l la rest truct a uració albania ón de la: des la adm de pla ministr an

 L
LA REST
TRUCTURACIÓ
ÓN DE L
LA ADM
MINISTR
RACIÓN DE TIERRA EN
N
A
ALBANIA
A: DESDE PLA
AN A ME
ERCADO
O
THE
E RESTRUCTURIN
NG OF LAND ADMINISTR
RATION IN ALBAN
NIA:
F
FROM PL
LAN TO MARKET
M
T
Da
avid Stanfie
eld
U
University of W
Wisconsin—Ma
adison, USA, e
email: jdstanfi@
@wisc.edu; Address: 10900
0 Stanfield Roa
ad, Blue Moun
nds, Wisconsin
n,
53517, USA
RES
SUMEN: De
espués de la 2a Guerra M
Mundial, com
mo en mucho
os países de Europa Orie
ental, Albania
a reestructurró su
econ
nomía para sser planificad
da y maneja
ada centralm
mente, incluyendo la adm
ministración de
d tierra. Pero
P
despuéss del
colap
pso de la Un
nión Soviética
a en los año
os 80, los líde
eres políticoss de Albania optaron para una transicción rápidam
mente
hacia
a una econo
omía de me
ercado, dond
de la propied
dad privada de los inmuebles juega
a un papel significante. La
Univversidad de Wisconsin
W
offreció asistencia en este
e proceso masivo, aseso
orando los A
Albaneses en
n como crea
ar las
instittuciones requ
ueridas para
a la administrración de loss derechos y las responssabilidades d
de los derech
hos de propie
edad
priva
ada. Este documento tratta de analiza
ar los éxitos y errores exhibidos en este proceso con el objetiivo de inform
mar a
otross países en ccondiciones ssimilares.
Pala
abras claves
s: transición, economía de
e mercado, Albania,
A
administración de
e tierra, prop
piedad privad
da, propiedad
d
pública
ABS
STRACT: A
After WWII a
as in many E
Eastern Euro
opean countrries, Albania restructured
d its econom
my to be centrally
planned and ma
anaged, inclu
uding the adm
ministration of
o land. Butt after the co
ollapse of the
e Soviet Uniion in the 19
980s,
Alba
anian political leaders opted to transition as quickkly as possib
ble to a marrket oriented economy, w
where the private
owne
ership of land and buildin
ngs would pla
ay a major ro
ole. The Uniiversity of Wiisconsin provvided some assistance
a
in
n this
massive underta
aking in advissing the Alba
anians on th
he institutionss needed ab
bove and beyyond the privvatization of land
and construction
ns. The pap
per reflects o
on some of the achieve
ements and mistakes ma
ade in this p
process with
h the
inten
ntion of inform
ming countrie
es in similar cconditions.
Key words: transition, marke
et economy, A
Albania, land
d administration, private property
p
David Stanfield | LA RESTRUCTURACIÓN DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE TIERRA EN ALBANIA: DESDE PLAN A
MERCADO
1. INTRODUCTION
The objective of this paper is to describe briefly
the experiences of the Land Tenure Center,
University of Wisconsin-Madison with improving
land administration in Albania as the country
transitioned from a command economy to a
market oriented one. Perhaps other countries in
similar transition conditions can benefit from the
Albanian experiences.
The recent history of Albania demonstrates
some of the challenges for countries moving
from a planned economy with State ownership
of most real property and minimal private
transactions in real property, to a mixed
economy where real property ownership is
widespread and where markets function actively
within an institutional framework for encouraging
environmental and social sustainability.
Albania is a relatively small country with a land
area of 28.748 sq km (about 11.000 sq miles)
located on the Adriatic Sea in SE Europe on the
northern border of Greece. Total population in
1990 was about 3.2 million of which about 40%
lived in urban areas (1).
After the trauma of WWII, Albania became part
of the socialist block of Eastern European
countries, and gradually eliminated private
property as solidified in its Constitution of 1975.
Most of Albania’s agricultural land by 1975 was
organized
into
cooperatives
from
the
expropriation of large estates and the
collectivization of small holdings. In urban areas
the State expropriated the homes of the
wealthier classes and gradually all commercial
and industrial enterprises.
The workers in the cooperatives, state farms,
and commercial and industrial enterprises as
well as in public services (schools, hospitals,
water, electric, telephone, etc) were State or
State enterprise employees.
The State invested in the consolidation of
agricultural enterprises as well as in commercial
and industrial enterprises and their technological
evolution. The State also constructed apartment
buildings mostly using volunteer labor who then
were awarded apartments for their use.
The country’s economy functioned largely as a
single enterprise, centrally planned and
managed, in a world of threats and insecurities.
While allied with Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union following WWII, Albania linked with China
for several years. Fears of invasion led to the
construction of a network of concrete pillboxes
along the coast and along the country’s border
with Greece.
