To the surprise of both the professional and the general public, the Ministry of Transport has submitted a new construction law for comments. The proposed law is to replace the criticized and unprepared law by Stefan Holý, which has already been approved by the Parliament, but its entry into force has been delayed.
Another attempt at a new construction law is presented by Transport Minister Jozef Ráž. The material is in the comment procedure until 15.8.2024.
What does the new Building Act bring?
Regarding the objectives of the new law, the sponsor states:
- is conceptually arranged according to the current requirements for the internal arrangement of laws; in accordance with Act No. 400/2015 Coll. on the Creation of Legal Regulations and the Collection of Laws of the Slovak Republic, as amended;
- in the field of professional terminology, historically proven and generally used terminology is adopted, at the same time new terminology is adopted from professional international documents, from legally binding acts of the European Union and from the International Statistical Classification of Buildings;
- strengthens the position of owners of land and buildings and their rights to the building, because to construct a building on the land is part of the constitutionally protected right to use the property in one’s possession;
- restores the original purpose of the state building authorities as purely technical building and technical state authorities, relieved of the duty to monitor non-technical activities (e.g., expediency, user relations, neighbour disputes, the resolution of movables, and so on);
- significantly simplifies the process of construction preparation by abandoning the current two-component decision-making (zoning decision and building permit) and introducing only one procedure – the building plan procedure, by which the building authority expresses its consent to the proposed construction activity;
- leaves the agenda of the building authority as a delegated state administration in the field of building law to the municipality, while municipalities can establish building districts similar to the current joint municipal authorities.
- pursues the tightening of training of employees working in the state administration in the field of construction law,;
- regulates the protection of works of art in buildings and public spaces from damage or destruction by construction activities; these are requirements arising from international legal documents (the Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe, the Convention for the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage and the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society);
- specifies the administrative procedure and the procedural rights and obligations of the parties and persons concerned and the content of the output decisions;
- provides for an additional procedure in relation to unauthorised structures constructed before the proposed Building Act comes into force, so that such structures are either retrospectively certified or removed within a certain period of time; the aim is to ensure that these structures do not appear as permanently unauthorised, not approved, but have been in use for years without any problems;
- clarifies offences and other administrative offences and extends the range of sanctioned persons to other persons in construction (contractors, persons performing construction supervision), because in the prevailing contractor method of construction, the builder is only the customer of the service (construction) and does not personally manage the construction; according to civil law, the person who caused the violations of the law and the damages caused by the provision of the service should be held liable for the violations and the damages caused by the provision of the service (the contractor), and not the customer of the service (the builder);
- highlights the importance of the participation of authorised persons in construction, in particular it specifies the authorisations and responsibilities of the designer, construction manager, construction contractor, person performing construction supervision, surveyor and structural engineer in the preparation of construction and in the construction of the building.
Pluses and minuses
I see it as a positive that the planned computerisation of construction proceedings is being abandoned. An exclusively electronic form would have made it impossible for a large number of citizens who are not computer literate and do not have the Internet to access protection of their rights. We also appreciate the efforts to ensure that the district of the building authority has a certain number of inhabitants and that small building authorities, which have often been unable to ensure compliance with the law and expertise in the permitting of buildings, should disappear.
However, a better solution would be if the state, not the municipalities, administered the building authorities. At present, there are strong ties between voters and mayors controlling building authorities in municipalities, which increases the likelihood of corruption. Also incomprehensible is the statement in the explanatory memorandum that the draft construction law has no impact on the environment. It is hard to find a law that affects the environment more than the Construction Act. The phrase ‘environment’ alone is mentioned 15 times in the law… Such disregard for reality indicates the unprofessionalism of the drafters of the law.
You can follow the approval process of the new law HERE.
