Cabinet on Friday approved changes to agricultural lease laws.
The changes are meant "to rationalise and simplify" the current processes for the transfer, allocation, disposal and general administration of government-owned land granted by agricultural lease (qbiela).
“Through this initiative, the government is reiterating its commitment towards those farmers who wish to sustain their activity in this important sector of the economy, and this by providing the means to maintain and sustain the viability of its agricultural holdings," Economy Minister Silivio Schembri said.
The move follows pleas from farmers threatened with eviction from land they and their families tilled for generations.
A court last year declared that although landowners have a right to enjoy property held under protected leases, the State has a “very wide discretion” to maintain the agricultural sector and prevent its collapse.
The judgment had followed a Constitutional Court ruling in 2020 which said that laws restricting a landowner's ability to evict tenants from agricultural land were unconstitutional.
In a statement on Friday, Schembri said the proposed amendments were designed to provide solutions for the “large number of pending requests” for the transfer and allocation of agricultural tenements.
Such requests would be rejected by current regulations.
The proposed amendments aimed to “break the impasse” on several long-standing issues which could be resolved "through the rationalisation of regulations".
The new regulations, he said, would remove current obstacles to the transfer of agricultural land between family members, or to third parties in the case of, for example, the retirement of the current farmer.
Such legal obstacles currently include limits to the size of buildings for the transfer of tenements, the need to obtain permission from in solidum co-tenants, and the difficulty to recognise co-cultivators as the legitimate successors to the lease.
The amendments will also allow for the processing of a large number of old applications for recognition of tenants or transfer of tenements which, due to these legal obstacles, had been left pending for many years.
So farmers who have been making use of government land for many years could now put their minds at rest that future generations would be able to continue doing so without excessive bureaucracy, Schembri said.
Further details, he said, would be announced in the coming days.