In brief

  • The State paid too little when it took the land, and the courts ordered it to top up the sum. Eight properties in the commune of Fărcășești, Gorj County, which entered the expropriation corridor of the Timișeni-Pinoasa lignite mine in 2020, receive higher compensation, set in two cases won by the owners and now final.
  • The difference comes to 65,559.96 lei and is paid from the State budget. The money is allocated through the budget of the Ministry of Energy for 2026 and reaches the owners through an account opened in the name of Complexul Energetic Oltenia, within at most 30 days of the approval of the request to open credits.
  • For the nine rows in the annex, the compensation reaches 113,693.13 lei. The arithmetic of the act shows that the sum previously approved for the same properties was 48,133.17 lei, so the courts pushed the payment to almost 2.4 times what the administration had offered.
Act: Government Decision no. 749/2026 supplementing the sum provided as fair compensation, approved by Government Decision no. 1.121/2020, and amending Annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 1.121/2020
Published: Official Gazette of Romania no. 803 of 22 September 2026
In force from: the date of publication, 22 September 2026, under Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000, which covers the normative acts listed in Article 11(1) other than laws and ordinances

Government Decision no. 749/2026 puts a further 65,559.96 lei on the table for eight properties in the commune of Fărcășești, Gorj County, lying in the expropriation corridor of the works opening the Timișeni-Pinoasa lignite mine. The figure does not come from a fresh valuation by the administration, but from two cases the owners won against the State. Top-ups of this kind are routine on large works, and on roads they look the same: also by a Government decision, seventeen plots in Olt are only now entering the Craiova-Pitesti expropriation. The difference lies in who set the sum: there the expropriating authority, here the court.

The act has five articles and one annex. Article I approves the supplement for 2026, with a total of 65,559.96 lei. Article II sets out what changes in Annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 1.121/2020, published in the Official Gazette of Romania no. 1317 of 31 December 2020: at entry 125 only the sum is updated; at entries 130, 181 and 426 the names of the holders and the sum are updated; at entries 305, 306, 419 and 420 the names, the expropriated area and the sum are updated. Eight current numbers, matched by nine rows in the annex, because entry 420 covers two plots.

There are two beneficiaries: a single owner, at entry 125, with 6,472 square metres of forest outside the built-up area and compensation of 65,470.13 lei, and a group of three co-owners, who hold the other seven entries, with 48,223.00 lei. All the properties are in the commune of Fărcășești. The area taken into account is 11,218 square metres, and the total compensation value written in the annex is 113,693.13 lei, of which 86,510.13 lei for land, 2,513.00 lei for plantations and 24,670.00 lei for buildings.

The judgments that produced the sum are set out in the preamble. The first is civil judgment no. 146 of 2 June 2025 of the Gorj Tribunal, in case no. 130/95/2023, which became final through civil decision no. 352 of 4 December 2025 of the Craiova Court of Appeal. The second is civil judgment no. 86 of 17 April 2025 of the same tribunal, in case no. 7.567/95/2023, which became final through civil decision no. 6 of 14 January 2026. The legal basis relied on is Article 108 of the Constitution of Romania, republished, together with Article 8(3), Article 9(8) and Article 32(3) of Law no. 255/2010 on expropriation for a cause of public utility.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is budgetary. The 65,559.96 lei are allocated from the State budget through the budget of the Ministry of Energy for 2026, within the sums approved by the State Budget Law for 2026 no. 43/2026, from chapter 81.01, title 55, article 55.01, paragraph 55.01.12, that is, from the line for investment in State-owned economic operators. The sum moves inside a budget line that already existed.

The second effect concerns the list. Annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 1.121/2020 is the document payments are actually made from, and it is corrected whenever reality no longer matches what is written there. That is exactly what Article 32(3) of Law no. 255/2010 provides, one of the grounds relied on. Besides the money, the act also repairs the identification: at four entries the names of the holders of the ownership right change, and at four others the expropriated area changes as well, according to the measurements accepted by the courts.

The third effect concerns the route the money takes. The Ministry of Energy transfers the sum within at most 30 days of the date on which the request to open credits is approved, into a bank account opened in the name of Complexul Energetic Oltenia, at the disposal of the owners. The company acts as a cash desk: the money passes through its account without entering its own assets. Responsibility for the accuracy of the data in the annex and for the way the sum is spent lies with the Ministry of Energy, through the same company, under Article IV.

The fourth effect is the one the act does not state but assumes: payment discharges the obligation established by the two court judgments. Ownership passed long ago, when the expropriation decision was issued, and Article 22(1) of Law no. 255/2010 says plainly that the owner may challenge only the amount of the compensation, not the transfer of the property to the State, and that appeals suspend neither the transfer nor the judgment setting the sum. The dispute is therefore about money, over land that has not belonged to the claimant since the day of the expropriation.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until this act, 48,133.17 lei had been approved for the nine rows at issue, a figure obtained by subtracting the 65,559.96 lei supplement from the total of 113,693.13 lei written in the annex. After the act, the same properties are worth 113,693.13 lei, 2.36 times more. The increase is not even: at entry 125 the compensation reaches 65,470.13 lei and by itself covers almost the whole supplement, while at entries 305 and 306 the sum falls, because the court accepted smaller areas than those in the original list.

