Law on Land Reform (No. VIII-370).

This Law, divided into 5 Chapters, provides for the privatization of rural lands in Lithuania and aims at regulating landownership relations and land reform procedure. Chapter 1 contains general provisions. Chapter 2 ("Acquisition of land as private property) reaffirms the right to private landownership and determines the conditions of sale, size ceilings, priority categories of buyers as well as the restrictions on the resale of private agricultural and forest lands. Chapter 3 ("State land") lists those public lands not subject to privatization, which will compose the State Land Fund (arts. 13 and 14). Chapter 4 ("Implementation of land reform") cites rural agrarian reform agencies as responsible for the implementation of land reform, and the State Institute of Land Exploitation as responsible for land reform plans. Chapter 5 ("Land survey work") concerns the formation of land survey plans of land reform and the determination of land easement. The goals of land reform: ensuring the protection of natural resources, implementing the right of natural persons to own and use land in accordance with the procedure and conditions established by law returning illegally expropriated land, transferring or giving free ownership and selling it to those who wish to buy it, renting or ensuring use of state land, creating legal and economic prerequisites for the development of the land market, implementing social justice by privatizing public land. During the implementation of land reform, the methods of acquiring land ownership are: (a) restoration of ownership rights to land by returning it in kind or by transferring or granting ownership of a plot of land free of charge in accordance with the Law on the Restoration of Citizens' Ownership Rights to Existing Real Estate; (b) free ownership of state land; (c) sale of public land; and (d) civil land transactions.