Last updated: 6 June 2018
Pursuant to several international agreements, Romania is required to urgently register real estate property in the integrated cadastre and land registry system. Therefore, Government Emergency Ordinance (OUG) no. 31 as from 18 April 2018, published in Official Journal no. 353 as from 23 April 2018, brings certain changes to Law no. 7/1996 on cadastre and real estate publicity. Such changes simplify and accelerate the registration procedures.
When adopting these measures, the Romanian authorities took into account in particular the status of agricultural lands for which the Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture (APIA) pays subsidies. This is an important matter because, for 2015-2020, Romania receives financial allocations from the European Union for implementing the common agricultural policy.
The acceleration of the registration of agricultural lands is much expected by farmers, given that the procedure for collecting APIA subsidies and the entire agricultural activity are much more difficult due to the lack of cadastre. The lack of cadastre for agricultural lands also causes an excessive division of such lands, which cannot be joined together.
Main changes regarding the registration in the land register
An important change consists in the simplification of the procedure to be followed for the first registration in the land register.
For example, the heirs of an immovable good can apply for its registration in the land register based on the certificate of inheritance alone (without filing any additional documents). Registrations based on the certificate of inheritance were also possible until now, but only for successions open before 2011 (when the new Civil Code established that the certificate of inheritance alone proves the heir’s ownership right). This solution comes to support real estate owners from Muntenia, Moldova, Dobrogea (where, unlike Transilvania, land registers did not exist). Such owners often lack documents proving ownership older than the certificate of inheritance.
In accordance with OUG no. 31/2018, the same conditions apply to the first registration performed based on a voluntary division deed, concluded in authentic form, or based on a judicial division deed, regardless of the date thereof.
The provisional registration of the ownership right was also changed by OUG no. 31/2018.
Therefore, in the absence of the ownership title issued pursuant to Law no. 18/1991, the provisional registration of the owner can be done based on the vesting deed and on the decision of the county commission for land ownership validating the ownership right. The actual registration of the ownership right will be performed later.
OUG no. 31/2018 also reduces from 60 to 30 days the deadline for resolving the applications for the rectification of technical cadastral documents.
Attributions linked to personal data processing
As a novelty, the Ordinance provides the possibility for the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Publicity (ANCPI) and its subordinate institutions to process personal data; liability for the protection of data transferred to third parties belongs to the latter.
The conditions under which ANCPI can access the personal data in the National Register of Personal Data are established by a protocol concluded between ANCPI and the Directorate for Personal Records and Database Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Such access shall be strictly limited to the data ANCPI needs for the proper conduct of its activity.
Personal data in the National Register of Personal Data cannot be processed later by ANCPI for another purpose, except for processing operations performed under an express legal provision.