In brief
- Owners of historic monument buildings now have a written procedure for the agreement of the Ministry of Culture, with firm deadlines and a tacit agreement if the ministry stays silent.
- Two procedures, two deadlines: 5 working days for first-emergency intervention works and 60 calendar days for the other notified works.
- The order repeals the 2020 procedure and creates a register of applications, notifications and agreements. Notifications filed earlier are settled under the old rules.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 717 of 27 August 2026
In force from: 27 August 2026
If the Ministry of Culture does not answer within the deadline, the agreement is deemed given. That is the central rule of Order of the Minister of Culture no. 3.167/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 717 of 27 August 2026, which approves the procedures and the formats for the written agreement required by Articles 283 and 284 of the Code of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and Construction. It is the first act issued under the Code that reaches the owners of historic buildings directly.
The order has eight articles and three annexes. Annex no. 1 contains the procedure for first-emergency intervention works, annex no. 2 the notification procedure for the other works, and annex no. 3 the model of the register that the ministry and its deconcentrated services have to keep.
The act covers two categories of property: historic monument buildings and buildings of architectural or historic value established through approved urban planning documentation. The second category is wider than the list of monuments and catches buildings that are not listed but are protected by an urban plan.
The same series of administrative simplifications this summer includes the platform through which the single industrial licence is obtained entirely online.
What it changes in practice
The first effect, and the one that matters most to an owner, is the deadline. For first-emergency intervention works, the written agreement is issued within no more than 5 working days from the filing of the complete documentation. For works notified under Article 284, the deadline is 60 calendar days.
At the Ministry of Culture another deadline moved further out, at a price: cultural projects funded from the de minimis scheme have until 5 December, and the list of eligible beneficiaries has been repealed.
The second effect is the tacit agreement. If neither the written agreement, nor the reasoned rejection, nor the notice of non-applicability has been communicated within the deadline, the agreement operates by operation of law. The procedure leaves no room for interpretation: the silence of the authority has the value of a favourable answer, for the works itemised in the complete documentation.
The third effect is the limit of that tacit agreement, and the order writes it down twice, once in each annex. The tacit agreement produces effects exclusively for the works and the solutions included in the complete documentation and does not replace the building permit, the approvals or the other mandatory administrative acts. In other words, the ministry’s silence opens a single door, not the whole corridor.
The fourth effect is procedural. Applications and notifications may be filed on paper or electronically, directly at the registry office, by post, by electronic means or, from the date it becomes operational, through the national one-stop shop of the national platform for urban planning and construction authorisation. The order adds a guarantee: documents on paper or sent electronically are received and processed regardless of how far the technical integration of the authorities’ IT systems has gone.
The fifth effect is traceability. The register in annex no. 3 has 16 entry fields, among them the date on which the documentation became complete, the legal deadline for settlement and the date on which it expires, the outcome, including the „tacit agreement” variant, and the on-site checks carried out. An owner can reconstruct from the register whether the deadline was observed. The ministry worked on the underwater side of the same regime in September 2026, when a derogation let public institutions bring in outside divers for archaeological research, after a gap of 665 days.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until today, the matter was governed by Order of the Minister of Culture no. 3.037/2020, which dealt with the prior notification and the written agreement under Article 11 of Law No 50/1991 on the authorisation of construction works. That order is expressly repealed.
The substantive change is not merely one of numbering. The old procedure rested on Law No 50/1991, which was replaced by the Code of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and Construction. The new procedure rests directly on Articles 283 and 284 of the Code, therefore on a legal basis with a different architecture, in which the deadlines and the tacit agreement are laid down in the law itself and the order only makes them work in practice.
The third thing that has changed is protection for those caught in between. Notifications filed under the 2020 order and not yet settled on the date the new order enters into force are dealt with under the rules in force on the date of filing, unless a higher-ranking act provides otherwise. Nobody has to start the procedure again from scratch.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The deadlines are short and clear, above all the 5 working days for first-emergency interventions, where a delay can mean losing the building.
- The tacit agreement moves the risk of administrative silence off the owner’s shoulders and onto the authority’s.
- The limit of the tacit agreement is written down explicitly, so nobody can claim that silence stood in for a building permit.
