Article 312 has two paragraphs and neither runs past four lines. It is probably the shortest article in the code that changes something concrete for a person selling or buying land with a project already under way.
What it says, exactly
Paragraph (1): the transfer of the rights and obligations attached to the permit, where its holder changes during execution of the works, occurs by operation of law. The new holder takes over all rights and obligations arising from the permit.
Paragraph (2) covers the earlier moment: if the holder changes before the permit is issued, the transfer of rights and obligations attached to the urbanism certificate, the approvals and the consents already obtained likewise occurs by operation of law.
So the code covers both ends of the procedure. A file in progress transfers together with the approvals already gathered; a site under way transfers together with its permit.
“By operation of law” means without an application
The phrase does all the work here. A transfer that operates by law needs no administrative act to record it, no separate application, no fee, and no consent from the issuing authority. The effect follows from the statute, at the moment the holder changes.
That does not mean the council need not find out. The permit remains an act whose obligations are performed in dealings with the issuing authority, and notices, inspections and final acceptance are conducted with the current holder. The difference is that informing them is a matter of record keeping, not a condition of the transfer’s validity.
What the article does not solve
Three things sit outside it, and they are worth naming because they are exactly where disputes arise.
Deadlines do not reset. The new holder takes on the obligations, including the execution period written into the permit and its validity regime. We wrote about the tension between the paragraphs governing extension in extending the permit.
Liability for what has already been built does not vanish through the transfer. What passes are the rights and obligations under the permit, not the consequences of works carried out beforehand.
And if the design changes along with the owner, the transfer does not help: a change of brief takes a different route, described in the amending permit.
Why it matters to the market
What follows is interpretation, not statutory text. To a buyer, land with an urbanism certificate in hand and approvals gathered is worth exactly the time it saves. For as long as the transfer was a grey area handled differently from one council to the next, that time was hard to price, because there was no certainty it carried over.
Paragraph (2) makes it expressly transferable. This is not a new market, but it is one uncertainty fewer in a transaction that has plenty. The regime for approvals obtained through the single approval committee, which are the ones that cost time, is set out on the committee page, and we wrote about how that committee looks in practice here.
This article is analysis, not legal advice. The provisions cited are from Legea 169/2026, published in Monitorul Oficial no. 661 of 10 August 2026. Check your own situation with the issuing authority.