The author of the figure has changed too. In 2020, the sums in the annex were estimates made by the expropriating authority through Complexul Energetic Oltenia. From 2026, for the eight entries, the figure is the one set by the Gorj Tribunal and confirmed by the Craiova Court of Appeal. Law no. 255/2010 expressly allows this move from administrative to judicial valuation: Article 22(3) refers the case to Articles 21 to 27 of Law no. 33/1994, and Article 23(1) exempts from court stamp duty the applications by which the amount of the compensation is established.

Finally, the identification of people and land has changed. The act updates the names of the holders at seven of the eight entries and the area at four of them. These corrections look administrative, but they decide who gets paid: without them, the money would sit blocked in an account, because the person in the list would not match the person in the court judgment.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It enforces two final judgments without asking the owners for a further step. The sum enters the payment list directly, not through a separate enforcement procedure.
  • It repairs both the money and the identification in the same act. The names of the holders and the areas are corrected together with the sum, which avoids a payment that exists on paper but has no one to be made to.
  • It shows the exact source of the money, down to the budget paragraph. Chapter 81.01, title 55, article 55.01, paragraph 55.01.12 can be followed in the budget execution of the Ministry of Energy.
  • It confirms that going to court works. Two claimants obtained, between them, more than twice the sum offered administratively, and the action to establish the amount is exempt from stamp duty.

What remains a problem

  • It never shows the old sums. The annex carries only the new values, so a reader cannot check, straight from the act, how much the compensation rose at each entry or how the supplement splits between the two cases.
  • It does not say who the expropriating authority is. The act names the ministry that pays and the company that holds the account, but that capacity appears only in Government Decision no. 1.121/2020, which states that it is the Romanian State, represented by the line ministry, through Complexul Energetic Oltenia.
  • Payment starts from a moment with no date. The 30 days run from the approval of the request to open credits, and the act sets no deadline for filing or approving that request.
  • It settles only the cases that reached a final judgment. The other owners in the same list keep the administrative valuation, even though their properties border those revalued by the court.

Practical advice

  1. If you are in the list in Annex no. 2 and the sum does not suit you, the deadline for going to court runs from the date on which the decision setting the amount of the compensation was served on you, not from the publication of the Government decision. The basis is Article 22(1) of Law no. 255/2010, and missing the deadline means losing the right.
  2. Do not put off the action for fear of legal costs. Article 23(1) of the same law exempts from court stamp duty applications by which the right to compensation and its amount are established. The cost of the valuation expert report is, however, advanced under ordinary law.
  3. Do not confuse challenging the sum with challenging the expropriation. The land passes to the State on the date of the expropriation decision, and a case won on the amount does not bring it back. The only question is what it is worth.
  4. Check how you appear in the annex before you ask for payment: surname, first name, cadastral number, land register number, area. This act exists precisely because seven entries carried an identification different from the one accepted by the courts.
  5. For inheritances, the reference point is different. For the heirs of an expropriated owner, the deadline for applying to the court runs from the date the succession is accepted, under Article 22(2) of Law no. 255/2010.
  6. If you are following the payment, ask the Ministry of Energy for the date on which the request to open credits was approved. The 30 days in which the money must be transferred into the account opened in the company’s name start running from that moment.

Frequently asked questions

Who receives the 65,559.96 lei?
Two beneficiaries, across eight entries in the expropriation list: one owner at entry 125 and a group of three co-owners at entries 130, 181, 305, 306, 419, 420 and 426. All the properties are in the commune of Fărcășești, Gorj County. The annex carries only the total compensation value for each entry, without showing how much of the supplement goes to each beneficiary.
Why is the State paying more than in 2020?
Because the 2020 sums were estimates by the expropriating authority, and the owners challenged them in court and won. The Gorj Tribunal set different values, later confirmed by the Craiova Court of Appeal. The Government decision revalues nothing; it only puts into payment what the courts decided.
When does the money actually reach people?
The act provides that the Ministry of Energy transfers the sum within at most 30 days of the date on which the request to open credits is approved, into an account opened in the name of Complexul Energetic Oltenia, at the disposal of the owners. That date is not set by the act, so the moment from which the 30 days start cannot be read from the published text.
Does the decision enter into force three days after publication?
No. The three-day rule in Article 12(1) of Law no. 24/2000 covers laws and Government ordinances issued under a special enabling law. Government decisions enter into force on the date of publication, unless the text provides a later date, under Article 12(3) of the same law. Here it does not, so the act applies from 22 September 2026.
What can the other owners in the same list do?
They can ask the court to establish the amount of the compensation, under the procedure in Article 22 of Law no. 255/2010. The application is exempt from court stamp duty and is heard by the ordinary court. The two cases that produced this act were registered in 2023 and ended with final judgments in December 2025 and January 2026.
Does the expropriation stop while the case runs?
No. Article 22(4) of Law no. 255/2010 states that neither the expropriation procedure nor the works may be suspended at the request of anyone invoking disputes over possession or ownership. The challenge concerns the sum, and the land stays with the State throughout the trial.
Where can the sum for each plot be seen?
In the annex to the decision, published on page 7 of the edition. Each row of the table carries the current number from the original list, the position on the plan, the administrative-territorial unit, the field, the plot, the land use category, the cadastral number, the land register number, the area and the compensation values, broken down into land, plantations, buildings and fencing.

