Denationalization of Property on the Territory of Former Yugoslavia - Case of Kosovo

Abstract

Nationalization, or nationalization, is the process of transforming private assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization in the legal sense was a unilateral state power, under which violently has taken from a private owner and runs the state-owned property of a certain branch of the economy, with or without pay. Second world war and the new regime made Yugoslavia change towards the idea of creating the system that made changes of ownership of the property, by taking the property from the private ownership in order to create a “Greater General Good”. The process of nationalization of land is a very complex process and complicated one which even nowadays affects the properties of different persons. Kosovo as a former part of Yugoslavia has gone through the rough process of Nationalization of property. Drafting a law on restitution of property nationalized under communism is necessary, based on the models of other countries that have addressed this issue.