E/CN.4/2004/63/Add.2 page 15 Government Ordinance No. 21/1997 on the return of certain properties to the Jewish community and Emergency Government Ordinance No. 183/1999 on the return of certain properties to other national minorities). 66. In practice, representatives of most of the religious minorities who met with the Special Rapporteur during his visit complained about the slowness and relative inefficiency of the process of restitution, despite the promises made to them. These religious minorities believe that most of the property confiscated from them has yet to be returned to them. B. Farmland and forests 67. After 1948, as well as other real estate, a large area of farmland and forests was also confiscated from different religious communities in Romania. After the revolution, the authorities had to arrange to have the various communities’ property rights restored or established, as the land handed over in this process did not necessarily correspond to the land that had been confiscated. 68. Under article 22 of Act No. 18/1991, rural religious communities may be granted ownership of up to 5 hectares, and monasteries up to 10 hectares, of arable land when they were the former owners of farmland handed over by the communist regime to farm cooperatives and when, in addition, they no longer owned such land. The Act also stipulates that the religious communities concerned can apply for the restoration of ownership of land with an area of more than 5 hectares, or 10 hectares in the case of monasteries, so that the area matches the area owned in the past, up to a maximum of 10 hectares for parishes and 50 hectares for convents and monasteries. 69. In this context, it should be noted that Romanian legislation also provides for the possibility that newly established religious communities can acquire farmland, within certain limits. 70. Romanian legislation stipulates that ownership of forests can also be returned to religious communities of any kind, up to a limit corresponding to the area they owned previously but not more than the maximum of 30 hectares. 71. The comments on religious property in chapter V, section A, also apply to farmland and forests. C. The case of the Greek Catholic Church 72. The Greek Catholic Church was founded in Transylvania at the end of the seventeenth century with the union of Romanian Orthodox Christians and the Roman Catholic Church. For the sake of this union, Greek Catholics accepted the four principles required for union with Rome but continued to observe a number of Orthodox traditions. Just before the beginning of the communist era, the Greek Catholic Church had 1.5 million members (10 per cent of the population) and was the second-largest religion in the country.