On November 11, 2022, the Romanian Senate (as decisional chamber) passed a draft law that includes certain amendments with respect to the terms applicable to administrative and court challenges brought against construction and urbanism documentation.
Purportedly aiming to clarify and bring further predictability to the existing legal framework (i.e., Law no. 50/1991, Law no. 350/2001, and Law no. 554/2004) till the approval of the Constructions and Urbanism Code, the new draft law proposes amendments to the existing legal enactments mainly with respect to the terms in which non-governmental organizations will be allowed to challenge suspicious building permits and/or urban planning documentation.
More specifically, the draft law proposes that NGOs should be able to challenge the urbanism documentation only within a maximum of one year from their approval date (as an exception from the general five-year term set for all other categories of interested persons).
Also, the possibility of an NGO to challenge a building permit is subject to observing the following deadlines: the preliminary complaint must be submitted to the authority within 30 days from the last publicity act made in relation to the respective building permit and the court claim for the cancellation or suspension of the building permit must be filed within sixty 60 days from the authority’s response (or deemed response) to the preliminary complaint. As regards the “last publicity act” wording used by the draft law, this refers to the latest of the following dates: the date when the city hall published the building permit-related information; the date when the beneficiary affixed the building information/identification panel; the date when the building permit related information was published in the press; or the date of the building permit’s land book registration.
