Global Trade Alert

On 14 April 2016, the Polish parliament amended the law on agricultural land.
The amendment prohibits the trade in agricultural land for the next five years. The ban does not hold for:

• areas planned to be transformed and used for other purposes than agriculture
• areas with Special Economic Zones
• agricultural areas up to 2 hectares
• houses, garages and gardens belonging to the houses.

Despite the ban, agricultural land may be sold but only to individual farmers who will need a prior recommendation from the Agricultural Property Agency (ANR) and an approval from the Agriculture Ministry. Even then, the individual farmer cannot own more than 300 hectares to be able to purchase it.
Whereas the ban does not de jure discriminate between foreigners and local residents, the amendment came into force one day before a 12-year cooling off period with the EU expires. According to that deal with the EU, Poland was allowed to stop any sale of agricultural land to other EU-residents. This amendment is therefore clearly targeted at prolonging the cooling off period even at the expense of preventing sales of land between local residents.
The amendment came into force on 30 April 2016.