Amendments to Romania’s New Urbanism Code Underway
A legislative proposal to amend Romania’s recently enacted Urbanism and Construction Code is now on the Senate’s agenda.
According to the grounding note, the proposal aims to address legal uncertainties and practical difficulties identified in the application of the new Code.
Three proposed amendments are particularly worth highlighting:
1. Superficies and easement rights as sufficient legal title for obtaining building permits
One of the proposed amendments addresses precisely an issue we recently highlighted in our article: whether a superficies right constitutes sufficient legal title for obtaining a building permit.
While the Ministry of Development had previously adopted a welcome and pragmatic interpretation of the relevant provisions, we argued that a legislative amendment was necessary to ensure legal certainty.
The proposal now expressly clarifies that construction works may also be carried out by holders of superficies rights, easement or concession on private ownership assets. In our view, the proposed wording adequately addresses the existing uncertainty.
2. Construction permitting procedures initiated before the new Code entered into force
While the Code currently states that the construction permitting procedures conducted based on urbanism certificates issued before the enforcement of the Code continue to be governed by prior law, the draft expands this principle also to cases where the urbanism certificates were only requested, but not yet issued, before the enforcement of the Code.
However, the proposed wording retains a reference to the legislation applicable at the date of issuance of the urbanism certificate, which may require further clarification to ensure that the intended transitional protection is effective.
3. Clarification of the calculation of the land occupancy ratio (POT)
The proposal also corrects an ambiguity in the definition of the land occupancy ratio (POT), expressly clarifying that certain surfaces are excluded from its calculation. These include, among others, photovoltaic panels and EV charging station.
The ongoing legislative process also provides a valuable opportunity to address other inconsistencies and ambiguities identified in the application of the new Code.
The legislative proposal is available here: https://www.senat.ro/legis/lista.aspx?an_cls=2026&nr_cls=b576
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