Property In Europe Research Articles

Book Review: The Future of Family Property in Europe, edited by Katharina Boele-Woelki, Jo Miles and Jens M. Scherpe. (Cambridge: Intersentia Publishing, 2011)

Book Review: <i>The Future of Family Property in Europe</i>, edited by Katharina Boele-Woelki, Jo Miles and Jens M. Scherpe. (Cambridge: Intersentia Publishing, 2011)

The issue of redundant places of worship

Full text, with notes, of the paper presented at the International Conference “ Holy places and religious institutions. Comparative legal and religious approaches – Italy/Balkans, Israel/Palestine Israel”, organized by LUMSA University (Rome) and the Catholic America – Columbus School of Law (Washington) in Rome, LUMSA, December 10-11, 2008: Dec. 10th session on the subject of “Holy places and religious property in Italy ”. It will be published in the conference proceedings. Translated from Italian by Paola Bernardini. INDEX: 1. The issue of redundant places of worship in Europe - 2. Canonical perspectives - 2.1. The regulations according to the Code of Canon Law - 2.2. General criteria for change in churches’ deployment. The Guidelines of the Episcopal Conference of Italy (CEI) about the cultural goods of the Church in Italy (1992) - 2.3. The documents of other episcopates (Germany and Switzerland) – 3. The phenomenon of churches’ desertion in some countries - 3.1. France - 3.2. Quebec (Canada) - 3.3. United States of America - 4. The situation in Italy - 4.1. Ownership of the churches - 4.2. Financial aspects - 4.3. Legal protection of the destination bond - 4.4. Churches as cultural heritage - 4.5. Fiscal considerations - 4.6. The recent CEI Directive (2005) - 5. Concluding remarks. Abstract: Nowadays one of the major issues concerning ecclesiastical, or religious, property in Europe, as elsewhere, consists of deciding what to do with redundant churches and places of worship of traditional Christian denominations, all of which have lost their original use, either due to a formal decision of the ecclesiastical authorities or to simple closure to the public. This might have been caused by a series of events, like a significant decrease in the church attendance, limited public resources, new urban planning projects and the fall in religious vocation. For these places there is either the prospect of a new use, or a slow process of decay which can ultimately end up in a sale, or demolition. This problem is faced today with singular urgency in Europe, where it determines an increased risk of decay of much of the historical-artistic heritage, together with the abandonment of the countryside and mountain locations and a progressive desertion of historical town centres. Consequently, the issue concerns not only the religious community but also the civil authorities and public opinion, more and more sensitive to the protection of cultural heritage and the historical memory of local communities. This paper examines many aspects of the issue in some countries (Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Quebec, the United States), comparing the different legal frameworks and the documents of some national episcopal assemblies on the subject, especially about the change in the use of churches. Finally it concentrates on the situation in Italy, where the legal framework on this subject is strictly connected with the system of church-state relations, making some concluding remarks about future prospects and possible solutions to some of the more serious aspects of the issue.

Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe, Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, eds. (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007), xi + 295 pp., hardcover $85.00, pbk. $34.95

Robbery and Restitution adds to the excellent reputation of Berghahn's Studies on War and Genocide series under the general editorship of Omer Bartov. Readers familiar with the series know that it summarizes the most recent research on such topics as “the Massacre in History,” “Nazi Extermination Policies,” and “Genocide and Religion.” One of the latest volumes, Robbery and Restitution is essential reading for all Holocaust scholars. Organizing the anthology into four sections, the editors present sixteen essays by leading American and European scholars. Part One consists of an introductory essay by Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther establishing the main themes that subsequent essays examine in more detail. Essays in Parts Two and Three investigate the robbery and the restitution of Jewish property, respectively. The late Gerald Feldman wrote the conclusion that constitutes Part Four. Goschler and Ther's introduction argues that scholars must examine expropriation as a political process involving more than German Nazis; as a social process closely linked to local attitudes and actions throughout Axis Europe; and as “a typology” (p. 11) reflecting local variations in the process of “Aryanization.” Several factors limited restitution after the war, and while these factors also varied by country, common obstacles included the sheer number of Jews murdered, the Cold War confrontation between East and West, and the degree of willingness in each country to face the extent of its own people's role in the robbery.

Regional model for formation, dynamics and Long-range transport of atmospheric aerosol: Study of atmospheric aerosol properties in Europe

This paper provides performance evaluation of the EMEP (Cooperative Programme for the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe) model, formulated in [1], and presents model calculation results. A satisfactory agreement is found between calculated and observed PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations (i.e., particulate matter with diameters smaller than 10 and 2.5 μm) and their chemical composition for different parts of Europe for the years 2001–2004. The model manages to reproduce observed regional gradients of background PM10 and PM2.5, with spatial correlations being 0.70 and 0.80, respectively, while the temporal correlation coefficients between modeled and measured daily PM vary mostly between 0.4 and 0.8 at EMEP sites. The agreement between calculated and observed aerosol number concentrations is worse than for mass concentrations. Model calculated PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations and chemical composition in Europe for the year 2004 are presented, as well as their interannual variations in the period 2000–2004. Further, contributions of different sources to PM10 and PM2.5 are estimated. Model results show that in 2004, background PM10 and PM2.5 exceeded EU critical levels and WHO recommended guidelines in a number of European regions. They also show that the transboundary transport contributes considerably to PM pollution in the European countries.

