CEDER in review: Urbanism Code

7 June 2023

During the Logistics Panel held at CEDER 2023, moderator Daniel Cautis, Managing Partner of Dunwell Industrial Brokerage, brought up the subject of the Urbanism Code, a piece of legislation which is currently under debate in the Senate of Romania. The moderator was keen to know whether the experts in the panel thought the new law would “shorten the length of the due diligence process and the paperwork needed for buying and developing land for parks”.

Florian Nițu, Managing Partner at Popovici Nițu Stoica & Asociații stated that the law did not bring too many fundamental changes. As a positive aspect, he noted: “It brings certainty in connection to challenging the zoning documentation. […] We’re speaking about five years statute of limitation from the time the regulation was published.”

The expert believes the new Urbanism Code will indirectly favour public-private partnerships, which he thinks are essential for the development of the market: “A lot of infrastructure elements have to be put in place for an industrial project to complete. And for those infrastructure elements, the PPP solution […] [is] enabling authorities, municipalities, to engage freely with the developers in order to effectively contribute […] financially for the [common] good.”

Fellow panelist, Ioana Niculeasa, Partner and Head of Real Estate at NNDKP, says she is feeling less positive about the legislative project, which she calls “a work in progress”. She says “It is very good because it aims to address whatever the investors want: […] predictability, accuracy from a legislative point of view. If [it does] this until the end, it is something that we need to see.”

Although Florian Nițu stated that “technically the conditions are met to have the Urbanism Code adopted before summer starts”, Ioana Niculeasa thinks the Code “will solve your problems, maybe, but not in the near future. […] To my recent experience with law projects ended up in the chambers of deputies, […] after the law is issued, you actually need a bunch of lawyers to see what was the real intention [of] those amendments. So, it is not clear at all.”