A commentary by Ilya Artemyev, Consultant of the Legal Practice Department at the Alliance Legal Consulting Group, has been published in the professional publication “Advokatskaya Gazeta.”
Issues Not Regulated by Legislation
The Land Code of the Russian Federation grants an exclusive right to acquire title to or lease of land plots to citizens and legal entities that own buildings and structures located on such plots (paragraph 1 of Article 39.20).
However, in my view, the law does not set out with sufficient clarity the conditions under which this right may be exercised, and in respect of a number of issues does so incompletely. As a result, courts take into account approaches corresponding to regulation that is no longer in force and resort to systematic interpretation to derive new requirements that do not directly follow from the law.
The problem outlined is one of many outcomes of regulating relations between the state and private persons by means of the Land Code.