In brief
- The Government has topped up by 9,940 lei the compensation owed for a single plot inside the expropriation corridor of the Satu Mare bypass.
- Position no. 362 on the list approved back in 2017 is rewritten: 1,037 square metres of arable land outside the built-up area, total compensation 10,370 lei, which works out at 10 lei per square metre.
- The money comes from the state budget, through the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, and must be transferred within 30 days of the approval of the request to open credit lines.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 699 of 24 August 2026
Adopted: 20 August 2026
A Government decision devoted to a single plot of a thousand square metres shows exactly how an expropriation payment gets corrected in practice, nine years after the list was approved. Government Decision no. 648/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 699 of 24 August 2026, adds 9.94 thousand lei to the sum set aside as fair compensation for the expropriation corridor of the Satu Mare bypass and rewrites position no. 362 in annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 282/2017. This is the kind of act that never makes the headlines, yet it matters enormously to owners caught inside a road corridor, alongside the other operations through which the state is putting its asset records in order.
The legal basis is Law no. 255/2010 on expropriation for reasons of public utility, more precisely Article 5(1), Article 8(3), Article 9(8), Article 11(7) and Article 32. These are the provisions that allow the identification details of a property and the individual amount of compensation to be updated once the procedure is already under way.
The annex to the decision contains a single row. Position 362 on the 2017 list concerns a plot in the administrative-territorial unit of Satu Mare, Satu Mare county, owned by Bîjan Valeria and Bîjan Dumitru, land use category arable, with cadastral and land register number 158468, an area of 1,037 square metres according to the title deeds, an area to be expropriated of 1,037 square metres, outside the built-up area, and a total land compensation value of 10,370 lei.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is the allocation of the money. The sum of 9.94 thousand lei is allocated from the state budget, through the budget of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, under the state budget law for 2026, Law no. 43/2026, at chapter 84.01 „Transport”, title 58, budget article 58.01 „Programmes financed from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)”, sub-item 58.01.03 „Non-eligible expenditure”.
The second effect is the update of the list. Position 362 in annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 282/2017, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 332 of 8 May 2017, is amended so as to update the identification details of the property and the individual sum of compensation attached to it. The rest of the list is left untouched.
The third effect is arithmetical. Total compensation for this plot rises to 10,370 lei, and since the top-up is 9,940 lei, the sum previously provided for was 430 lei. Set against the surface area, the new compensation amounts to 10 lei per square metre of arable land outside the built-up area.
The fourth effect concerns the route the money takes. The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure transfers the sum into a treasury account opened in the name of the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration, within no more than 30 days of the date on which the request to open credit lines is approved, under Article 4(8) of the implementing rules approved by Government Decision no. 53/2011. From there, the money stands at the owners’ disposal for the actual payment of the compensation.
The fifth effect is one of accountability. The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, through the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration, answers for the accuracy of the data in the annex, for the way the sum is used and for the correctness of the data in the documents on which it was based.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until now, the 2017 list showed a far smaller sum for this plot. The amendment brings it to 10,370 lei, together with an update of the identification details of the property, meaning the cadastral and land register data.
The second change is one of principle, even though the act covers a single row: it shows that an expropriation list is not final at the moment it is approved. It can be corrected by Government decision, under Law no. 255/2010, whenever the identification data or the valuation turn out to be wrong or incomplete.
The correction can also come from outside the administration. At the Timișeni-Pinoasa mine, the courts took the compensation for eight properties in Gorj to almost 2.4 times what the State had offered.
The third change concerns the source of the funding. The sum is paid from a budget article earmarked for programmes financed by the European Regional Development Fund, at the sub-item for non-eligible expenditure. In other words, the compensation is not reimbursed from European funds but is borne in full by the state budget, even though the works as a whole are co-financed by the European Union.
What does not change is the rest of the procedure. The expropriation corridor, the alignment approved by Government Decision no. 282/2017 and the other positions on the list remain as they were established, with subsequent amendments and additions.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It corrects compensation that was visibly below the value of the land, moving it from 430 to 10,370 lei.
- It updates the identification details of the property, which removes the risk of payment being held up by a cadastral mismatch.
- It sets a clear deadline for transferring the money, no more than 30 days from the approval of the request to open credit lines.
- It shows that the correction mechanism in Law no. 255/2010 works for individual cases too, not only for large-scale revisions of a list.
What remains a problem
- The correction arrives nine years after the initial list was approved, a period during which the owners did not have the real sum at their disposal.
- Every correction of this kind requires a separate Government decision, which makes the procedure slow and administratively expensive.
- The act does not explain why the initial sum was set wrongly, nor whether other positions on the same corridor are in the same situation.
- The sum is paid from the sub-item for non-eligible expenditure, so it cannot be recovered from European funds.
Practical advice
- If you own land inside an expropriation corridor, check periodically whether your position in the annex has been amended by later decisions. The initial list is not the final version.
- Compare the area shown in your title deeds with the area to be expropriated on the list. When the two are equal, the land is taken in full and the compensation covers the whole plot.
- Check the cadastral number and the land register number in the annex. A mismatch here is the most frequent cause of delayed payment.
