Investors will be interested to complete all publicity formalities as soon as possible after the issuance of the building permit.

On 18 April, Law no. 102/2023 was published, which is to enter into force on 21 April 2023; it brings several amendments to the construction permitting framework, with special impact on the ability of NGOs to challenge building permit(s) and PUZ(s), such as:

1. Obligation to publish certain elements under the building permit (“BP”):

a) the building permit issuers must publish (on their website and/or at the headquarters) certain elements regulated by the BP, within 30 days as of issuance (e.g. the title/project description, POT, CUT, number of floors, whether the endorsements for the protection of cultural heritage and environment were requested/issued);

b) any investor must:

• register the BP with the land book (until now, such registration was usually performed upon the request of the financing banks, as a prerequisite for registering the financing securities upon the future constructions);
• publish a notice in a newspaper;
• exhibit the investment identification board at the construction site.

Should the above formalities not be performed, the term for NGOs to file a complaint does not start!

1. For NGOs, the deadline for filing a complaint against a BP starts as of completion of all the above publicity obligations. For this reason, any investor’s interest will be to perform (and request performance from the authorities) of all publicity formalities as soon as possible (after BP issuance).

The deadlines applicable for the NGOs to file a complaint are of:

• 30 days for the preliminary complaint (Romanian: plangere prealabila) and
• 60 days for filing the complaint before the courts [as of (i) receipt of the reply to the preliminary complaint/ or (ii) in case of no received reply, as of the expiry of the reply deadline or (iii), if the prior complaint is not mandatory, starting with the completion of all publicity formalities].

1. NGOs’ right to file a complaint against zoning plans is of 1 year as of the approval thereof; previously, such term was unlimited and, for the zoning plans approved since July 2019, it is set to 5 years.

Nonetheless, the terms currently applicable to the challenges (of the BPs or zoning plans) promoted any other interested person, remain unchanged (thus, still very interpretable).

While RES projects are not usually targeted by NGOs (most active being the environmental NGOs), such limitation of their right to challenge the building permit and zoning plans is welcomed, as it brings more legal stability to the RES framework.