2. CRISIS IN EASTERN
COMES TO ALBANIA
EUROPE
As the dissolution of the Soviet Union unfolded
in the late 1980s, the events in Eastern Europe
had great influence on Albania. The turmoil in
Romania in the late 1980s resulted in the violent
overthrow of Ceauşescu and the end of the
Communist regime in that country in 1989 and a
period of extreme social instability.
The
Albanians experienced similar instability in the
early 1990s but the heirs of the Hoxha regime in
Albania (Enver Hoxha died in 1985) wanted to
avoid the Romanian violence by providing land
to the people on a massive and emergency
basis. The economy based on state enterprises
had largely collapsed, masses of people were
leaving the country as fast as they could, and
the spector of starvation threatened the country.
The first emergency economic measure was the
Law on Land approved by Parliament in July
1991, which authorized the distribution of
agricultural
land
then
organized
into
cooperatives to the workers on those farms in
family owned parcels, but with possessory rights
and not the right to sell.
The March 1992 elections saw the formation of
two parties more or less agreed to the transition
of Albania to what they understood as a market
economy, with some differences as to degree
and speed of this transition. The Law on Land
of 1991 distributed State assets, agricultural
land, to the families of workers on agricultural
cooperatives. This basic principle was rapidly
applied to other State assets—particularly state
farms, apartment buildings, and even artist
studios as well as commercial entities such as
restaurants, although most enterprises simply
closed, in some instances for years.
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David Stanfield | LA RESTRUCTURACIÓN DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE TIERRA EN ALBANIA: DESDE PLAN A
MERCADO
3. ASSISTANCE
BY
THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOR
DEVELOPMENT OF ALBANIAN
LAND ADMINISTRATION
The US reopened its embassy in Tirana in 1991.
In May, 1992 the US Agency for International
Development invited a team from the University
of Wisconsin’s Land Tenure Center to do an
assessment (2) of the land reform efforts
launched by the Law on Land of July, 1991.
That study resulted in USAID’s challenge to the
University to provide practical assistance to
Albania for the transition to a market oriented
economy, composed of private and public rights
to property and the institutions needed for
protecting those rights and defining the
associated responsibilities. In February, 1994
the UW agreed to accept the USAID challenge,
resulting in an eight year University program
supporting the development and implementation
of the Albanian Land Market Action Plan,
involving USAID, World Bank and EU financial
and technical support.
The Land Market Action Plan was approved by
Cabinet (an executive body including all
Ministers) in 1993 Since February 1993 along
with a Coordinative Working Group with
representatives from the five Ministries relevant to
a property registration system to implement the
Action Plan (Agriculture and Food, Justice,
Construction, Finance and Defense).
The main challenges faced in that Action Plan in
1994 were:
Western countries’ pressures on the countries
in the Soviet block and the tremendous sense
of crisis plaguing these countries had pushed
the privatization of land and industries as the
key to unlocking the magic of the market
economy and achieving the economic levels of
the western European countries.
The Albanians had done a major privatization of
agricultural land with the Law on Land of 1991,
but had no conception that a market oriented
economy requires a complex web of supporting
and guiding institutions which did not exist.
Institutional capacities had to be created for
such functions as:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Registration of private and public rights
to Immovable property and mapping of
property boundaries
Planning for development of land and
other resources in urbanizing areas
Assessing the monetary values of
properties
Assisting buyers and sellers of rights to
land and buildings to complete
transactions legally
Protection
of
environmentally
threatened lands, water, forests
Regulation of expanding informal urban
settlements through informal land
markets
Financing
of
investments
using
immovable properties as collateral
(mortgaged lending)
Management of conflicts over private
and public properties
4. INSTITUTIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
FOR REGISTRATION OF RIGHTS
AND
OTHER
LAND
ADMINISTRATION FUNCTIONS (3,
4)
Given the massive privatization of land
which was begun in 1991 focusing on
agricultural land, the immediate need was
for an institution to record the rights to
immovable properties and register the
subsequent transfers of those rights as
normally occurs in market oriented
economies.
The government in the early 1990s launched
many other privatization programs, but each
with different concepts of “owner” holding
the privatized rights as well as what public
entities would exercise the rights to real
property which was not privatized:
•
The privatization of rights to
agricultural land under the Law on
Land of 1991 was not to individuals,
but to over a half million families;
• apartments were privatized in joint
ownership of occupants through a law
approved in 1992 affecting over 1 million
IX CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL GEOMÁTICA 2016
David Stanfield | LA RESTRUCTURACIÓN DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE TIERRA EN ALBANIA: DESDE PLAN A
MERCADO
•
•
•
•
apartments and businesses in State
constructed multiunit buildings
artists’ studios were awarded to the
individual artists;
buildings used for state businesses were
sold at very favorable rates to mostly local
buyers or were simply abandoned, and
later torn down or remodeled and
repurposed;
road rights of way, schools, hospitals,
and other public buildings were left de
facto in State or municipal ownership;
forest tenure forms evolved into
communities holding use rights.