- If the sum looks below market value, challenge the amount of the compensation in court, under Law no. 255/2010. Contesting the sum does not block the transfer of ownership.
- Bear in mind that the money goes first to the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration, not straight to the owner. That is where the payment file has to be lodged.
- Ask the works administrator in writing for the status of your file, quoting the number of your position in the annex. It is the quickest way to find out where the payment has stalled.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly did this decision approve?
How much is the compensation for that plot?
Where does the money come from?
How long does payment take?
Can an expropriation list be amended after approval?
Who answers for the accuracy of the data?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article III(1) refers to a unit that does not exist. The text says that the sum approved under Article I is used „pentru imobilul prevăzut la art. II pct. 1”, for the property referred to in Article II point 1. Article II has no points: it consists of a single indent, by which position no. 362 in annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 282/2017 is amended. The correct reference would be to Article II without any subdivision, or directly to position 362.
- The two figures in the decision do not close on each other. Article I approves a top-up of 9.94 thousand lei, while the annex shows, in column 15, a total compensation value of 10,370.00 lei. The difference of 430 lei is the sum approved earlier, but the decision mentions it nowhere, although it amends the very position that contained it. From the act itself the reader cannot check that 9,940 plus the old sum come to exactly 10,370 lei.
- The top-up is expressed in thousands of lei, to two decimal places, so it does not fix the exact sum. „9,94 mii lei” covers any value between 9,935 and 9,945 lei, while the annex gives the exact figure, down to the bani, for the total compensation. In an act that allocates budget appropriations for a single position, the unit of measure ought to be the leu, as it is in the annex.
- Article II announces an update of the identification details, and the annex leaves them blank. Position 362 „se modifică în sensul actualizării, în condițiile legii, a elementelor de identificare ale imobilului”, is amended so as to update, in accordance with the law, the identification details of the property, yet in the table column 5 „Tarlaua”, the field, holds a dash, column 6 „Parcela”, the parcel, is empty, and column 8 „Nr. act proprietate/încheiere CF”, the number of the title deed or of the land register entry, holds another dash. The only details actually filled in are the cadastral number and the land register number, both 158468, plus the area.
- Article III(2) speaks in the plural about a single sum. The paragraph refers to „sumele individuale prevăzute la alin. (1)”, the individual sums provided for in paragraph (1), although paragraph (1) provides for one sum only, for one property. The wording has been carried over as it stands from decisions that amend dozens of positions at once and has not been adapted to the present act.
Editorial analysis
The real problem the act solves is one of elementary justice: a position on an expropriation list approved in 2017 carried a sum that bore no relation to the value of the land, and the owners were left with it for years on end. The correction was necessary and the mechanism in Law no. 255/2010 does work. What catches the eye is the price of the procedure: a Government decision signed by the Prime Minister and countersigned by three members of the Government, published across two pages of the Official Gazette of Romania, for 9,940 lei. The administrative cost of the decision is comparable with the sum it unlocks.
The second observation concerns what the act does not say. There is no valuation report, no valuer and no valuation date to support the 10 lei per square metre, although Law no. 255/2010 ties fair compensation precisely to a report drawn up in accordance with the valuation standards. Nor is any reason given why the 2017 sum was wrong: whether the error was one of area, of land use category or of valuation. Without that line, a correction from 430 to 10,370 lei remains an assertion that nobody outside can check, and Article IV leaves the whole responsibility for „realitatea datelor”, the accuracy of the data, with the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration.
The third observation is about time. The list was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 332 of 8 May 2017, and the correction arrives in August 2026. Nine years in which a plot of 1,037 square metres was carried at a sum 24 times smaller than the one now held to be fair. Neither the law nor the decision sets a period within which such a discrepancy, once flagged, has to be seen through, and the act does not say whether the same corridor holds other positions in the same situation.
What should be changed
- The decision should show both sums, the old one and the new one. A single extra line in Article I, of the kind „de la 430 lei la 10.370 lei”, from 430 lei to 10,370 lei, makes the top-up verifiable in arithmetic and spares the reader from hunting down the 2017 version of annex no. 2.
- The act should cite the valuation report on which the new sum rests. The number, the date and the issuer of the report, exactly as for any other operation involving public assets. Without them, column 15 of the annex is a figure with no source.
- Corrections on the same corridor should be grouped periodically, not taken one at a time. A quarterly decision updating every position identified as wrong on a given project would cut the number of acts, shorten the road to payment, and show at a glance the real scale of the problem on that corridor.
- A maximum period between the finding of the error and the decision that puts it right. Law no. 255/2010 sets deadlines for the expropriating authority, but not for its own mistakes. A deadline of the order of six months from the moment the matter is raised would stop a nine year interval from happening again.
- Publication of the state of payments on each expropriation corridor. The position, the sum approved, the sum paid and the date of payment, in a table kept up to date by the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration. The owner would no longer have to ask in writing where his file stands, and the positions left behind would become visible without waiting for a Government decision.
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. 699 of 24 August 2026 32 pages PDF, 202 KB the act starts on page 29
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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.