Bulgariа Ex Tsar Keeps Up Court Battle over Property Rights

Former Bulgarian Tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg, who also served as the country's prime minister 2001-2005, is seeking to regain in court his property rights over a large plot of land of what was once part of the royal palace of Vrana.

Simeon Saxe-Coburg and his sister try to recover nearly 1500 decares of agricultural land, which are currently part of the assets of state company Vrana EAD, owned by the Agriculture Ministry.

Sofia City Court heard on Tuesday the testimonies of three witnesses on behalf of the royal family and the state and scheduled the next hearing for April 26, 2011.

Simeon Saxe-Coburg filed in August a complaint against the Bulgarian state in the European Court of Human Rights over his suspended property rights.

The former king is said to have been assured by lawyers that there are very high chances that he wins the case against Bulgaria in Strasbourg for freezing his ownership of lands formerly returned to him.

In the end of 2009 the Bulgarian Parliament voted to freeze the former Tsar's rights to lands in the Rila mountains, on grounds of information disclosed after an investigation at the Ministry of Agriculture, according to which the former monarch was granted more land than his family actually owned. Bulgarian courts have also found a number of errors and violations in the procedure for returning lands to Simeon.

Saxe-Coburg now wants to overturn the ban.

The estates and forests were owned by the state after the former communist regime seized them in 1946 and forced Saxe-Coburg's family into exile.

The question of the so called "Tsar's estates" has become an issue disgruntling the Bulgarian society in the recent years over doubts that the property was given to Saxe-Coburg unlawfully during his term as Prime Minister (2001-2005).

Simeon II is the last monarch of Bulgaria, having reigned with regents 1943-1946 (aged 6-9), after the death of his father Boris III. After the communist takeover in 1944, a controversial referendum was held 1946, at which people voted in support for the creation of a republic, and this led to banishing the royal family from the country. In 1947 a new constitution was adopted proclaiming Bulgaria a republic.

Simeon returned to Bulgaria in 2001 and swiftly founded a liberal political party (National Movement Simeon II, later National Movement for Stability and Prosperity), which won a landslide victory in the general elections the same year.

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