Romanian court rules that 10,000ha of forest, including protected land, was illegally ‘restituted’

Hunedoara Court in Romania decided, after a 13-year trial, that the “restitution” of vast areas of land in Retezat mountains (10,000 ha of forest), in 2006, to the alleged heirs of the Kendeffy family was carried out with the breach of the law, Adevarul reported.

The trial of the most controversial property restitution of land in Hunedoara County began in 2009 at the Haţeg Court after the Romanian Academy requested the cancellation of the three property titles granted to the alleged heirs of the Kendeffy family.

In August 2020, at the end of the case tried on the merits, the Haţeg Court established that the alleged heirs of the Kendeffy family illegally obtained over 10,000 hectares of land in the Retezat Massif, following retrocession requests settled by the Romanian authorities in 2006.

The lack of Romanian citizenship, a will, the compensations already granted by the Romanian state in the past to the Kendeffy family and the fact that the law does not allow the retrocession of lands from a protected national park were among the reasons invoked by the Romanian state through the Ministry of Finance and the Romanian Academy, in order to recover the Retezat mountains.

(Photo source: Alin Neamtu | Dreamstime.com)