The Church appealed against the rejected lawsuit regarding the May Garden

Olomouc - The dispute between the state and the church regarding the ownership of the Květná zahrada in Kroměříž, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, is heading to the regional court. The Olomouc Archdiocese has filed an appeal against the March ruling of the Kroměříž District Court, which rejected their lawsuit concerning the restitution of the garden. Jiří Gračka, spokesman for the archdiocese, said this today to ČTK. The church continues to assert that the garden constitutes a functional whole with the Kroměříž Castle and the Podzámecká zahrada, which the church acquired as part of a property settlement in 2015.

"We have submitted the appeal to the regional court. We are convinced that the ruling did not take our arguments into account. With the reasons we have, that these are not new constructions, but facilities necessary for operation and should therefore also be subject to restitution, the court did not sufficiently address these and it needs to be reviewed," said Gračka, the spokesman for the Olomouc Archdiocese.

The three mentioned monuments were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together, which, according to the legal representative of the archdiocese, is one of the proofs of their functional connection. The archdiocese also argues that the gardens and the castle have always had the same owner, first the church and then the state. "We are convinced that this area forms a whole and a functional connection with the Kroměříž Castle and the Podzámecká zahrada, and therefore restitution claims of the Olomouc Archdiocese should also apply to it," Gračka stated earlier.

However, according to District Court judge Jana Ivánková, the Květná zahrada can function independently. The National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) refused to return the Květná zahrada in restitution due to doubts about the fulfillment of legal conditions, which was also supported by the district court. "All claims by the suing party regarding the functional connection between the Květná zahrada and the properties they already own have been refuted," said NPÚ legal representative Petr Wünsch.

The lawsuit regarding the ownership of one of the most significant garden monuments globally was filed by the archdiocese in mid-2017. The court was supposed to begin deciding the case in the autumn of 2017. However, the archdiocese requested that a court other than the Kroměříž court handle the case, which was rejected by the Regional Court in Brno. The archdiocese later also failed with an appeal to the Supreme Court. At the end of last year, the regional court dismissed as unfounded the objection of bias against Judge Ivánková. This judge then ruled on the case on March 7 of this year.