Parliament adopts text on land "disorder" in Corsica

In 1801, a decree (the Miot decree) exempted Corsicans from inheritance tax, with the failure to declare an inheritance not giving rise to any penalty. This legislation encouraged an accumulation of unsettled inheritances.

Result: even today, around 30% of plots of land in Corsica are registered as belonging to a person born before 1910, and therefore presumed deceased.

This situation leads to many difficulties: it reduces local authority tax revenues, can limit residents' recourse to credit (due to the inability to assert a title deed), or even prevents the implementation of obligations such as clearing brush to prevent fires.

A structure called Girtec (Public Interest Group responsible for the reconstitution of property titles in Corsica) is responsible for helping to re-establish property titles, and a 2017 law aims to promote this work through a series of legal and fiscal measures, including a 50% exemption from inheritance tax, in order to encourage regularizations.

But these provisions were due to expire in 2027, while Girtec is far from having finished its work. Since 2017, around 15.000 plots have been titled, but some 300.000 remain to be allocated.

The bill by Senator Jean-Jacques Panunzi of South Corsica, adopted on Tuesday in the Assembly after having been adopted in the Senate, allows the special regime to be extended by ten additional years, until 2037.

No MP voted against this extension of the 2017 law, even if the rebels and the communists criticized tax exemptions applying to all inheritances, and not just those posing problems.