Romanian Senate adopts changes to agricultural land purchase law

The Romanian Senate approved on Tuesday, May 22, the amendment to the law on agricultural land purchase, which sets a new pre-emptive order and new conditions for acquiring properties for all buyers, local Profit.ro reported. The current Law 17/2014 establishes that the sale of agricultural land outside towns is done in compliance with the pre-emption right of the co-owners, lessees, neighboring owners, as well as of the Romanian state through the Agency of State Domains, in this order, at an equal price and under equal conditions. The senators have now established a new right of pre-emption: co-owners and first-degree relatives, lessees, young farmers, owners of neighboring agricultural land, and the Romanian state. However, the senators have also introduced an important provision in the bill, which says that “if the right of pre-emption is not exercised, if none of the potential buyers, within the legal term, meets the conditions to buy the agricultural land situated outside towns, its sale can be made to any individual or company.” The project also states, however, that the landowners are obliged to use the agricultural lands, directly or indirectly, for agricultural activities from the date of purchase. The Senate also kept in the project the 15-year term in which the purchased land can’t be resold. The project will now go to the Chamber of Deputies for debate. Romania liberalized the sale of land to foreigners in 2014. The annual sale offers have tripled since then. Romania recorded over 45,600 sale offers for over 58,000 hectares of agricultural land in 2014. By comparison, the number of sale offers reached 140,000 in 2016, for over 144,000 hectares of land. Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com