Supreme Court ruling lifts limits on foreign land ownership 

Argentina’s Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling on Tuesday that had blocked an article included in President Javier Milei’s 2023 mega decree that struck down the country’s Land Law. The law, passed in 2011, imposes limits on how much rural land can be owned by foreigners. 

While the ruling does not directly declare that the decree repealing the law is constitutional, its practical effects are that the limits on foreign ownership of land mandated by the land have been lifted. 

According to the ruling, the court’s three members Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Ricardo Lorenzetti based their decision on the fact that the group of Malvinas War Veterans that had challenged the repeal was not legally entitled to bring the case.

From a decree to the Supreme Court Passed in 2011, the Land Law established that foreign individuals and companies could not own more than 15% of rural land at the national, provincial, or municipal level.

It also set a limit of 1,000 hectares for a single foreign owner in Argentina’s agricultural core region.

The law was one of Milei’s targets when he issued DNU 70/23 in December 2023, shortly after taking office. The sweeping decree changed or repealed hundreds of laws as part of his government’s deregulation program.

Article 154 of the decree repealed the Land Law, therefore removing restrictions on foreign ownership of rural land.

The provision, however, was immediately challenged in court by the Center for Malvinas War Veterans in La Plata, known as CECIM. A federal judge initially restored the Land Law, and the Federal Court of Appeals in La Plata later declared the relevant section of the DNU unconstitutional.

In 2024, the government appealed to the Supreme Court, which delivered its verdict on Tuesday.

The court said CECIM did not have the legal standing required to bring the case and that there was no qualifying collective legal dispute before the court.

The justices added that their decision “does not constitute a ruling on the constitutional validity of Article 154” and does not interfere with Congress’s role.

Nevertheless, because the article is now back in force, foreign individuals, companies, and foreign states can therefore buy rural land without the 15% national, provincial, and municipal caps or the 1,000-hectare limit in the core agricultural region.

Congress and the Land Law With the federal court’s injunction still in effect, the Milei administration tried to repeal the law through Congress. 

In August, the ruling part’s bloc introduced a broad private-property reform that would have eliminated restrictions on foreign ownership altogether. 

Under pressure from allied lawmakers, the government changed it to propose raising the limit from 15% to 25%.

That compromise also failed to secure enough support. Amid intense political and social opposition, the government withdrew the chapter dealing with foreign ownership from the bill before it reached a vote in the Senate.

The withdrawal meant that the 15% limit remained in force.

What happens now Although the Senate rejected DNU 70/23 in March 2024, under the law governing presidential emergency decrees, a DNU is repealed by Congress only if both the upper and lower houses reject it.

As a result, the decree remains in force unless the chamber of deputies also rejects it.

This means that, while the congressional rejection remains incomplete, the immediate effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling is the elimination of the Land Law.

Left-wing lawmaker Myriam Bregman has called for the Lower House to reject DNU 70/23. “The decree must be annulled now,” she said, arguing that many of the disputes surrounding the Land Law would then be resolved. 

If the Chamber of Deputies also rejects the decree, it would lose its legal force. That would remove Article 154, and the Land Law would come back into effect, including its 15% ceiling on foreign ownership. 

Editorial disclaimer: Although the UK refers to the Malvinas territory as the Falklands Islands, Argentina strongly contests this name. The Buenos Aires Herald refers to the islands as the Malvinas Islands.