In brief

  • The Government is adding 858,400 lei to the compensation for the expropriations along the Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Episcopia Bihor railway line. The money covers 30 entries in the Dâmbu Rotund and Gruia districts of the municipality of Cluj-Napoca: 29 which were already in the list approved in December 2024 and one new entry, which appeared when a parcel on Calea Baciului was subdivided.
  • Those concerned are the owners and holders of 10,026 square metres of land, a little over a hectare, together with the buildings put up on it. Thirteen of the 30 entries are land in the private domain of Cluj County or of the municipality of Cluj-Napoca, carrying fences, platforms, advertising panels and installations belonging to companies. The rest belong to individuals and to commercial companies on Calea Baciului, Tudor Vladimirescu Street, Oradiei Street, Nikola Tesla Street and Tăietura Turcului Street.
  • The figures that count: the new annex adds up to 29,920,093.15 lei, which is 858,344.13 lei more than the sum approved in 2024 for the same entries, while the decision allocates 858,400 lei. The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure transfers the money within at most 30 days of the request for it, and payment to the owners is made within at most 90 days of the decision fixing the amount of the compensation.
Act: Government Decision no. 773/2026 on supplementing the sum provided as fair compensation, approved by Government Decision no. 1.701/2024 on starting the expropriation procedures for all privately owned properties, on approving the list of properties in the public ownership of the State, as well as the list of properties in the public ownership of the administrative-territorial unit, situated on the additional site which forms the expropriation corridor of the public utility works of national interest „Electrificarea și reabilitarea liniei de cale ferată Cluj-Napoca — Oradea — Episcopia Bihor”, located within the administrative-territorial unit of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj County, as well as on amending and supplementing Annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 1.701/2024
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 826 of 29 September 2026, pages 2-9
In force from: from publication, 29 September 2026, because Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 on the rules of legislative drafting technique provides that normative acts, with the exception of laws and ordinances, enter into force on the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, if no later date is laid down in them, and the decision lays none down

Government Decision no. 773/2026 does for the railway between Cluj-Napoca and Episcopia Bihor, by way of Oradea, what an act published a day earlier had done for a road: it puts extra money on top of a compensation list opened years ago, after the measurements and the valuations had been redone. The sum added is 858,400 lei, that is 858.4 thousand lei in the wording of the act, and it is allocated from the State budget through the budget of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.

The works in question, „Electrificarea și reabilitarea liniei de cale ferată Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Episcopia Bihor”, the electrification and rehabilitation of the railway line from Cluj-Napoca to Episcopia Bihor, have their technical and economic indicators approved by Government Decision no. 93/2022, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 65 of 21 January 2022. That act sets them at 166.7 kilometres, 48 months of execution and a total value including VAT of 9,493,358,000 lei, at the prices of 20 April 2021 and at an exchange rate of 4.9275 lei to the euro, that is around 1.93 billion euros. The route runs through the counties of Cluj, Sălaj and Bihor, but the decision of 29 September 2026 concerns only the municipality of Cluj-Napoca.

The expropriation corridor for the additional site inside the municipality had been opened by Government Decision no. 1.701/2024, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1314 of 24 December 2024. Annex no. 2 to that decision, the one holding the privately owned properties, the owners and the individual sums, has 56 entries, and the compensation estimated at the time came to 50,364,000 lei. Between its publication and the decision of 2026, 644 days went by.

What changes now can be seen in five articles. Article I approves the supplement of 858.4 thousand lei and shows where the money comes from: chapter 84.01 „Transporturi”, transport, title 61 „Proiecte cu finanțare din sumele aferente componentei de împrumut a PNRR”, projects financed from the sums belonging to the loan component of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, PNRR, article 61.06, in accordance with the State budget law for 2026, Law no. 43/2026, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 242 of 27 March 2026. Article II amends 29 entries in Annex no. 2 to the decision of 2024, inserts a new entry after entry 9, numbered 91, and adds buildings at entries 6, 18, 47 and 50, as well as on the land of the new entry. Article III starts the expropriation procedure for these newly appeared buildings. Article IV says how the money moves, and Article V leaves responsibility for the accuracy of the data with the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, through the National Railway Company „C.F.R.” S.A.

The annex to the decision of 2026 therefore has 30 rows. They restate, in updated form, entries which already existed: entries 6, 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 50, 52, 53, 54 and 56, plus entry 91. Against each of them stands the present total compensation, recalculated in full. Added together, they give 29,920,093.15 lei. The same 29 entries were worth, in 2024, 29,061,749.02 lei. The difference is 858,344.13 lei, which is 55.87 lei less than the sum allocated by Article I.

