January 13th, 2020
At the end of last week, several pieces of legislation have been enacted bringing important amendments to Law no. 10/1995 on construction quality, Law no. 50/1991 on authorizing the construction works, and the latter’s Methodological norms no. 829/2009 (collectively, brevitatis causa, the “Construction Laws”).
There is a significant number of amendments, amongst which the following may be mentioned (e.g.):
1. the maximum timeline within which the construction works should be started is extended from 12 to 24 months. As previously regulated, the extension thereof may be made 1 time only with maximum 12 months.
2. the investor has the right to request that the authorizations and endorsement requested via the Urbanism Certificate (including the utility networks endorsements) be obtained at the county and capital county public authorities by the Commission for single authorization (in Romanian language: “Comisia pentru acord unic” / “CAU”), which shall obtain, at the request of the investor and on its own costs, the authorizations and endorsements required to authorize the construction works based upon the relevant documentation submitted in electronic format in this respect. The correspondence between public authority and the endorsements’ issuers shall be made via the portal: www.edirect.e-guvernare.ro
3. the Urbanism Certificate for construction works shall indicate: (i) if the existing urbanism documentation may not be amended; (ii) if an opportunity endorsement (in Romanian labguage: “aviz de oportunitate”) is required; (iii) if the amending of the existing urbanism documentation is possible without an opportunity endorsement;
4. the handover of any construction works to the owner, and starting the use thereof by the latter, shall be made only after the utility networks are operational, which will alleviate some practices in which the construction works (mainly residential) were handed-over without the utilities being usable;
5. the execution of any connections to the utilities executed on any public domain can be perform without building permit, subject to the authorization of the road administrator;
6. the execution of photovoltaic renewable energy source systems on buildings may be made without building permit;
7. the Prefecture Office may no longer annul the building permits, such being possible only through court of law decision;
8. the value of the fines to be applied in certain cases, such as executing construction works without building permit or by not complying with the provisions thereof, are reduced from Lei 50,000 – Lei 100,000 to Lei 5,000 – Lei 20,000;
9. the authorization of construction works shall include also the authorization of organizing the construction works, and, as exception, for the later a separate authorization may be obtained.
10. in case the construction works are totally dismantled, the authorization documentation shall not require: the energetic audit report, the energy performance certificate or the study regarding the possibility to use alternative systems for producing energy;
11. in case the documentation to obtain the Urbanism Certificate is incomplete, the public authority has the obligation to notify the missing pieces within maximum 5 days as of the registration request date;
12. the provisions regarding the retroactive issuance of building permits for construction works executed without building permit have been deleted. New provisions regarding the registration of buildings erected without building permit have been implemented.
