Professional paper
The Meaning of the Notion Protected Lessee through Cross-Section of Legal Postulates and Constitutional Case Law
Marko Babić
; Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Renata Gerkman Rudec
; Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The Constitution of the Republic of Croatia from 1991 does not recognise the right of abode. Because of it, it was necessary to regulate the relations that existed based on the Constitution and the laws of the former state that deal with the right of abode. For that purpose several laws were passed, out of which for the relations from the area of housing the most significant ones are The Law on sales of flats with a right of abode, the Law on ownership and other real rights and the Law on renting flats. In order to coordinate this relations with the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, the legislator decided to change the institute of the right of abode with the classical institute of the civil law – lease, in that way respecting the provisions of the Croatian constitution about inviolability of ownership rights as one of the highest values of the constitutional framework (article 3), guarantee of the ownership rights (article 48), the principle of proportionality in the limitation of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights (article 16) and the limitations of ownership rights in the interest of the Republic of Croatia (article 50, paragraph 1).
In the paper the legal position of flat owners as leasers and the position of former carriers of the right of abode as protected lessees according to the Law on the renting of flats is discussed. Special emphasis in the paper is given to the reasons of the termination of the lease contract signed for indefinite period towards lessees (article 21 and 40 of the Law on renting of flats) and to the constitutional-judicial praxis on this matter. The paper analyses the decisions of the Constitutional court of the Republic of Croatia that, among other things, revoke the provisions of the article 21, paragraph 2, and article 40, paragraph 2 of the Law on renting of flats because they are in opposition with the Croatian constitution, it further analyses the Report of the Constitutional court from 20 June 2007 sent to the Croatian Parliament in which it is warned of the fact that the legislator did not in specific time, in accordance with the decisions of the Constitutional court, regulated the issue of the termination of contracts about flat lease for indefinite time, and finally, it analyses two decisions of the Constitutional court regarding the constitutional claims against rulings that order protected lessees to leave the flat based on the revoked provisions of the Law on renting of flats.
Keywords
protected lessee; lease; constitutional case law
Hrčak ID:
100040
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2012.
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