Our partners in Europe are mystified by land system

The paper which I presented to the conference highlighted the fact that in the UK there are no controls over who can own agricultural land. It is through the spatial planning process (town and country planning) and by various rural development policies and environmental stewardship schemes that the UK Government seeks to influence the use of land and balance of rural communities.

This situation is very different in most of the rest of Europe where spatial planning generally appears to be far less sophisticated and authorities rely much more heavily on restrictions on land ownership to influence use and protect rural communities.

This would seem the fly in the face of the Treaty of Rome which requires free movement of capital and labour. However, national and regional governments across Europe justify the controls by relying on Article 39(1b) of the Treaty of Rome which sets out among other objectives to "ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community..." and the social constraints that are identified within Article 39(2). Legal precedent was cited which supports this view provided the controls are proportionate and provided no single objective is accorded permanent priority.

It seems that only Holland has an open land market similar to the UK and all other EU countries control farm land ownership to a greater or lesser degree. This is understandable in eastern Europe for new member states (NMS) where land values remain low and there is concern about land grabs by individuals or companies from wealthier nations. The NMS have enjoyed a derogation on land ownership controls to allow for transition but this has either already expired or in some cases is about to. This has led the NMS to complain about double standards as old member states still retain historical land controls. For example, in Germany the Land Transfer Act requires prior approval of all agricultural land transfers. They can be rejected if the price is too high, the size of the transfer is not appropriate or there is otherwise considered to be "unhealthy distribution".

Meanwhile there was also much interest in the UK Land Registry System. Many member states were amazed to hear that more than 20 per cent of UK land is still unregistered. Many use their land registry as a management tool for taxation and land control, so they were mystified by our approach. A special paper delivered by a Spanish delegate described the introduction of a new multi-layered online land registry database that includes not only land ownership details but also environmental factors, spatial planning matters and neighbouring land uses. This gives potential land buyers a wealth of information available freely online before they make a decision to buy.

It was widely felt that this could usefully be extended to the rest of Europe, although data protection concerns were raised.

In the closing session of the conference, Professor Roland Norer of Lucerne University commented that "a common legal basis for Agricultural Law (in the EU) remains a dream".

He later asked: "Do we have only a common administrative and financial system and actually are all member states doing their own thing and are not at all common?"

I think he has a point.

* Mike Taylor is senior partner of Barbers Rural in Market Drayton and specialises in independent expert valuations of farms and other rural property for dispute resolution.