The Cooperative Member's Proprietary Right to an Apartment: A Legal Survival of the Period of Actually Existing Socialism in Polish Private Law

Abstract

The notion of legal survivals refers to those elements of the legal superstructure, which, following a profound change in the socio-economic infrastructure, still exist in the new, modified conditions. The proprietary right to an apartment in a cooperative is an example of a survival of the Socialist Legal Tradition in post-1989 capitalist Poland. This right was created in the 1950s in order to serve the specific agenda of that period, namely a compromise between the requirement that preference be given to socialized property (such as cooperative property) and the need of providing persons who finance the construction of their own apartment with a sufficiently attractive legal title. After the transition to capitalism in 1989, the original raison d'être of this right disappeared. In spite of that, proprietary rights to apartments in newly constructed housing stock could still be established until 2007 and in existing housing stock, under certain conditions, until the end of 2012. The paper aims at exploring the reasons of the existence of this legal survival in the modified socio-economic context.

Keywords: legal survivals, Socialist Legal Tradition, Poland, private law, civil law, cooperatives law, proprietary right to an apartment, housing law

JEL Classification: K11