The Renationalization of Restituted Property: Remarks on the Ozsdola Commonage Case

Abstract

The study examines the judicial annulment of the restitution of forests and pastures previously restituted to the Ozsdola Commonage in Romania. It argues that the Romanian state did not acquire ownership of the disputed property through the 1921 agrarian reform because neither full and prior compensation nor constitutive registration in the land register was completed. Consequently, ownership remained with the commonage until the nationalization of 1948, making the restitution carried out in 2002 legally justified. The study also criticizes the courts’ reliance on a non-binding statement of the Romanian Constitutional Court, and interprets the case as part of a broader trend of judicial renationalization affecting Hungarian communities and churches in Transylvania.