- Filing on paper remains valid regardless of how far digitalisation has gone, which shields the applicant from the delays of the state’s IT projects.
- The register with its 16 entry fields makes it verifiable, afterwards, whether the deadline was observed.
- Pending files are not restarted: the rules in force on the date of filing apply.
What remains a problem
- The order enters into force on publication, with no transition period for the deconcentrated public services that have to set up the register.
- No deadline is set by which the register has to be up and running, although the checking of the deadlines rests on it.
- Nowhere does it say that the register is public or open to consultation by the person concerned, although it holds exactly the data that would help them.
- The 60 calendar days for notified works is long measured against the pace of a building site, all the more so because it also takes in the holidays.
- The moment from which the deadline runs is the „date of filing of the complete documentation”, and the one who establishes completeness is the same authority.
- The „national one-stop shop” is invoked without a date on which it becomes operational, so the fully electronic route remains, for now, a promise.
Practical advice
- Ask in writing for confirmation of registration. The order obliges the authority to confirm receipt and to communicate the registration number and date, and the deadline can be counted from that date.
- Find out from the start whether the property falls into the second category, that of buildings of architectural or historic value established through urban planning documentation. Not every building covered is a listed monument.
- For first-emergency interventions, prepare the complete documentation before you file: the 5 working days run from the filing of the complete documentation, not from the first request.
- If the deadline has passed with no answer at all, invoke the tacit agreement, but only for the works and the solutions in the documentation you filed. For anything else you need the express agreement.
- Do not confuse the tacit agreement with the building permit. The order says twice, in both annexes, that it does not replace it.
- If you have a notification filed before 27 August 2026 and still not settled, it will be dealt with under the old rules. Do not file it again.
- Keep proof of how you filed. The order guarantees processing regardless of how far the integration of the IT systems has gone, but the proof is yours to hold.
Frequently asked questions
Who does the order concern?
What are the deadlines?
What does the tacit agreement mean?
Does the tacit agreement stand in for a building permit?
How are the documents filed?
What happens if the IT systems are not integrated?
Which act is repealed?
I have a notification filed this year that has not been settled. What happens to it?
Is there a register of applications?
Editorial analysis
This is the sort of act that reads easily precisely because it was thought out from the point of view of the person filing, not the person receiving. The deadline runs from an identifiable moment, the authority is obliged to confirm registration and to communicate the number, and if it stays silent, the silence is held against it, not against the applicant. For first-emergency works, the 5 working days are a serious deadline: in a damaged historic building, the difference between five days and two months can be the difference between consolidation and demolition.
The double statement about the limits of the tacit agreement, repeated in both annexes, is well judged too. Without it, an owner acting in good faith might have believed that the ministry’s silence stood in for a permit, and another one, acting in bad faith, might have claimed exactly that. Repetition, which in other acts is ballast, earns its place here.
The weak part is the register, that is to say the very piece that would turn the deadlines from a promise into a verifiable right. The order sets it up and gives it a detailed model with 16 entry fields, but it does not say by when it has to exist, who keeps it at central level as against the deconcentrated one and, above all, whether the applicant may consult it. A register that holds the expiry date of the deadline and the outcome, but that you cannot get at, is useful to the administration and useless to the citizen. In the same way, the „national one-stop shop” is invoked as a future destination, with no date at all, which leaves digitalisation at the stage of an intention.
What should be changed
- A deadline for making the register operational. Without one, checking that the deadlines are observed depends on the goodwill of each deconcentrated service.
- Access for the applicant to their own entry in the register. A right to receive, on request, an extract showing the date the documentation was completed, the deadline and the outcome would be enough.
- A rule for establishing that the documentation is complete. The moment from which the deadline runs is set by the same authority that has to observe the deadline, and that should at least be paired with a written confirmation of completeness.
- A date for the national one-stop shop. The act mentions it as a future filing route; without a horizon, the mention produces no effect at all.
- Publication of a list of the competent deconcentrated services. An owner in the provinces needs to know without searching which county directorate to file with, all the more so when they have five working days to do it in.
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. 717 of 27 August 2026 16 pages PDF, 105 KB the act starts on page 5
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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.