The land actually expropriated through these 30 entries comes to 10,026 square metres. Out of the total sum, 11,457,781.50 lei go on land and 18,462,311.65 lei on buildings, so almost two thirds of the money, 61.7% to be exact, goes on what stands on the land and only 38.3% on the ground beneath it. The largest single entry, number 15, on Tudor Vladimirescu Street, comes to 14,941,545.14 lei, that is half the annex: 582,660 lei for 498 square metres of land, 14,335,037.50 lei for a mechanical processing station of 419 square metres, a building with a ground floor and four storeys, and 23,847.64 lei for a fence. At the other end, entry 32 receives 1,955 lei for a single square metre of arable land.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is financial and shows in the budget: the supplement pays almost only for old land at a new price, not for new land. The sum provided as fair compensation for the additional site in Cluj-Napoca rises from 50,364,000 lei to 51,222,400 lei. Worked out row by row from the annexes, the full list of 56 entries reaches 51,221,989.85 lei, against 50,363,645.72 lei in the form of 2024. Set against the value of the works, everything paid on this site amounts to 0.54% of the investment, and the present supplement to 0.009%.

The second effect concerns the 30 owners and holders in the annex, because the sum entered against their name is the one deposited in that name. Fourteen entries receive more than in 2024, by 752,263.41 lei in all. Two receive less, by 99,960.88 lei in all. Thirteen stay at exactly the same sum, so for them the decision changes only the identification data of the property or the names of the holders, while the sum remains the one from 2024. The thirtieth is the new entry, with 206,041.60 lei.

The third effect is an expropriation proper. Article III starts the procedure for the buildings which appear now at entries 6, 18, 47 and 50 and on the land of entry 91. These are small things in appearance and not at all small in money: a concrete platform of 4 square metres, paid at 499.20 lei, a well of 3 metres, paid at 3,861 lei, two fences, paid together at 7,557.81 lei, a parking platform of 438 square metres, paid at 54,662.40 lei, and, on the land of the new entry, a garage of 44 square metres valued on its own at 91,520 lei, beside three fences, an access gate and a concrete platform.

The fourth effect is procedural. The individual sums are transferred by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure into a treasury account opened in the name of the National Railway Company „C.F.R.” S.A., within at most 30 days of the request for them, at the disposal of the owners. From there on, Law no. 255/2010 on expropriation for a cause of public utility applies: the owner lodges a payment claim with the ownership documents, within 10 days of the posting of the list at the seat of the local council, and the expropriator pays within at most 90 days of the decision fixing the amount of the compensation.

The fifth effect goes unnoticed, because it sits in a line of budget classification. In 2024, the money for the same compensation came from title 60, „Proiecte cu finanțare din sumele reprezentând asistența financiară nerambursabilă aferentă PNRR”, projects financed from the non-repayable financial assistance under the plan. Now it comes from title 61, „Proiecte cu finanțare din sumele aferente componentei de împrumut a PNRR”, projects financed from the sums belonging to its loan component. The same works, the same corridor, the same owners, but the source has moved from the grant part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to the credit part. For the owner nothing changes. For the public debt, it does.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until 29 September 2026 the list of December 2024 was the only reference: 56 entries, 50,364,000 lei, surfaces and sums worked out on the valuation of the time. The new decision replaces 29 of those rows, adds one and leaves the other 27 untouched.

The most visible change is the price per square metre of the land. In the Dâmbu Rotund district, land in the „curți-construcții” category, yards and buildings, was valued in 2024 at 874 lei the square metre. In the list of 2026 it appears at 1,170 lei, 33.87% more. In the Gruia district, the same type of land climbs from 1,955 to 2,600 lei the square metre, 32.99% more. Arable land inside the built-up area is paid at 1,840 lei the square metre at entries 16 and 53, and unproductive land and roads at 86.25 and 97.75 lei.

The second change is the subdivision of a parcel. Entry 9 in the list of 2024 covered a property at Calea Baciului no. 7, with 1,317 square metres on the documents, of which 152 expropriated, and total compensation of 190,080.30 lei. In the list of 2026, entry 9 stays at the same address but with 1,484 square metres on the documents, 59 expropriated and 97,334.42 lei, while the new entry 91 appears at no. 5, with 1,237 square metres on the documents, 79 expropriated and 206,041.60 lei. Put together, the two entries come to 138 square metres expropriated instead of 152 and to 303,376.02 lei instead of 190,080.30. The difference comes from the new price per square metre and from the garage of 44 square metres found on the detached parcel.

