Systematic Registration in Romania

LEI’s Managing Director recently visited Romania as an adviser on the World Bank Implementation Support Mission of the CESAR Project and it looked more like a holiday destination?! Hidden among the beauty of Saxon fortified churches, treasured villages, and lush green pastures of Romania, lies the CESAR project with cadastral, public awareness and notary public issues hindering the completion of 0.7 million hectares of systematic registration.

Romania is one of the few countries in ECA to implement a full systematic registration process with public display. The process is being undertaken by contractors with government officials providing extensive checking of the field results prior to the public display. In this checking the officials are attempting to reconcile issues such as discrepancies between the parcel areas mentioned in prior deeds and documents and areas measured in the field, as well as issues related to succession for every immoveable (parcel). Despite this extensive quality oversight, complaints in the first district (UAT), Valea Mare during the public display period were made against nearly 50% of all immoveables. With a total of about 10,600 immoveables surveyed and adjudicated, there were nearly 400 complaints which involved 5,459 immoveables. This result highlights the relative importance of prior checking and the validation in the public display.

There are other issues that have impacted on the work, including a change in the Civil Code that has made systematic registration an even more complex process. An extra step has been included in the process to enforce the registration of succession which requires a notarial deed and the payment of a tax levied by the Ministry of Finance. This immediately stalled the registration process. These issues are not too unfamiliar with many other systematic registration projects, and all need to be carefully negotiated during roll out among all the stakeholders. The Missions are a good opportunity to help resolve project bottlenecks and in the case of Romania soon after the mission, Parliament had already made changes to key legislation to address a number of the issues.