Government opts for expropriation to push through strategic motorway link

For several years a battle over a piece of farmland has stopped a strategic Czech motorway project in its tracks. On Monday the government decided to remove that obstacle with the radical step of expropriation. We look at that controversial step and whether it will bear fruit.

For the last 16 years authorities have tried in vain to reach an agreement with the owner of farmland on the outskirts of the eastern city of Hradec Králové and on the route of the D11 motorway from Poděbrady. That section of motorway is part of bigger strategic plan aimed at linking Prague with the north-east of the country and eventually with Poland.

Ludmila Havránková, photo: www.ct24.cz

Plans for this strategic route were originally drawn up in 1938 but interrupted by World War II. Testimony of the more recent problem has been the all too visible fact that the motorway now stops several kilometres short of Hradec Králové near the village of Plačice and the farm owned by Ludmila Havránková.

In spite of ongoing negotiations, the government appeared to lose patience and on Monday decided to take the uncompromising route of expropriation. That is a little-used and controversial step in an ex-Communist country where there is now a reluctance to encroach on the rights of private property owners even in the public interest.

The expropriation decision appears to have taken many people by surprise. A deal from the government side offering to swop Mrs. Havránková’s three hectares for another similar sized plot, payment of 21 million crowns, around 1.0 million US dollars, and the rights to rent another 130 hectares appeared close to being concluded.

D11 motorway, photo: www.rsd.cz

But that deal did not account for the fact that a smaller part of the required land is jointly owned by Mrs. Havránková’s sister, Jaroslava Štrosová, and she was reportedly opposed to a sale for the offered price. Some on the government side have suggested that the main land owning sister should have got the other on board.

Faced with the option of a two-track procedure under which a deal could proceed with Mrs. Havránková but her sister’s small plot would be expropriated, the government on Monday took the more drastic step of expropriation for both.

Mrs. Havránková’s lawyer, Pavel Černohous, told Czech Radio that he finds that decision inexplicable:

“The government decision is rather incomprehensible from my point of view: the state says that it could not agree with Mrs. Štrosová, so it then says that it will not go ahead and find an agreement with Mrs. Havránková.”

D11 motorway, photo: www.rsd.cz

The lawyer says that his client is prepared to carry on the fight in the courts. That fight will probably revolve around questions of procedure and definitions of public interest. Meanwhile the government’s appointee for pushing through the motorway project admits that these legal battles could last another year or two.

One thing looks clear, the legal bulldozer of expropriation does not look like completing this section of the D11 by the 2011 deadline.