The third change concerns the holders. On Oradiei Street, at entry 18, the company listed in 2024 is replaced by another, and the compensation climbs from 379,942.75 to 546,046.56 lei, of which 158,546 lei come from the revaluation of the land and 7,557.81 lei from the two fences added now. On Tăietura Turcului Street, at entry 33, the building listed in 2024 as an outbuilding of 66 square metres, valued at 78,936 lei, appears in 2026 as a hall of 52 square metres, valued at 101,400 lei: less surface, 22,464 lei more.

The fourth change is less spectacular and all the more important for anyone looking for his property in the list: the surfaces on the documents are corrected almost everywhere. Entry 46 falls from 1,149 to 876 square metres, entry 32 from 2,950 to 2,588, entry 6 from 737 to 73, and others change by a square metre up or down. The surface actually expropriated through the 29 amended entries nevertheless grows very little, from 9,896 to 9,947 square metres, to which the 79 square metres of the new entry are added.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The prices per square metre climb wherever the valuations were redone, by roughly a third, which brings the compensation closer to the market value of land inside the built-up area of Cluj-Napoca.
  • The small structures standing on the expropriated land, from a well of 3 metres to a parking platform of 438 square metres, enter the list and are paid for, instead of disappearing along with the works.
  • The annex closes to the leu: in each of the 30 entries the compensation for the land plus the compensation for the buildings equals exactly the total in the last column, and the difference against the list of 2024 matches the sum allocated.
  • The act shows its basis in five concrete texts of Law no. 255/2010, among them Article 9(8), which calls for precisely this updating of the list with owners, surfaces and sums once the expropriated surface has been individualised.
  • The decision enters into force on publication, so the procedure can start at once, without the waiting period that laws and ordinances need.

What remains a problem

  • The same decision pays two different prices for the same type of land, in the same district. On Calea Baciului, entry 9 is valued at 1,170 lei the square metre, while entries 6, 46 and 47, a few house numbers away, stay at 874 lei, because they were not revalued.
  • The act nowhere says what the total sum is after the supplement. Anyone who wants to know what Annex no. 2 is worth now has to open the decision of 2024 and add up 56 rows.
  • The 30-day time limit for transferring the money runs from the request, so its starting point stays in the expropriator’s hands, however long passes after the publication of the decision.
  • The decision amends 29 entries without saying, for any of them, what exactly has changed. The owner who wants to know whether his sum has risen has to compare two editions of the Official Gazette of Romania himself, two years apart.
  • The surface on the documents for entry 6 moves from 737 to 73 square metres, with no change either in the expropriated surface or in the compensation, and the text does not make clear whether this is a correction of the land book or something else.

Practical advice

  1. Look for your property by the land book number. The annex of 2026 has its own numbering, from 1 to 30, and the second column shows the corresponding entry in the decision of 2024. Addresses and names have changed between the two lists more often than the land book numbers have.
  2. Compare the new sum with the one from 2024 before taking any step. If your entry is one of the 13 which stay at the same value, the decision has updated only your identification data, and the sum deposited does not change.
  3. Check whether a new building has appeared in the list against your name. At entries 6, 18, 47 and 50, as well as on the land of entry 91, the expropriation of the buildings is only being started now, so for them the procedure, notification included, begins from scratch.
  4. Lodge the payment claim within 10 days of the posting of the list at the seat of the Cluj-Napoca city hall. The time limit is laid down by Article 19(2) of Law no. 255/2010, and the claim has to be accompanied by the documents proving the right of ownership, in the original or in a certified copy.
  5. Present yourself with the documents within 20 calendar days of the notification received by post. If you do not, the expropriation goes ahead and the sum is deposited in your name until the legal position is clarified, which only means that your money waits longer for you.
  6. Collect the sum and challenge it separately, if it seems small to you. Article 22 of Law no. 255/2010 lets you go to court within the general limitation period, and the action does not suspend the transfer of the right of ownership. Article 23 exempts from the court stamp duty the claims by which the amount of the compensation is fixed.
  7. Compare your price per square metre with that of the neighbours in the same annex. If your land in Dâmbu Rotund is valued at 874 lei the square metre while a neighbouring entry appears at 1,170, you have a written argument for the compensation committee or for the court.
  8. Ask the city hall for the list and the site plan. Article 11(3) and (4) of Law no. 255/2010 obliges the expropriator to post them at the seat of the local council and on its own website, and the date on which the committee begins its work is announced in a local newspaper.

