By means of Law no. 17 dated 07.03.2014, published in the Official Gazette no. 178/12.03.2014, special mandatory rules have been instituted for selling extra muros lands with an agricultural destination.
The Law will come to force on 11.04.2014 and the main rules provided by this normative act regard:
- The pre-sale contracts regarding extra muros lands have to be authenticated.
- The request for registering the property right in the land book, based on a court judgement standing as a sale agreement, shall be rejected if the special conditions provided by Law no. 17/2014 are not followed.
- A special procedure for exercising the pre-emption right is provided and superseeds the general rules provided by the Civil Code and applies in those situations when beneficiaries of the pre-emption right are co-owners, leaseholders, neighboring land owners as well as the State, through the State Domains Agency. A control mechanism for applying this special procedure is created, effected in an endorsement issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development or by its territorial structures.
- The offers for selling the extra muros lands should be published on the Ministry’s website or on the website of its territorial structures, as the case may be.
- The endorsement is necessary both when the contract is authenticated by the public notary, as well as in front of the court invested with a claim for superseding a sale contract.
- The sale of extra muros lands, without obtaining the endorsement provided by Law no. 17/2014, is the absolute nullity of the contract concluded in such conditions.
- Non-observance of the pre-emption rights mentioned in article 4 and conclusion of contracts without the endorsements provided by Law no. 17/2014 is considered an offense.
- According to article 20 paragraph 2, the provisions of this law do not apply to sales concluded between relatives which are blood proximity-wise, at the third degree of kinship, maximum.