The aim of this study was to compare the agricultural land market in Poland and in the selected countries of the European Union. The present paper compares the price changes of agricultural land in Poland and the EU. This research contains the information on institutions involved in agricultural land management in the selected EU countries. The paper presents the current state of the Polish market and its prospects for the land. Therefore, the development of the agricultural real estate market in Poland covers the years from 2004 to 2012.

Immovable property tax is one of the national taxes the administration of which is subjected to continuous changes. Frequent amendments to the law “On Immovable Property Tax” (1997) also evidence the mentioned changes. The procedure for tax calculation, tax base, and tax rates has been considerably changed in the course of time. The research provides a discussion on the changes in tax formation, development, and administration in Latvia to understand better the essence of immovable property tax.

Already during the Land Reform, land properties of several land parcels were formed in the rural areas. Another factor that benefits to the fragmentation of farm properties is development of land market because buying or renting land for farm size building, it is not always possible to find adjacent land plot. Consequently, the land fragmentation not only makes land management difficult, but also increases the transport costs. With this rural land tenure system, competitive and efficient agricultural production cannot be discussed, so a large part of rural areas remains untreated.

Spatial modifications should be introduced in areas where members of the local community actively participate in consolidation projects. Social acceptance is the key prerequisite for successful land consolidation. How should the sequence of land consolidation measures be planned in a rural area whose inhabitants have not expressed their opinions about the project? Are the existing criteria, which are applied to evaluate land consolidation measures mostly in agricultural regions, sufficient?

To comply with the requirements of the EU Directive 2009/28/EC for using renewable energy sources (RES) in Latvia, the agricultural industry has to become a significant supplier of resources to energy producers and consumers. An increase in the area sown with maize is forecasted by exploiting the unused agricultural land to expand biogas production. The agricultural area has decreased by 2% in Latvia over the recent decade, and 16% of its total agricultural area are not exploited anymore.

In Greece, there is no official inventory for the activity land use, land use change and forestry. The national forest inventory was completed in 1992. Using the data of this inventory, the carbon store of woody biomass of Greece has been estimated by FAO-TBFRA (2000) as 52.04 millions t C, of which 46.36 millions t C is above stump biomass and 8.67 millions t C is stump and root biomass.

Forest is an important natural resource to the Latvian economy. It is useful to examine the historical context to estimate objectively the events that created the structure of forest property rights today. While 50.3% of all Latvian forests are state-owned and the remaining 49.7% are under different ownership, historically this structure has changed with the political situation and the authorities.

Changes in soil morphological, physical and chemical properties as a result of establishing forest on agricultural lands were studied using as an example the lands naturally overgrowing in different periods of time by Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.), silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.), grey alder (Alnus incana (L.) Moench) and aspen (Populus tremula L.). The research results showed that the soil with a texture of sandy loam and loam retains the morphological properties of agricultural land for up to 100 years.

The main tasks of the reclaimed and soil science have been formulated. It was noted that the radical and final reorientiring of the reclaimed and soil science as a whole in the country is necessary to working out the science methodology of support and effective functioning of the acting reclaimed complexes and systems. It is necessary to expand researches on microbiology, biochemistry and biophysics of agricultural lands with the purpose of the long-term strategy of the fertility, productivity and land immunity improvement.

The primary aim of this paper is to determine the most common contemporary meaning of the terms most often used to characterise international real estate transactions. The synonyms of the terms “international”, “real estate”, “transactions” or terms used in research literature with similar meanings were identified during the research.