Frequently asked questions

Does this decision take my land now?
For most of the 30 entries, no. The expropriation had been started by Government Decision no. 1.701/2024, published on 24 December 2024, and the act of 29 September 2026 updates the data and the sums. The exception is the buildings at entries 6, 18, 47 and 50 and those on the land of entry 91: for them, Article III starts the procedure now.
Why are there 30 entries, if the supplement is only 858,400 lei?
Because what the annex sets out is the present total compensation, recalculated for each entry. The 30 rows add up to 29,920,093.15 lei, and the 29 entries which existed in 2024 as well were worth 29,061,749.02 lei then. The difference between the two sums, together with the new entry, gives 858,344.13 lei, that is exactly what is being allocated, rounded to 858.4 thousand lei.
Has my compensation gone up or down?
It depends on the entry. Fourteen entries rise, by 752,263.41 lei in all, two fall, by 99,960.88 lei, and 13 stay unchanged as a sum. The two that fall are entries 9 and 31. At entry 9 the fall comes from the subdivision of the parcel: the detached part appears separately, at entry 91, and the two taken together are worth more than the single entry of 2024.
How much is paid per square metre?
It depends on the district, on the land-use category and on when the valuation was made. In Dâmbu Rotund, land in the yards-and-buildings category appears at 874 or at 1,170 lei the square metre, in Gruia at 1,955 or at 2,600, arable land inside the built-up area at 1,840 and at 1,955, and unproductive land and roads at 86.25 and 97.75 lei. The higher prices are, as a rule, those redone through the new valuation.
How long before I get the money?
The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure transfers the sums to the National Railway Company „C.F.R.” S.A. within at most 30 days of the request for them. Actual payment to the owner is made, under Article 21 of Law no. 255/2010, within at most 90 days of the decision fixing the amount of the compensation. Until then, the sum is deposited in the owner’s name.
Where does the money come from?
From the State budget, through the budget of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, at chapter 84.01 „Transporturi”, transport, title 61 „Proiecte cu finanțare din sumele aferente componentei de împrumut a PNRR”, the loan component of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, article 61.06. In 2024, the same compensation was provided for under title 60, the one for non-repayable funds under the same plan.
What happens to the rest of the line, towards Oradea and Episcopia Bihor?
The decision of 29 September 2026 concerns only the additional site inside the municipality of Cluj-Napoca. The works run for 166.7 kilometres and pass through the counties of Cluj, Sălaj and Bihor, and the other stretches have expropriation decisions of their own.
I am a tenant, or I have a building on somebody else’s land. Do I get anything?
Yes, if you hold a real right over the building. The annex shows several situations of this kind: the land is in the private domain of Cluj County, while the platforms, the fences, the advertising panels, the natural gas station or the automated barrier standing on it are paid to commercial companies, separately from the land. The payment claim is lodged by the holder of the real right, under Article 19 of Law no. 255/2010.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Article IV(2), set against Article 4(8) of the Implementing Rules approved by Government Decision no. 53/2011. The decision provides that the sums are transferred „în termen de cel mult 30 de zile de la data solicitării acestora, conform prevederilor art. 4 alin. (8)” of those rules, that is within at most thirty days of the date on which they are requested, in accordance with the provision cited. The text invoked, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 84 of 1 February 2011 and unchanged in the consolidated version, says something else: within 30 days of the publication of the decision, at the request of the expropriator, the Ministry of Finance approves the opening of a budget credit for the sum representing the total value of the compensation. The difference is not one of nuance. In the rules, the 30 days start from a public and verifiable date, namely 29 September 2026, and the operation is one between two ministries. In the decision, the same 30 days start from a request with no time limit of its own, and the operation is the transfer of the money to the railway company. The Government may set its own time limit, since Article 5(1) of Law no. 255/2010 requires it to put one in the decision, only it presents that time limit here as flowing from a text which says something different. For the owner waiting for his money, the question is left unanswered in the act: from when are the 30 days counted.

Editorial analysis

As arithmetic, the act is clean. Each of the 30 entries closes to the leu, that is the compensation for the land plus the compensation for the buildings give exactly the total in the last column, and the 30 totals added together give 29,920,093.15 lei. Subtract from them the 29,061,749.02 lei which the same entries were worth in the annex of 2024, and 858,344.13 lei are left. The Government allocates 858.4 thousand lei, so 55.87 lei more, a rounding upwards which changes nothing in what is owed to anybody. This is exactly the kind of check an expropriation act has to pass, and which in this case it does pass.

