Speaker at the 2023 Romanian Solar Summit

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Our Managing Partner, Mihaela Nyerges, attended as speaker at the Romanian Solar Summit organized by GOVNET Romania, sharing her wide experience on the legislative and practical challenges faced by investors in developing solar projects in Romania.

The main ideas she raised are the following:

• the law that was just adopted by the Parliament and awaits promulgation by the Romanian president brings 2 important positive changes: (i) it removes the PUZ for intramuros lands and (ii) allows the issuance of multiple building permits based on the same urbanism certificate thus offering practical solutions to investors envisaging to stage their investment or to restructure the project so as to comply with the 50 ha limitation imposed by the Ministry of Agriculture; unfortunately, it does not solve the 50 ha barrier;

• the development of agrivoltaic projects on pastures is blocked by Ministry of Agriculture by failing to take over the dual-use principle enacted by the Parliament almost 1 year ago in the secondary legislation required to enforce such principle; this has a great impact as, relying on the legal provisions adopted by the Parliament (i) many developers have significantly invested in pastures and (ii) many city halls have awarded concession agreements on pastures under dual-use regime;

• the installation of cables for connecting the projects to public grids faces important challenges coming from (i) lack of knowledge and refusal by the local authorities to apply the special legal requirements applicable to the installation of underground cables under public roads and (ii) the circular and unclear legal provisions that render inapplicable the legal easement rights set out by the Energy Law for the installation of OHL.

Congratulation to GOVNET Romania for bringing together the entire solar industry and for the valuable ideas shared in the conference.