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1.
Introduction
Most of the norms affecting property in continental legal systems may be found in separate units of civil codes and external laws normally defined as 'special'. In the 19th century, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Vojvodina, as parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were under the Austrian Civil Code (ABGB). Montenegro adopted a civil code in 1888. Serbia was the first country of the region to adopt a French oriented Civil Code in 1844.2
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo was a part, did not adopt a unified civil code due to its constitutional allocation of powers between Federation and States. The main subject matters of a typical civil code used to be a shared competence between the constitutive units of the federation (property, family and inheritance) and the federal level (obligations).
The fragmentation of property laws in Kosovo is now a reflection of different historical, cultural and political traditions, making ownerships rights extremely problematic. As a region of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Kosovo did not have land surveys. Evidence of property was based on a complex cadastral system that was a mixture of population and tax roll records. Property ownership was evidenced by a system of tapi (allotment certificates). Since no surveying measurements were done, the tapi identified the owner, property, residence of the owner, description of the parcel, boundaries, and names of adjacent parcel owners (their names, dimensions of the boundaries, and additional characteristics relevant in making the identification of the property as clear as possible, especially with regard to the adjacent properties). The tapi system in Kosovo was incorporated into the laws of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The first cadastral survey, in cooperation with the police forces and geodesy specialists, started in 1923 and ended in 1937. It had legal power after the final preparation of cadastral documents.
The native Albanians did not care to obtain ownership documents (tapi) for their real estate properties as they were a marginalized group. In addition, they did not register ownership titles, in order not to be liable to pay high property taxes. Therefore, upon the cadastral survey completion, the land of Albanian owners, passed from generation to...