The state does not have to hand over the Flower Garden in Kroměříž to the church, the court said

Kroměříž - The state does not have to return the Kroměříž Flower Garden, listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, to the church. This was decided today by the District Court in Kroměříž. In the garden, managed by the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ), new constructions have emerged in recent years due to state care, which, according to Judge Jana Ivánková's ruling, legally prevent the garden from being returned to the Olomouc Archdiocese. The verdict is not final.

The Archdiocese claims that the garden forms a whole with the Kroměříž Castle and the Podzámecká Garden, which were returned to it during church restitution. Both the castle and the Podzámecká Garden are also on the UNESCO list, having been inscribed alongside the Flower Garden. According to the legal representative of the archdiocese, Stanislav Hykyš, this is one of the evidences of the functional connection between these properties. Furthermore, he states that in the past, the gardens and the castle always had the same owner, first the church, then the state. "The synergy between the Flower Garden, the Podzámecká Garden, and the castle, established 350 years ago, continues to this day," Hykyš said. However, according to the judge, the Flower Garden is capable of independent existence.

NPÚ's legal representative, Petr Wünsch, considers the Flower Garden to be a monument that is justifiably on the UNESCO list. He believes this is less true for the castle and the Podzámecká Garden. NPÚ refused to return the Flower Garden in the restitution process due to doubts about the fulfillment of legal conditions. "After the garden was taken from the archdiocese, new constructions emerged on the land of the Flower Garden for decades. It was not just about the reconstruction of buildings," Wünsch stated. In 2014, work costing 230 million crowns, co-financed by European funds, was completed in the garden. Thanks to them, part of it returned to its 17th-century appearance when it was founded by the Olomouc bishop Karl von Lichtenstein-Kastelkorn.

Hykyš stated that all new constructions represent a part or accessory to the garden. They are not, according to him, an obstacle to its return. "Workshop-repair type objects, garden machinery storage, retention basins, ponds, a hill with rabbits, or production greenhouses are undoubtedly necessary for the proper use of the Flower Garden land," Hykyš said.

The court was originally supposed to start deciding the case in autumn 2017. However, the archdiocese requested that the case be handled by a court other than the Kroměříž court, which the Regional Court in Brno rejected. The archdiocese was also unsuccessful with its appeal to the Supreme Court. At the end of last year, the Regional Court dismissed as unfounded the claim of bias against Judge Ivánková submitted by the archdiocese.