The Falklands War veterans’ group that stopped Javier Milei’s land decree in 2024 said the Supreme Court had now solved the president’s political problem. The Centro de Ex Combatientes Islas Malvinas de La Plata, known as CECIM, said: ‘La Corte resolvió el problema político de Milei. Acaba de poner, este 29 de septiembre, a la República Argentina en venta’ (The Court resolved Milei’s political problem. On this September 29, it put the Argentine Republic up for sale).
The court’s decision on Tuesday 29 September 2026 cleared the way for Milei to repeal limits on foreign ownership of rural land. The ruling gives fresh force to a central part of his economic deregulation programme, while handing opponents a political fight in Congress.
The restrictions came from Law 26.737, the Ley de Tierras, enacted under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government in 2011. It limited foreign ownership of rural land to 15 percent nationally, with the same ceiling at provincial and municipal level, and barred foreign ownership in strategically important areas.
Milei repealed the law through an emergency decree immediately after taking office in December 2023. He said removing barriers to private property and investment formed part of his effort to deregulate the economy.
CECIM challenged the decree in March 2024, saying it threatened national sovereignty. A federal appeals court in La Plata then blocked the measure.
The Senate also voted against the decree on March 14, 2024, by 42 votes to 25, with four abstentions. The Chamber of Deputies has never considered it.
The Supreme Court set aside CECIM’s challenge because the group lacked the legal standing to bring it and there was no constitutionally valid case, the court ruled. Its decision dealt with procedure, leaving the decree’s constitutionality unaddressed.
Andrés Gil Domínguez, a constitutional lawyer, warned that ‘cualquier persona física o jurídica extranjera o cualquier Estado extranjero pueden comprar toda la tierra rural a donde quieran -incluida las zonas de frontera- sin límite alguno’. His warning was that foreign individuals, companies and states could buy rural land anywhere in Argentina, including border areas, without limits.
Opposition parties condemned the ruling, questioned its scope and warned that it could permit unrestricted foreign ownership of rural land. Unión por la Patria said it would seek a special session of the Chamber of Deputies to reject the decree, backed by the Civic Coalition, Provincias Unidas and the Left Front.
A decree of necessity and urgency can be overturned only when both chambers of Congress reject it. That leaves Milei’s measure in place unless the lower house joins the Senate’s earlier vote.
The government had also tried to loosen rules on foreign land purchases through Congress during 2026. In August 2026, it withdrew the land-purchase chapter from its bill after failing to gather enough votes and facing resistance among its own allies and across different parts of society.
Comments (0)