The minister said leasehold contracts whereby foreign farmers pay a lease fee in advance are, similarly to pocket contracts, invalid and must be terminated from May this year.

Austrian farm minister Andrä Rupprechter said this law amendment causes a problem in that until 2001 leasehold contracts were legal in Hungary and registered in the land registry. Fazekas told MTI that the land law takes the interests of Hungarian farmers who genuinely make use of the land into account rather than those of speculators.

“Hungarian land is Hungarians’ business and we are not going to allow someone’s land to get mired in illegal transactions,” he said. The office of commissioner for the internal market Michel Barnier told MTI in Brussels on Wednesday that the commission was examining the Hungarian land law and had not yet drawn any final conclusions.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

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