International property consultants and the transformation of local markets

The paper presents the findings of a case-study research on the role of British property consultants in consolidating a transnational market for property in Europe. It examines comparatively the incorporation of Madrid and Milan into networks of transnational property investment and development and seeks to clarify the relationship between the expansion strategies of British firms and changes in property market structures in both cities. The focus is on the dynamic of the relationship between the consultancy firms and the different legal, institutional and cultural contexts of those property markets. The paper looks at the implications of that relationship for the firms and the markets, and at the role of the firms' strategies in bringing about market structures, practices and cultures compatible with the types of interest they mediate. The paper suggests that the structures and dynamics of the two markets have set a number of reasonably well-defined routes of entry for the consultancy firms, shaped by the different response of the institutional, cultural, economic environments of each city to similar pressures towards market internationalization. These alternative possibilities of insertion into the evolving relations of provision of commercial property have conditioned how firms have developed in the markets and how they have related to processes of market change.

The Plundering of Jewish Property in Europe: Five Recent Publications Documenting Property Seizure and Restitution in Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Belarus

The Plundering of Jewish Property in Europe: Five Recent Publications Documenting Property Seizure and Restitution in Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Belarus

Property in Europe:

Property in Europe:

War Damage and Nationalization in Eastern Europe

In assessing the consequences of modern the economic history of Eastern Europe in the post World War II period is extremely significant. Five years after the end of World War II, it is Eastern Europe which has experienced the swiftest evolution in economic form. In varying degrees, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria have shifted from capitalistic to communistic economies. Behind this transformation was the impetus of World War II. The Russian revolution, itself, it should not be forgotten, occurred in the late stages of World War I. No symposium dealing with modern problems of would seem complete without some discussion of modern in its most generalized sense, i.e., the loosening and weakening of the basic economic structure of modern societies under the pounding of military and economic warfare and the revisionist policies of enemy occupations. The lesson of Eastern Europe is that economic reform is tremendously accelerated, nationalization ensues, and, given political pressures generating from within a destroyed or injured economy, and simultaneously asserted from without, the form of the society is transformed. Thus neither the legal, economic, nor political aspects of to property can, in our time, be fully isolated or considered in a vacuum. Compensation for is, of course, the touchstone of the legal approach. War may have occurred on such a scale that compensation in the conventional sense cannot be practically entertained. Compensation, as an economic device for restoring economies, may be rejected by governments in the face of overwhelming compulsions to adopt alternative solutions. In the circumstances of World War II, given the magnitude of the injuries and wrongs to private individuals, the thoroughgoing overhauling of property rights perpetrated by the Nazi occupants of Eastern Europe,1 and the uniform policies adopted in the liberation and reconstruction period of 19451947, war damage moves away from war claims and merges with the fundamental political considerations of the economics of reconstruction. It cannot be divorced from the post-war reorientation of views concerning property rights and relations. Thus Poland and Czechoslovakia, facing similar problems of postwar reconstruction, quickly recognized the oneness of property rights, political * Ph.B. 1929, J.D. 1931, University of Chicago. Member of the Illinois and District of Columbia bars. Until December, 1950, Assistant to the Legal Adviser for International Claims, Department of State. Contributor to legal, economic, and political science periodicals. 'See RAPHAEL LEMKIN, Axis RULE IN OCCUPIED EUROPE 36-49 (1944). Social philosophers and statesmen must watch carefully the phenomenon of the destruction of the institution of private property in Europe in the present war, which may become even more extensive if the is prolonged and may prove significant for future developments in the post-war period. Jd. at 40.

Postwar Nationalization of Foreign Property in Europe

Postwar Nationalization of Foreign Property in Europe

The Last Generations of Mediaeval Monachism

IN the days when 'appeasement' was already showing itself as suicidal, I was writing the last words of the fifth volume of my Five Centuries of Religion. Regarding the actual explosion as certain, I hastened to complete this and send one copy of the Ms. to Chicago for safe storage during the war. For the fourth volume, describing in detail the monks' food and dress, reading and writing, labor and other occupations, I had long since collected materials which Professor G. R. Potter of Sheffield, my friend and former pupil, has generously undertaken to see through the press if necessary. This fifth volume, however, could not be thus left to friendly help. The whole point of it lies in the exhaustive and symmetrical exposition of those forces which, in all countries of Europe, led monasticism on to the Renaissance and the Reformation. In past volumes, I have repeatedly expressed my judgment that 'the Religious Orders have been among the main forces of European civilization; at certain times and in certain places they may have been the greatest of all civilizing forces. But the historian's most important task is to trace how the pioneers of one generation became the laggards of a later age. We need therefore to collect evidence from as many different dates and places as possible, and do all we can to carry these threads onwards abreast, just as they lead forward to that double Revolution of the sixteenth century on which our modern civilization is based, whether for good or for evil. That Revolution itself cannot be fairly judged unless we make up our minds whether society has gained or lost by the disestablishment and disendowment of men who possessed such an enormous proportion of all the real property in Europe, with corresponding privileges and immunities. This I have tried to answer in a volume of 69 chapters, too bulky to hope for publication while this war lasts. Therefore I seize this opportunity of presenting briefly my main results, in order to lay down clearly certain lines, hitherto most strangely neglected, which can no longer be ignored if we are ever to come anywhere near to general agreement upon this most important question. Dean Colet of St Paul's and St Thomas More may guide us here. Each, at one time or another, faced the idea of enclosing himself in a monastery, and each turned deliberately away. Colet, paradoxically, looked towards Italy and Germany for soul's ease, and not towards his own England, where Church life, on the average, was more regular than on the Continent.2 But Colet was not a man to content himself with mere average excellence; and he saw that the best could be found, here and there, in crudest contrast with the worst. Precisely because Continental monachism had sunk, as a whole, below the English standard-and, in some cases, almost incredibly far below therefore here and there in Italy and the German Empire fervid reforms had been kindled by the natural process of