This situation of rampant privatization required
the immediate crafting of legislation defining the
rules and procedures for the administration of
private and public right to immovable properties
adapted to the variety of ownership types that
emerged. The law on Immovable Property
Registration (No. 7843) was approved by
Parliament in July of 1994.
While the Registration law was being debated,
field teams were testing procedures for
surveying the boundaries of the new family
owned agricultural land parcels and for
recording the names of the families to whom the
Village Land Commissions had assigned each
privatized parcel. The field teams used the
privatization documents produced by Village
Land Commissions, and the various parcel
maps sketched by the District Cadastral officers
onto existing paper base maps which had been
produced by the Ministry of Agriculture for the
management of agricultural cooperatives and
State Farms.
New parcel maps and lists of
family owners were produced and put on display
for a month in each Village for correction and for
educating the villagers about how the new
Registration Offices operated.
Due to the high village populations and the
strong egalitarian tendencies of the village land
commissions, the agricultural land was
distributed to farm families in the form of multiple
family owned small and fragmented parcels.
Also, in many villages there were disputes as to
the right of owners prior to the collectivization
programs had eliminated all private ownership of
land as finalized in the Constitution of 1975.
The Village Commissions tended to divide the
agricultural land among the existing workers,
without strictly observing their land holdings prior
to the collectivization programs of the 1950s.
But these claims were still in the minds of the
people, and led to de facto re-distributions of ag
land in some villages or simply lingering bad
feelings in others.
Beginning in 1993 procedures were also
piloted for registering and mapping the joint
ownership of apartments and retail stores.
With the approval of the Land Registration law
in 1994, there was a pressing need not only for
the initial registration of privatized agricultural
land and privatized apartments, but also for the
building and furnishing of Registration Offices,
and the training and monitoring of staff.
This establishment of Registration Offices and
the initial registration of private and public
properties came at a time of great frenzy for
acquiring private property rights. There was
also a gradually emerging need for the
registration of new owners resulting from
transactions of private rights from one owner to
another and for establishing the institutional
bases for protecting the public interests in the
emerging private property system.
Initial registration of a property involved the
definition of the boundaries of the property and
the determination of the owner(s), both
aspects basic for creating a title registration
system. Title registration is favored in many
European countries and in most ex British
colonies as distinct from a deeds based
registration system favored in most US States
and countries influenced by the Spanish and
French legal traditions.
A main component of the Land Market Action
Plan was the systematic first registration of all
properties in each former cooperative and
state farm as well as in entire apartment
buildings, including residential and commercial
units within them.
The recording of rights and description of
boundaries were done within one institution—
the Immovable Property Registration System.
No separate cadaster was created for mapping
property boundaries. Private companies were
contracted to do the property boundary
IX CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL GEOMÁTICA 2016
David Stanfield | LA RESTRUCTURACIÓN DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE TIERRA EN ALBANIA: DESDE PLAN A
MERCADO
mapping and the assembling of evidence of
ownership rights to the mapped properties as
well as the display of the maps and registries
for comment and correction, and finally the
digitization of the registries and maps.
The 2.3 million property records produced from
the first registration process during the period
2004-2001 were transferred to all 34
Registrars and their District Offices throughout
the country. There remained to be initially
registered approximately 1.7 million properties
after the termination of the Action Plan in 2001.
The Land Market Action Plan also included
components for building land related
institutions for the regulation of land markets
and for other lnd administration functions.
• Capacity development, including graduate
studies, study tours and equipment for
Albanian
University
Development
Planning Faculties
• Formation of Association of Property
Assessors and training
• Formation of Association of Realtors and
their training
• Preparation
of
an
Environmental
Protection Action Plan.
• Development of procedures for initial
registration of properties in informal urban
settlements.
• Preparation of mortgage legislation and
regulations for lending institutions
• Preparation of legislation for a special
land court for handling conflicts over
immovable property rights and boundaries
5.
LESSONS LEARNED
The Land Market Action plan was constantly
evolving in the chaotic environment post 1992
through its abandonment in 2002. While there
were impressive achievements, looking back
there are also some things which could have
been done differently and better:
a.
Private rights property were extinguished
legally in 1975 and all deeds based
Registry offices closed. By 1996 the
Albanian Parliament had approved
legislation for the massive privatization of
rural and urban immovable properties and
for the creation of a new Immovable
Property Registration system. Donors
and government partnered beginning in
1995 for initial registration of over 2 million
new properties and the building of new
institutions for guiding the new markets in
immovable properties.
