In recent years, unfriendly rhetoric towards the Catholic Church and Christianity, in general, has become one of the central themes of the Slovenian left-wing establishment. Things that some people used to dare say only sitting at the bar, because they carried a certain stigma of intolerance, are now frequently heard in the National Assembly and in university lectures. We hear calls for the Catholic Church to be treated equally as other social institutions, we hear that it should pay taxes, how it is involving itself in politics, and so on. Of course, we do not hear such concerns in relation to the Slovenian Islamic community, for example. Now the government is about to deal another blow to the Slovenian church, the Catholic newspaper Družina recently reported.
Following the Constitutional Court’s decision in 2020, the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning issued systemic recommendations to municipalities on the assessment of compensation for the use of building land, also for buildings intended for religious activities.
Some municipalities – including Postojna and Ilirska Bistrica – have already calculated the amount of the building land use compensation for churches. Appeals by parishes, which have so far not had to pay the building land use compensation for religious buildings, have now been sent to the Ministry of Finance.
The 1984 Building Land Act exempts buildings used for religious activities from the levy of the building land use compensation: “No building land use tax shall be payable on land used for the purposes of national defence, on buildings of foreign states used by foreign diplomatic and consular missions or occupied by their staff, on buildings of international and interstate organisations used by such organisations or occupied by their staff, unless otherwise provided in an international agreement, and on buildings used by religious communities for their religious activities.”
Religious buildings are no longer exempt from paying the building land use compensation
The Building Land Act has since expired. Following two decisions of the Constitutional Court in 2004 and 2020, religious buildings are no longer listed as exempted from the payment of the building land use compensation. The 2020 Constitutional Court decision was the basis for the systemic recommendations to municipalities on the levying of the building land use compensation, issued last year by the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, which no longer exempts religious buildings from the payment of the compensation.
Since last year, the Postojna parish has been paying the building land use compensation. As explained to the newspaper Družina by the local parish priest, Jožef Koren, MSc, the diocese of Postojna, in accordance with the instructions of the Koper diocese, filed an appeal against the decision of the Financial Administration of the Republic of Slovenia of the 21st of June 2021 regarding the assessment of the building land use compensation for 2021, as they believe that the current provision of the first paragraph of Article 59 of the Building Land Act, “which stipulates, inter alia, that the compensation does not have to be paid for buildings used by religious communities for religious activities,” was not taken into account.
The law does not address the issue of religious buildings
Although the Building Land Act is no longer in force, according to parish priest Koren, the main purpose of the exemption from having to pay the building land use compensation for certain building lands is because of the lands’ special purpose or because of the specific buildings on it, and not simply because that is building land. “In our case, we are talking about buildings that are religious buildings, meaning churches and chapels, which are mostly also defined as sacral cultural heritage. In all the decisions and laws that replace, supplement and abolish one another, as well as in the two decisions of the Constitutional Court of the 16th of December 2004 and the 17th of September 2020, there is no mention of the issue of buildings for the exercise of religious activities, but only of military buildings. Therefore, we do not consider that it can be inferred from these decisions of the Constitutional Court that the exemptions provided for in Article 59 of the Building Land Act no longer apply to the facilities of religious communities,” he stressed.
He also called on the Slovenian Bishop’s Conference to get involved in solving the problem and wants the state to come to an agreement with the church, or religious communities and the state, so that new legislation is drafted that will more clearly define which buildings are exempt from paying the building land use compensation.
Income of six weeks in a year for the compensation
Parish priest Koren is still waiting for a reply to the appeal from the Ministry of Finance, but since the appeal does not suspend the execution of the decision on the assessment of the building land use compensation, they have been paying the compensation for both parishes, Studeno and Postojna, for two years now, reports Družina. “In two years, we have paid 3,371.02 euros from the donations of the members of both parishes to the Postojna Municipality for the payment of the building land use compensation, which, for the Postojna and Studeno parishes, represents the income of about six weeks in a year.”
“All of the money comes from the pockets of the churchgoers in our parishes; we have no other sources. If we did not have to pay the compensation, the money would be spent on the needs of the parish, or it would be given to Karitas, for charity, or, if nothing else, it would be spent on gas,” said Stanko Fajdiga, a representative of the Ilirska Bistrica parish, adding that if it is found that the payment of the building land use compensation for churches is also in line with the legislation, all municipalities will have to levy it, as they will not be able to circumvent this.
Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning: from now on, the building land use compensation is also mandatory for churches and other religious buildings The Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning has sent recommendations to the municipalities to inform them of the content of the decision of the Constitutional Court, which is binding and has the erga omnes effect – against all – and its consequences. The content was coordinated with the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Administration of the Republic of Slovenia, and the recommendations were sent to the associations of municipalities, as well as to all municipalities. At a consultation of the Community of Municipalities of Slovenia on the 4th of November last year, it was specifically clarified that the building land use compensation should also be levied on churches and other religious buildings.
The problem is the (non)perception of religious buildings as special institutions
Even though the Building Land Act is no longer in force, the problem lies in a legislative loophole which, due to the Yugoslav tradition of a compulsorily atheist state, is not familiar with the European standard of legislative regulation of the exclusion of religious buildings from the payment of land taxes. The Building Land Act provided for an exemption without any explanation as to why the exemption was introduced in the first place, and when it ceased to apply, there was no general law regulating the exclusion of religious properties from the property tax system – as mentioned above, parish priest Koren says that the main point of the tax exemption is that these are special-purpose buildings, and not just building land.
For the Slovenian Constitutional Court, which is packed with left-wing activists, and for the Slovenian ministerial bureaucracy, religion does not mean a special
relationship of people to nature and the creation, but old-fashioned ritualism that is redundant in modern times. The frontal assault on the Slovenian churchgoers is, therefore, no surprise.
Andrej Žitnik
