| On 17 June 1990,
the Volkskammer (People's Parliament of the GDR) passed the Trusteeship
Law, which created a Trusteeship Agency (Treuhandanstalt) to privatize
East German public property and prepare it for world market competition.
Based on the intention
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to restore the state's commercial activity as quickly
and extensively as possible through privatization
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to make as many businesses as possible competitive,
thus protecting existing jobs and creating new ones
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to provide real estate for economic purposes
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to make it possible, after taking stock of state
property, its productivity, and its priority usefulness for structural
adaptation of the economy and stabilization of the national budget, to
grant investors a vested right to shares in state property for a sum reduced
through the monetary conversion of July 2, 1990, the following law is passed:
Article 1: Transfer of Property
(1) State owned property is to be privatized.
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In certain cases to be determined by law, state-owned
property can also be conveyed to the ownership of local governments, cities,
districts, and states, as well as to the public.
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State-owned property serving local needs or providing
local services is to be conveyed by law to local governments and cities.
(2) The Council of Ministers bears responsibility
for privatization and reorganization of state-owned property and is accountable
to the Volkskammer.
(3) The Council of Ministers appoints the Trusteeship
Agency to implement the necessary measures.
(4) The Trusteeship Agency is, under the provisions
of this law, owner of shares in capital corporations that will be created,
or that have already been created before this law takes effect, through
transformation of state monopolies, enterprises, institutions, and other
legally independent economic units registered as state-owned property.
Sources: Gransow, Volker and Konrad
H. Jarausch, eds. Uniting Germany; Documents and Debates, 1944-1993. Translated
by Allison Brown and Belinda Cooper. Rhode Island: Berghahn Books, 1994.
ISBN: 1-57181-011-0pb. (Deutschland Archiv 23, 1990, 1301+) |