Regulations on Agricultural Land in Romania
With its 14 million hectares of agricultural land, considerably cheaper than in other EU countries, Romania is attractive to foreign investors who seek to buy land.
Corina Cristea, 07.03.2014, 13:14
This week President Traian Basescu has promulgated a law regulating the sale of agricultural land. According to the authorities, this is a very good law, which simplifies sale procedures for citizens and companies from another EU country or from a country in the European Economic Area. From now on, owners who want to sell their land only have to submit a sale offer to the respective town hall and wait at home for the sale approval. The sale offer must specify the price asked, the name and full address of the seller, the location and area of the plot, the cadastral documents and land use category. The seller does not have to pay any fee.
The conditions to be met, particularly the pre-emption rights of certain categories of buyers, are the same, but it is the local authorities that are in charge with ensuring compliance with these rules. Pre-emption purchase rights are given to co-owners, leaseholders, neighbours and the Romanian state. Authorities say that “the state is given preemption rights under this legislation in order to be able to step in when the circumstances require it or the situation threatens to deteriorate one way or another.”
The offer stipulates the same price and equal terms for all holders of pre-emption rights. Under the new law, farming land within 30 km of national borders or the Black Sea coast, or land located within 2,400 m of strategic sites may only be sold with the approval of the National Defence Ministry. According to centralized data from the Agriculture Ministry, the largest number of buyers of farm land in Romania are Italian citizens (around 25% of the total number), followed by Germans and by citizens from Arab countries. Hungarian citizens have purchased a little over 8% of the over 700 thousand hectares of agricultural land purchased by foreigners in Romania.