Editorial analysis

The act is short and soundly built, and that makes it a good specimen for studying a mechanism that repeats hundreds of times a year: expropriation is carried out on an administrative valuation, some of the owners challenge it, and the budget pays the difference several years later. What reading the act from start to finish does not show is the intervals. From the publication of Government Decision no. 1.121/2020, on 31 December 2020, to the publication of this act, on 22 September 2026, 68 months passed. Between the moment the first judgment, judgment no. 146, became final, on 4 December 2025, and the actual allocation of the money, 9 months and 18 days passed, that is 292 days. For the second, final on 14 January 2026, the interval is 8 months and 8 days. The appeal took less time than the administration of its outcome: judgment no. 146 became final 6 months and 2 days after it was delivered.

The second observation comes out of the arithmetic of the act. The annex carries a total of 113,693.13 lei, and the supplement is 65,559.96 lei, so the sum previously approved for the same properties was 48,133.17 lei. The ratio between what the State is paying now and what it had offered administratively is 2.36. Across the works as a whole the proportion looks different: the 65,559.96 lei are 0.91% of the 7,214,003 lei estimated in 2020 by Article 4 of Government Decision no. 1.121/2020. Except that Annex no. 2 did not stay at that value. After the last amendment before this act, made by Government Decision no. 1.054/2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania no. 1128 of 8 December 2025, the general total of the list had reached 10,752,945.56 lei, 49% above the initial estimate. The Timișeni-Pinoasa mine has received further supplements through Government Decision no. 1.072/2024, Government Decision no. 456/2025 and Government Decision no. 581/2025, the last of these with 3,088,752.10 lei. This act is at least the fifth round on the same list.

The third observation concerns the asymmetry of the deadlines, which is the rule in this type of case. The owner must go to court within the general limitation period, counted from the service of the decision setting the compensation, on pain of losing the right. The administration must transfer the money within at most 30 days of the approval of the request to open credits, that is, from an event it triggers itself and which the act does not date. One deadline is counted from an objective fact, the other from an internal one. On paper, the second looks far shorter. In practice, it can start whenever.

The last observation is about verification and deserves to be stated as such. If the new values in the annex are compared with the consolidated form of Annex no. 2 as it stood after Government Decision no. 1.054/2025, the difference across the nine rows comes to 65,853.96 lei, 294.00 lei above the sum supplemented by Article I. The figures inside the act close perfectly, by row and by column, and the gap appears only on comparison with the earlier form of the list, which the act does not reproduce. That is why we treat it not as an error in the published text, but as an argument for the first of the proposals below.

What should be changed

  • The annex should show, for each entry, the old sum and the new one. Two extra columns and a difference column would make the supplement in Article I verifiable without recourse to the consolidated list, and the 294.00 lei gap noted above would either close or be explained in the published text itself.
  • The act should name the expropriating authority, not only the payer. As published, that capacity can be worked out only from the amended decision. A sentence in the preamble stating that the expropriating authority is the Romanian State, represented by the Ministry of Energy, through Complexul Energetic Oltenia, would spare every reader a search across three acts.
  • The sum should be broken down by each court judgment being enforced. The preamble invokes two judgments and two decisions, and Article I gives a single figure. A breakdown would show what each case cost and would allow the administrative valuation to be compared with the judicial one, case by case.
  • Payment should be tied to a deadline that starts on a certain date. The formula about the 30 days from the approval of the request to open credits becomes verifiable only if the act also sets a deadline for filing the request, say 15 days from the entry into force of the decision.
  • The Ministry of Energy should publish a record of the supplements for each works project. For the Timișeni-Pinoasa mine there are at least five successive acts amending the same list. An updated table, with the running total and the history of the amendments, would make it unnecessary to reconstruct the picture from the Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) for anyone who wants to know what the expropriation corridor finally cost.
  • Decisions that enforce final judgments should be adopted on a fixed calendar. A 90-day deadline from the moment the court judgment becomes final would cut the 292 days in this case to a third and would give the administration a reference point, instead of a practice that varies from case to case.

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. 803 of 22 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 111 KB the act starts on page 6

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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.