Eu tackles 'land-grab' nightmare

Pressure from the EU over Spain's oppressive land-grab laws appears to paying off...

The government of the Valencian Region recently announced its intention to overhaul urban planning laws, including the infamous ‘land grab’ laws that allow developers to expropriate land from private owners. The action has come about after intense criticism and growing pressure from the European Parliament,

In 2006, the Valencian government replaced the original ‘land grab’ law, known as the Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urbanística (LRAU), with Valencia’s present town planning law, called the Ley Urbanística Valenciana  (LUV). Though a slight improvement, the new law did not stop unscrupulous developers, in cahoots with local politicians, from presenting planning schemes that expropriate land from private owners, in some cases forcing them to contribute hundreds of thousands of Euros to the urbanisation costs.

Constant pressure from the EU

Victims of Valencia’s planning laws, many of whom have lost their homes and been financially ruined by greedy local developers and politicians, were forced to take their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Brussels.

Unfortunately, the EU has no jurisdiction over national planning laws, so it was powerless to intervene on this front. Instead, the European parliament attacked the LUV, and the LRAU before it, for violating EU public procurement procedures, publicly condemning Spain three times in five years over the oppressive rules.

The pressure seems to have worked and investors can only hope that any new planning laws implemented will preclude the possibility of any future land-grab problems.