New important amendments to

Romanian construction and urban

planning laws
12.01.2017

Although Law No. 50/1991 on the authorisation of construction works

(“Construction Law”) and Law No. 350/2001 on Territorial and Urban
Planning (“Urban Planning Law”) recently underwent significant
amendments in November 2016 due to the enactment of Law No. 197/2016,
they have once more been substantially amended by Government
Emergency Ordinance No. 100/2016 (“GEO 100”), which was published and
entered into force on 27 December 2016.

This is an briefly point out the most important amendments introduced in the
Romanian Construction Law and Romanian Urban Planning Law:

- Initiating an urban zone plan (Plan Urbanistic Zonal or “PUZ”) for

an investment project located within the city limits of a specific
locality (either on an individual plot of land or on several plots)
will be allowed only if the area to be regulated by the PUZ is
“defined/bordered by at least three public roads or by limits
imposed by natural elements stable in time”. Consequently, should
the land affected by the investment project not be delimited in the
manner described above, a PUZ for that particular project taken
separately cannot be initiated (i.e. drafted and enacted); instead, the
neighbouring land plots have to be included in the PUZ-regulated area for
the delimitation requirement to be fulfilled. This procedure will also
require the consent of the owners of the additional plots of land included
in the PUZ-regulated area. Therefore, in view of the new regulation,
drafting and enacting such urban planning documentation might prove to
be more difficult in the future;

- Introducing real estate from the outside the city limits area
(extravilan) into the area within the city limits (intravilan) by
drafting and enacting a PUZ is allowed only if the relevant land
area cumulatively meets the following conditions: (i) the land has
a minimum area of 5,000m2 and (ii) is adjacent to an area
already situated within the city limits area of that locality. As an
exception, the creation of isolated intramural areas is allowed only if the
access and utility infrastructure required for the investment project
already exists or if the PUZ provides that the required infrastructure must
be built at the same time as the investment project;

- Obtaining a new town planning certificate once a PUZ has been

approved is a mandatory requirement for issuing the future
building permit. In the case of a detailed urban plan (“PUD”), the same
town planning certificate used for initiating the PUD can also be used for
requesting the building permit;
- The “opportunity endorsement” necessary for drafting and enacting a PUZ
has been renamed as “initiation endorsement”, although the general
regulatory framework of this deed remains largely unchanged;

- The urban planning documentation will now have to be published on the

websites of the mayor’s offices and the local/county councils and in the
National Territorial Observer, with anyone being allowed to request copies
of these. Furthermore, public authorities have the various obligations to
provide information and to send documents (urban planning
documentation, building permits, town planning certificates, acceptance
reports upon completion of construction works, etc.) to each other.
Moreover, GEO 100 provides for the creation of a national construction
registry which is to document all the construction projects for which the
start of construction works is communicated to the Construction
Supervision Authority (ISC);

- In order to increase the transparency of the decision-making process and

fight corruption, when voting on urban planning documents the
local/county councillors will have to document their option (“for”,
“against”, “abstention”) as well as the reasons for it in
writing;these documents will also have to be attached to the minutes of
the meeting during which the urban planning documentation was voted
on;

- The procedure of tacit approval in the case of endorsements

necessary for issuing of building permits has been eliminated. At
the same time, GEO 100 provides the possibility to create a “one-stop-
shop” committee to which only one copy of the documentation necessary
for obtaining the building permit is to be submitted. All notices, approvals
and endorsements requested by the town planning certificate (except for
the environmental permit) will then be issued based on this single set of
documentation;

- By abrogating the provision by which a permit from the Environmental

Protection Authority was not necessary when obtaining a demolition
permit, from now on such prior approval will once again be
necessary for demolition permits as well;

- Both the Construction Law and the Urban Planning Law contain new
regulations increasing liability in the event of failure to observe their
provisions, especially an increased number of regulatory offences
and higher fines where regulatory offences are committed. The
statute of limitation applicable to these sanctions has been
extended from three years to five years from the date when the
offence is committed, and the ascertaining of irregularities by the
Construction Supervision Authority will lead to the mandatory
suspension of the construction works (suspension being an optional
measure up to now). Furthermore, it is now expressly stipulated that the
Construction Supervision Authority can request the cancellation of
building permits in court;
- The validity period for building permits (i.e. the deadline by which
the beneficiary has to start the construction works) can be fixed up to
24 months. Furthermore, it has been clarified that the validity period
for urban planning documents is extended until the investment
project has been completed, provided that the town planning
certificate for the building permit is obtained within the validity
period of the relevant urban planning documents. The urban
planning documents for which no validity period was expressly stipulated
will be valid until approval of new urban planning documentation,
replacing or amending the previous documentation as appropriate;

- Public authorities are obliged to take measures to facilitate the electronic

receipt of the documents involved in the permission procedure within the
next three years;

- The standards for implementing the Construction Law and the Urban
Planning Law are to be updated in the near future; thus, further
amendments to the legal regulations in the fields of construction and
urban planning are expected to follow.

To sum up, the Construction Law and Urban Planning Law have been
significantly amended. General trends towards making the planning
permission procedure for construction work stricter in Romania are visible, as
well as a greater concern of the legislator to adopt measures to eliminate
bureaucracy, increase transparency and step up the fight against corruption.