DEMOCRATIZATION OF PROPERTY RELATIONS

Abstract

The process of democratization of property relations has affected, first of all, the European area, and then the other parts of the world. Having been established with a clear economic and social content, without the ideological burden, the employees shareholding and participation have the conditions to expand, strengthen their power and become one of the important factors in the structure of the modern society. In our area, the process of the transformation of social ownership began with the employees shareholding. Company employees were given the right to buy internal shares under privileged conditions. That was the main form of transformation. There was trust in the company to initiate, organize and manage the process of transformation in its own interest. The funds obtained through the issuance of shares, selling a part of the company or the whole company, according to the express provisions of the law, belong to the company or its complex form. Later, already during 90s, ideological properties were unjustifiably attributed to the employees shareholding and participation, which led to their complete exclusion from the economic and legal system. By subsequent regulations, privatization was almost exclusively reduced to selling, thus excluding all other possible different forms of privatization. This approach lost the sight of the basic economic objectives of privatization: there was no acquiring of new capital or new investment cycle; there were neither new business entities capable of receiving and fertilizing the capital emerged, nor the privatization represented an incentive for dynamic development of economy and employment. Economic enterprises were extinguished, and unemployment increased. And now, in a much less favorable economic and social climate, it is reasonable to raise the issue of whether there are still conditions to engage the inner forces that would take upon themselves the responsibility for getting out of the crisis, by introducing the employees shareholding and privatization. A prerequisite for this is certainly the creation of a legal framework for the establishment and development of the employees shareholding and participation. This would simultaneously bring us closer to the legal system of the European Union and its member states, in which the employees shareholding and participation are widely established and legally regulated institutions.