Ambiguous legal treatment of illegal structures in the Macedonian legislation

Abstract

The paper analyses the legal treatment of illegally constructed structures in the Macedonian real property law since 2001, when the basic Law on ownership and other real rights came into force, until today. By analyzing the legal treatment of illegal structures, we will show that the Macedonian legislator has struggled to find a sustainable legal solution that will resolve the problem of illegal construction. As the paper will demonstrate, the illegal construction is a decades old problem that many laws have addressed, including the basic Law on ownership and other real rights. Evidently, none of the laws regulating the legal treatment illegal structures has accomplished the two main objectives that the Macedonian legislator has aimed for – putting an end to illegal construction and resolving the legal status of the existing illegal structures. The purpose of the research and the analysis in this paper is to give a critical perspective on existing regulation related to illegal structures and to pinpoint the main reasons why the issue of illegal construction persist in spite of the strict regulation intended to prevent it.