Govt to start making offers to owners of land plots on Estonian-Russian border

BNS
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Four in five owners of land on the Estonian-Russian border have given their consent to clearing their land on the border strip of trees and bushes and the Interior Ministry will start making offers to buy the land at the end of this month.

At the moment 77 owners of privately held land plots or about 80 percent of landowners have given their consent to clearing of the border strip, spokespeople for the Interior Ministry told BNS. The ministry is planning to buy up all the land that constitutes the border strip by the end of this year.

Interior Minister Hanno Pevkur, who visited southeastern Estonia for the cornerstone laying ceremony of the new complex of the border guard base at Piusa on Monday, met with the landowners who have allowed work to be done on their land to thank them for cooperation.

"Evaluation of the land under the border strip will begin already at the end of this month, at the same time making of proposals to landowners to sell the land under the border strip will begin," Pevkur said. He said the ministry wishes to make just offers for the land and expects to be able to avoid expropriation. "We are planning to transfer all the pieces of land under the border strip that are currently in private ownership by the end of 2015," Pevkur said.

Seventy-two kilometers of the border between Estonia and Russia making up approximately 200 hectares of the roughly 300 hectares of land constituting the border strip has been cleared of high-growth vegetation by now. The work will continue through the summer.

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