The autorizație de regularizare

What it is and who issues it

The autorizație de regularizare is the act through which a work executed without a building permit, or in breach of one, later receives the necessary authorisation. The party who carried out the work must request it from the public authority competent to also issue the building permit.

• The mayor of the commune, town or municipality, or the sector mayor or the general mayor of Bucharest municipality, for works on the territory of that administrative-territorial unit.
• The county council president, with the mayor's prior aviz, for properties that span more than one administrative-territorial unit, or for units without their own specialist urban-planning structure.

For projects belonging to national transport infrastructure, the autorizație de regularizare is issued separately, by the central transport authority, based on technical assessments.

What it covers, permanently

The autorizație de regularizare can only be issued for buildings with a single-family housing function, with a ground-floor or ground-floor-plus-one-storey height regime, with a total built floor area of at most 150 sqm, which are not historic monuments and are located outside monument protection zones or protected built-up areas.

• Housing annexes, household annexes or agricultural holding annexes, also up to 150 sqm of total built floor area.
• Enclosing balconies, without extending onto public land.

Outside these categories, an autorizație de regularizare can only be requested within the one-year window explained below.

The cumulative conditions, and what happens if they are not met

The authority issues the autorizație de regularizare only if all of the following are met cumulatively:

• The conditions imposed by special environmental protection legislation.
• The fundamental requirements applicable to buildings.
• The specific requirements for properties with a special character belonging to SNAOPSN institutions, where relevant.
• The applicable urban planning regulations.

Compliance with the quality requirements is checked through technical assessments prepared by certified technical experts for each field, while compliance with the urban planning regulations is checked by the local public authority's specialist structure or, where it lacks qualified staff, by urban-planning specialists with signing rights hired by the applicant.

If these are not met cumulatively, the local public authority applies the legal provisions on demolishing the works. If technical solutions exist to meet them, the local public authority may instead require obtaining a building permit or a partial demolition permit, and before issuing the autorizație de regularizare it may require compliance works with the urban planning regulations and/or the technical quality requirements.

The one-year window: other buildings too, at fees ten times higher

By way of exception from the permanent scope above, for at most 1 year from the law entering into force (that is, until 25 August 2027) the autorizație de regularizare can also be requested for other categories of buildings besides those listed above, provided that:

• The works fit the urban planning regulations approved as of the date the autorizație de regularizare is issued.
• The fundamental requirements on construction quality are met.
• The fiscal obligations have been paid.
• The contravention measures have been applied.

During this period, the value of the state-control cotes for territorial planning, urbanism and construction, as well as the urbanism-certificate and building-authorisation tax, are ten times higher than if the works had been carried out legally.

What it costs, and what it does not fix

The fee for the autorizație de regularizare is calculated under the same Fiscal Code rules (Legea 227/2015, art. 474) as the fee for a building or demolition permit, and for buildings regularised through the one-year window's exception (categories outside the permanent scope), at ten times that value, as the section above shows.

• For buildings not yet regularised when the code entered into force, for as long as the building is not regularised, the building tax increases by 100% (art. 301 para. 11), from the moment the town hall records the situation until the autorizație de regularizare is obtained or the works are demolished.
• Paying the increased tax does not regularise the building with respect to urbanism and construction-quality obligations, and does not remove the sanctions for construction discipline.
• Carrying out works without a building, demolition, regularisation or modification permit is, separately, a contravention, punishable by a fine of 50,000 to 1,000,000 lei, independent of the regularisation procedure and of the increased tax.

What happens if the deadline passes without regularisation

After the one-year deadline above expires, the local public authority may demolish the unauthorised works and recover the costs, or it must sue the owner in court.

• The claim is filed by the mayor, on behalf of the administrative-territorial unit, within 30 days of the deadline expiring, based on the report drawn up by the town hall's specialist department or by the State Construction Inspectorate (I.S.C.).
• The court orders, as the case may be, the total or partial demolition of the building, or measures to restore the previous state; a demolition ruling constitutes an enforcement title (titlu executoriu) and is communicated to the enforcement bodies of the local public authority, which demolish the building at the expense of the party at fault, under a simplified procedure.
• The control body that sanctioned the contravention must, in turn, order the demolition of works carried out without a permit once this deadline has passed.

Separate from this 30-day deadline: the action through which the authority asks the court to order demolition or regularisation of the works, where the person sanctioned for the contravention did not comply with the measures ordered in the report, is time-barred 10 years from the actual completion date of the works. The two deadlines are not the same thing: one is the mayor's deadline to bring the claim after the one-year window, the other is the limitation period for a separate action, triggered by non-compliance with a contravention sanction.

How this relates to entering legality

The phrase "intrare în legalitate" (entering legality) does not appear in the Codul urbanismului: the autorizație de regularizare is the legal instrument the code uses in place of what everyday speech calls by that name. For an overview (the risks involved, where the procedure starts and, briefly, which conditions apply) see the dedicated entering-legality page. This page is the detailed treatment of the autorizație de regularizare itself: who issues it, the exact conditions, the one-year window, and what happens if the deadline passes.