What cannot be seen by reading the act from end to end is that it pays, on the same day and for the same type of land, two different prices per square metre. In Dâmbu Rotund, entries 9, 91, 10, 15, 18, 40, 41, 42 and 43 are valued at 1,170 lei the square metre of yards and buildings, while entries 6, 46 and 47, standing on that same Calea Baciului, stay at 874 lei, the price of 2024. In Gruia, entries 31, 36, 54 and 56 climb to 2,600 lei, while entries 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33 and 38 stay at 1,955. The technical explanation is simple, revaluation was done only where remeasurement was done, but the practical consequence is that two neighbours on the same street, expropriated for the same works, by the same decision, receive sums which differ by a third per square metre, and the act does not say why. The difference goes further than that: the parcel with cadastral number 337136, arable land inside the built-up area of 8,546 square metres, appears in the same annex at entry 16 at 1,840 lei the square metre and at entry 29 at 1,955 lei, while parcel 340713, a road inside the built-up area, appears at entry 50 at 86.25 lei the square metre and at entry 52 at 97.75 lei. The same piece of ground, two prices, in the same list.

The second observation comes out of a division the act does not make. The extra 858,344.13 lei come on top of a rise in surface of only 130 square metres, from 9,896 to 10,026 square metres: the surface grows by 1.31%, the money by 2.95%. In other words, the supplement does not pay for new land but for old land at a new price and for buildings the valuation of 2024 had not caught. The clearest example is entry 9, split in two: 138 square metres expropriated instead of 152, that is less ground, but 303,376.02 lei instead of 190,080.30, that is more money, because a garage of 44 square metres valued at 91,520 lei was found on the detached parcel. Across the annex as a whole, the buildings account for 18,462,311.65 lei out of the 29,920,093.15, so 61.7%. This expropriation buys more concrete than ground.

The third observation concerns the relation between the time limits the act imposes and those it takes for itself. The owner has 10 days from the posting to lodge the payment claim and 20 calendar days from the notification to present himself with the documents. The administration gives itself 30 days to transfer the money, counted not from publication but from its own request, and another 90 days from the decision fixing the amount until actual payment. Between the decision which opened the corridor, published on 24 December 2024, and the one which updates the sums, 644 days went by. The new decision was adopted on 24 September 2026 and published five days later. Haste is required of whoever receives the paper.

The last observation is a small one, and for that very reason worth making. At entry 6, on Calea Baciului no. 13, the total surface on the documents for the yards-and-buildings land moves from 737 to 73 square metres, while the expropriated surface stays at 15 square metres and the compensation stays at 13,110 lei. The two figures cannot both be right, and the act does not say which of them is the correction. Nothing of what is paid to the owner depends on it, because the property is identified by land book 277133 and the price is worked out on the expropriated surface. What does depend on it is the rest: after the expropriation, the cadastre office allots of its own motion a cadastral number for the unexpropriated surface, and that surface is either 58 or 722 square metres, depending on how you read the row. On the same row, the arable sub-parcel of 402 square metres appears with zero square metres expropriated, yet with a concrete platform of 4 square metres paid at 499.20 lei, that is a structure compensated on land from which nothing is taken.

What should be changed

  • The annex should have a column with the previous sum and with the difference. The table has eighteen columns, but not one of them shows what is changing. One more column would tell the owner at a glance whether he is among the 14 entries which rise, among the two which fall or among the 13 where only the identification data change, without his having to open the 2024 edition of the Official Gazette of Romania.
  • The decision should state the total sum resulting after the supplement. Article I says by how much the sum is supplemented, but not what the total becomes. Written once, „the total compensation for Annex no. 2 becomes 51,222.4 thousand lei”, it would make verifiable by anybody a figure which now requires adding up 56 rows from two different acts.
  • The revaluation should cover the whole area, at the same price. If the price of yards-and-buildings land in Dâmbu Rotund has been recognised as 1,170 lei the square metre, then entries 6, 46 and 47, left on the valuation of 2024, ought to be paid at that price too. Otherwise the difference of a third remains a matter of luck, that is of the order in which the valuer reached the parcels, and those left on the old price have solid grounds for litigation.
  • The transfer time limit should run from publication. The wording „30 de zile de la data solicitării”, thirty days from the date of the request, leaves the start of the time limit to the discretion of the party bound to observe it. Tied to the date of publication, as in the rules the decision itself invokes, it would become a date anyone can work out: 29 October 2026.
  • Surfaces which change by an order of magnitude should be accompanied by their cadastral basis. A move from 737 to 73 square metres, as at entry 6, ought to carry beside it the number of the cadastral documentation accepted by the National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration, so that the reader can tell a correction of the land book from a figure mistyped at the printers.
  • The owners affected should be told of the change in writing. The act changes the sum for 16 entries and adds a new one, without obliging anybody to inform those concerned. A notification within the same 30 days in which the money is transferred would cost as much as an envelope and would shorten the road to the counter.

Original text of the legal act

The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.

The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania

Official Gazette of Romania no. 826 of 29 September 2026, pages 2-9 16 pages PDF, 111 KB the act starts on page 2

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.