However,many
judges and lawyers in 2000 remembered
the old system which described properties
in metes and bounds and not property
maps. When the new title registration
system was transferred to the control of
the Ministry of Justice and all the staff in
the new registration offices were replaced
by political appointees in 2004, old ways
for conducting transaction emerged
focused on legal procedures. Cadastral
Index
Maps
describing
property
boundaries were not updated, and
property boundary descriptions evolved
into verbal metes and bounds. There were
no politically powerful champions for the
IPRS.
b. While initial registration of privatized
property
rights
was
based
on
documentations of the results of
privatization commissions, committees
and other entities, the Land Market
Action Plan did not envision the
involvement of community elders and
members in this process, other than
community viewing and correcting the
property maps and lists of adjudicated
owners.
A much more ambitious public education
and mobilization effort was called for to
accomplish an initial registration which
would be viewed as legitimate by the
population and whose value was
understood by the general public.
c. Significant pockets of resistance existed
to the privatization of rights to lands and
buildings to their possessors rather than
the restitution of properties to their
owners
prior
to
the
Hoxha
collectivization and expropriation of
private owners after WWII.
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David Stanfield | LA RESTRUCTURACIÓN DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE TIERRA EN ALBANIA: DESDE PLAN A
MERCADO
This pressure for the restitution of properties to
their pre-1948 owners continues 20 years after
the decisions were made to form a market
oriented economy where private rights to
property would play a major role.
Whose
private rights are legitimate is a discussion
which goes on.
The initial registration effort might have included
provisions for “provisional” first registration and
special
adjudication
courts
created
in
communities and buildings where former owners
exercised substantial influence.
d. Market Oriented Economy and Corruption
There was a gradually emergence of an
awareness that “greed is good” in a market
oriented economy, That is, most Albanians in
the 1990s came to believe that people “should”
maximize their individual gains without social
obligations.
Many Albanians gravitated to
such ideas after several decades of restricting
opportunities for consumerism imposed by a
socialist regime under threat, real and
perceived, committed to self-sufficiency,
economic and political within a command
economy.
Western market oriented economies had
developed restraints on such impulses over
many centuries, some with greater success
than others. But in Albania few such restraints
remained after the fall of the communist
regime. Western countries preached the need
for reducing corruption, but seemed to focus
more on governmental corruption rather than
its private business counterpart. Rampant
corruption in western country elections,
especially in the US, also undermined their
anti-corruption sermons to the Albanians.
Unrestrained greed became the mantra of the
day in Albania as in most of the planet.
Perhaps the combination of ecological and
economic crises in recent years over most of
the earth will produce a movement for
protecting the “common good” (5) which would
benefit also those Albanians who struggle for
such an aim.
6.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
From our first meetings in chaotic Tirana in
1992, the core team of Ahmet Jazoj, Spiro
Lamani, Romeo Sherko, Maksi Raco, Mira
Laha, Norman Singer and David Stanfield
expanded to include Mark Marquardt, Kathrine
Kelm, Albert Dubali, Rachel Wheeler, Malcolm
Childress, Edmond Leka and hundreds of staff
and consultants. This group of dedicated
professionals helped to establish the
institutional foundations for a socially and
environmentally sustainable market oriented
mixed economy.
References
1. Information Provided by the Government of
Albania to the United Nations Commission
on Sustainable Development, Fifth Session,
7-25 April 1997, New York
2. David
Stanfield, John Bruce, Susana
Lastarria-Cornhiel, and Edward Friedman,
“Consolidating Property Rights in Albania’s
New Private Farm Sector”, LTC Paper 146,
December, 1992
3. David Stanfield and Sonila Jazoj, May,
2008, “The Evolution of Immovable
Property Registration in Albania”, paper
presented to the International Conference
on Real Estate Development in Albania,
Tirana International Hotel.
4. Ontario Law Reform Commission. “Report
on land registration”, Ontario Department of
Justice, 1971.
5. Pope Francis, 2015, “Encyclical Letter
Laudato Si on Care for Our Common
Home”, Vatican, Rome
Summary of author’s background
The author has an undergraduate degree in
Mathematics from Ohio State University, a Master’s
degree in International Relations and Organization
from American University in Washington, D.C., and a
PhD in Communication from Michigan State
IX CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL GEOMÁTICA 2016
David Stanfield | LA RESTRUCTURACIÓN DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE TIERRA EN ALBANIA: DESDE PLAN A
MERCADO
University, East Lansing. Since 1978 the author has
worked principally through the Land Tenure Center at
the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and
specialized in the evolution of land tenure institutions
in mixed economies characterized by private,
communal, indigenous, and public rights to land and
buildings. Activities have included teaching, research,
training and advising experience on land tenure
institutions in South, Central and North America,
Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, and Africa.
IX CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL GEOMÁTICA 2016