional Court confirmed its 1982 ruling in the summer of 2008 that a fierce political debate got rolling. “In its first decision on the bodice, the Constitutional Court ruled out a reassignment,” Geisler recalled in his statement. The communities have “full access to the substance and assets of the agricultural communities”.
ÖVP club chairman Jakob Wolf currently sees no reason to discuss the topic of agricultural communities again. “For me, the issue of agrarian communities is well resolved, we don’t have to provoke disputes in the communities. The majority of mayors are satisfied with the solution.”