As is known, on April 18, Ráhel Orbán signed two sales contracts for a total of 94 hectares of land in the Tokaj Wine Region in north-eastern Hungary. For a while, the question persisted whether a local landowner (in Hungary, owners of adjacent properties have pre-emption rights when selling a given landed property) or perhaps the state would exercise their right of pre-emption and prevent the Prime Minister’s daughter from acquiring ownership at least for parts of the total area in question. This issue was also referred to in Ráhel Orbán’s response to us back in June.
Later, we inquired several times with Ráhel Orbán’s team to see if any of those entitled to pre-emption had exercised the right, but we would receive no more answers. Therefore, we took it upon ourselves to uncover whether the Orbán family had succeeded in the acquisition, focusing on the more valuable estates. For the twelve most expensive estates (the contract divided the 142 properties with distinct parcel numbers into property groups, in reality comprising a total of 73 different properties), no one had expressed a pre-emption claim, so the respective land authorities eventually registered Ráhel Orbán’s ownership.
“The preservation of World Heritage Sites is a matter of public interest, and for this reason, the government considers it important that the ownership structure of properties located in Hungarian World Heritage Sites poses the least risk in terms of the public task of preserving the given World Heritage Site. Where legal possibilities exist, the government seeks to strengthen the state as the main authority acting in its capacity as owner. To this end, the government proposes to the Parliament the complementation of the National Land Fund Act and the World Heritage Act with the addition that the Hungarian state should be able to exercise pre-emption rights regarding the sale of these properties at all times. Thereby the state could ensure that in cases of land exchanges or transactions where heritage protection action is justified, such measures could be realised solely through state acquisition” – argued in November 2017 Nándor Csepreghy, former Deputy Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, during the general debate of the legislative proposal.
The proposal was ultimately accepted by the Parliament in December. In an annex to a related government decree, more than 80,000 properties located in World Heritage areas were listed as properties to which the state has pre-emption rights ahead of everyone else. Shortly thereafter, within the eight days provided by the law, these pre-emption rights were officially registered on the affected properties by force of law. This means that in case of a potential transaction, the property owner in question must contact the relevant minister (in the case of Tokaj-Hegyalja, the minister responsible for cultural heritage, currently János Csák) and send through the respective government office (a government office, kormányhivatal, is a territorial state administration body of the government with general competencies) a declaration calling for the exercise of the pre-emption right along with the sales contract. The respective minister then has 30 days to decide whether the state will exercise its pre-emption right. If the minister does opt for pre-emption, the original buyer is left empty-handed, as it is the state that acquires it instead.
The regulations comprehensively address issues related to World Heritage Sites and state pre-emption rights; however, they do not specify how this pre-emption right is to be abolished regarding a certain property. According to a construction lawyer also specializing in heritage protection, this is not without reason,
The expert, requesting to remain anonymous, has not been aware of any cases where the pre-emption right was removed from any property originally affected by the legislation.
We attempted to contact János Csák’s Ministry of Culture and Innovation to inquire about the conditions under which the state’s pre-emption right on a property located in a World Heritage area can be abolished, and the number of such cases initiated so far. However, the ministry did not respond to our questions sent in mid-November — furthermore, we were also interested in learning how many instances ministers have exercised the state’s pre-emption right since 2018. The Hungarian National Commission for UNESCO suggested that we contact the Ministry of Construction and Transport instead, as it is they who handle state tasks related to World Heritage issues. We directed our questions to this ministry as well, but, much like Ráhel Orbán’s team, they would ignore our queries.
Lacking a response, one can only guess regarding why it could be important to strip the state of pre-emption rights. This deletion could come in handy the most when there is an intention to transfer the property on part of the owner, as then the state cannot step in as the buyer.
The legislation stirred up considerable uproar when local property owners received notices of the state registering a pre-emption right on their property titles.
We have not heard of anyone having the pre-emption right removed from their property, but it would be outrageous if this had indeed happened,
László Bíró, former Jobbik politician and vineyard owner in Tokaj-Hegyalja, told out paper. Bíró remembers the controversy in Tokaj-Hegyalja when the pre-emption right was registered on all properties within the World Heritage Site. “Farmers were upset; even some renowned winemakers spoke out against it. The issue was raised in the county assembly. There, the government’s explanation of the measure was that in case of a mortgage insolvency in the region, the state could step in to prevent banks from acquiring World Heritage properties at good prices” – explained László Bíró, who is involved in the work of the assembly in the colours of former Jobbik-chief Péter Jakab’s A Nép Pártján Mozgalom (“On the side of the people”).
