A FEW COMMENTS ON FREE REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Dimitrijević Duško (Dr Duško Dimitijević, naučni savetnik, Institut za međunarodnu politiku i privredu, Beograd), dimitrijevicd@diplomacy.bg.ac.rs

Free movement of capital is one of the fundamental freedoms affirmed in the EU Treaties ensuring business continuity and foreign investments. It does not only mean simple liberalisation of commodity and capital flows, but it involves much broader freedoms and rights including trade in capital services, securities trading, but also free trade in real estate in the areas of different European Union member countries. During the process of accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia to this organisation the elimination of all internal legislative and administrative barriers to real estate buying and selling was provided for in the transitional period. A special emphasis in the accession documents was put on free trade in agricultural and forest lands that for the most part had been owned by the state in the transition period. The specification of the conditions in the accession documents mentioned above enables harmonisation of legislations of states with EU acquis communautaire, thus contributing to the further development of connections among them and thus, their more rapid integration in the Union internal market

Keywords: Free movement of capital, transfer of real estate, acquis communautaire