Landscape expropriation

The regulations of the so-called 2015 landscape act enabled municipal councils to passresolutions specifying the terms and conditions for locating small architecture objects,bill-boards and advertising devices as well as fences, their dimensions, quality standards andtypes of construction materials from which they can be made. One of the elements of the contentof such a resolution is to determine the terms and time of adjustment of the objects, fencesand advertising boards and devices existing on the day of its entry into force to the introducedprohibitions, rules and conditions. This in turn gives the opportunity to eliminate from the legalturnover the rights obtained in accordance with the then applicable law, resulting for examplefrom the decision on the building permit. Such a solution is in a way similar to the so-calledexpropriation of a right that is acceptable in the current constitutional order. However, thelegal construction of the “landscape expropriation” coined for the purposes of this article raisessome fundamental reservations. Firstly, the consequences of the adopted resolutions arein contradiction with the constitutional principle of non-retroactivity of law, of which derogationis possible, but it must be justified by relevant reasons, such as protection of valuesappreciated higher than the certainty of legal turnover or trust in public authorities. Secondly,the abovementioned deprivation of rights acquired in accordance with the law in force occurswithout a fair compensation required by the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Thirdly,the mechanism of eliminating the norms derived from legal turnover, reconstructed fromthe content of an administrative decision by subsequent higher-level norms, by whichin this case we mean the norms resulting from the analyzed resolutions, which are acts of local law,is challenged by the doctrine of law, the more so that the derogation of these derived normshas the characteristics of implied derogation.