Legal Control of Adverse Economic Impacts from the E.E.C. Project Focusing on Land Problem

Abstract

The E.E.C. project, Thailand’s special economic zone, needs to gain land from people by expropriation for developing the project. Both the Constitution and Immovable Property Expropriation and Acquisition Act B.E. 2562 require that ‘just compensation’ must be paid to the landowner in expropriation, yet the compensation assessed by the committee is still contrary to the Constitution and causes unfairness to the landowner because compensation for land expropriation is always lower than the market price. Appraisal prices set by the government authority, as one of the factors to assess compensation, do not reflect the real market value of the land. The provision concerning list of person with the right to get compensation is also not clear enough to provide fairness to affected people. The principle of just compensation is also not included in the guideline for the committee to set the preliminary price for expropriation. While in foreign expropriation laws, they mainly focus on the real market value, and provide more protection to redress the damage by giving compensation for non-pecuniary damage for severely mental suffering, and compensation for loss of goodwill to compensate the business loss resulted from the expropriation. As a result, being a huge project which can generate high income to the state and affect lots of people, E.E.C. should focus more on just compensation to establish fairness in the society. Besides, the removal of some unfair factors and the addition of some beneficial factors are also recommended.