In brief

  • The Constitutional Court upheld the objection raised by the President of Romania and found that the law approving Government Ordinance no. 36/2024, which exempted Metrorex and other national transport infrastructure projects from the building completion certificate requirement at land registration, is unconstitutional.
  • The reason: the rules on land registry entries are part of the general property regime, a matter reserved exclusively to organic law; the Government could not introduce such an exception through a simple ordinance, issued under an enabling law valid only for matters of ordinary law.
  • The practical effect: both the approving law and Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 are unconstitutional in their entirety and therefore produce no legal effects; the old rule remains in force, and Metrorex and other managers of national transport infrastructure must obtain the building completion certificate before registering ownership in the land registry.
Act: Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 114/2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania no. 553 of 6 July 2026
Delivered: 11 February 2026

The Constitutional Court upheld the objection of unconstitutionality raised by the President of Romania and blocked, on extrinsic grounds, the law by which Parliament approved exempting Metrorex from the building completion certificate in the land registration procedure for infrastructure works. Decision no. 114/2026, delivered on 11 februarie 2026 and published only now, more than four months later, in the Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 553 of 6 July 2026, comes shortly after Parliament allowed, through Law no. 141/2026, the phased handover of public construction works, another simplification of construction procedures for infrastructure investments. Unlike that case, this time the Court found that the simplification proposed for Metrorex went beyond what the Constitution allows.

The act under review was Government Ordinance no. 36/2024, which introduced into the Cadastre and Real Estate Publicity Law no. 7/1996 and into Law no. 50/1991 on the authorization of construction works a special rule: for national transport infrastructure projects and for the metro projects managed by the Bucharest Metro Transport Company “Metrorex” S.A., ownership of the buildings was to be registered in the land registry based solely on the construction permit issued by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, the completion handover report, and the cadastral documentation, without any further need for the building completion certificate, a document normally required for any other construction in Romania.

The President of Romania referred the matter to the Court on 5 noiembrie 2025, raising, in essence, two types of objections: first, that the ordinance amends an organic law (Law no. 7/1996) and should therefore have been adopted through an organic law as well, not through an ordinance issued under an enabling law valid only for matters of ordinary law; second, that the challenged law in fact has an individual character, having been drafted for a single specific beneficiary, Metrorex, which would run counter to the principle of the separation of powers and equality before the law.

What it changes in practice

The Court upheld the first category of objections. It held that the rules on the documents required for registering ownership of buildings, including the building completion certificate, are part of the general legal regime of property, a matter that art. 73 alin. (3) lit. m) of the Constitution reserves exclusively to organic law. Since Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 was issued under an enabling law (Law no. 187/2024) that allowed the Government to legislate only in matters of ordinary law, and the exception for Metrorex affected, by its content, precisely the property regime, the ordinance and its approving law could not be adopted through this route.

The legal consequence is direct: the approving law and, with it, Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 are unconstitutional in their entirety. In practice, the exception introduced for Metrorex never validly entered into force, and the earlier, stricter rule remains the only applicable one. For any building erected within national transport infrastructure projects or metro projects managed by Metrorex, registering ownership in the land registry continues to require, as for any other construction in the country, the completion certificate issued by the competent authority, alongside the construction permit and the completion handover report. Metrorex is going through similar asset regularizations during the same period for sections already completed: Line 5, the Eroilor 2-Raul Doamnei section, was recently entered into the centralized inventory of state assets, a separate procedure from the land registry entry discussed here, but one that shows how active the chapter of administrative regularizations for the company’s works currently is.

The Court rejected, however, the second category of objections, concerning the individual character of the law. It explained that the mere fact that Metrorex is expressly named in the text does not give the act an individual character, since the company is, at present, the sole provider of public metro transport services in Romania, and the regulation addresses a public interest of national scope, not a personal privilege. Because unconstitutionality on extrinsic grounds was already established, the Court did not examine the substantive objections concerning the public safety risks raised by removing the completion certificate requirement. The money side of the same company reached the Official Gazette of Romania in September 2026: Metrorex got its 2026 budget on 11 September, with a loss of 295 million lei and 2.66 billion from the State.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

  • The approving law and the ordinance fall in their entirety: the Court found both the law approving Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 and the ordinance itself unconstitutional on extrinsic grounds (adopted through the wrong procedure, as ordinary acts, when they should have been organic).
  • The old rule on the completion certificate remains applicable: for any building related to national transport infrastructure or to metro projects managed by Metrorex, ownership continues to be registered in the land registry only with a building completion certificate, exactly as before 2024.
  • Regularizing the fee owed to the State Construction Inspectorate (ISC) also reverts to the general rule: the simplified procedure introduced by art. II pct. 1 of Government Ordinance no. 36/2024, based on the beneficiary’s own declaration of the final value of the works, disappears.
  • Nothing changes for other categories of construction: the decision concerns exclusively national transport infrastructure projects and metro projects managed by Metrorex; the general land registration regime, applicable to the rest of construction works, was not covered by the annulled ordinance and remains unchanged.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It restores an additional technical control mechanism (the completion certificate) for works with a direct impact on public safety, such as metro infrastructure used daily by hundreds of thousands of passengers.
  • It confirms, with general binding effect, that the legal regime of the land registry cannot be amended through simple ordinances, however justified an administrative simplification might seem in a specific case, thereby protecting the predictability of property rules.
  • It does not affect the validity of the construction permits and completion handover reports already issued for Metrorex’s works, which remain, in themselves, valid acts.

What remains a problem

  • It reintroduces, for Metrorex and for other national transport infrastructure projects, an additional administrative step that the Government had removed precisely to speed up the registration of works already completed, such as metro line extensions currently under construction.
  • Buildings for which registration was already completed under the rule now declared unconstitutional (without a completion certificate) could, in theory, become subject to challenges, even though the Constitutional Court’s decision does not, by itself, have retroactive effects on entries already finalized.
  • The decision was delivered on 11 februarie 2026 but published only on 6 iulie 2026, a delay of nearly five months during which the act declared unconstitutional formally remained in force and applicable.

Practical advice

  1. If you are working on a land registration file for a Metrorex or national transport infrastructure project that is in progress, check the list of required documents again: the building completion certificate must be included, even if the simplified procedure under Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 seemed, until now, applicable.
  2. If you already have a completed registration without a completion certificate based on the rule now declared unconstitutional, discuss the possible implications with a lawyer specializing in real estate law, even though the Constitutional Court’s decision does not automatically annul entries already made.
  3. Institutions managing national transport infrastructure (CNAIR, CFR, Metrorex) should update their internal procedures for preparing land registration files, going back to requesting the completion certificate from the authority that issued the construction permit.
  4. If the Government wants to reintroduce some form of simplification for registering strategic infrastructure works, the decision clearly shows the correct path: an organic law, adopted with the majority required by the Constitution, not an ordinance issued under an enabling law for ordinary matters.

Frequently asked questions

What did the Constitutional Court decide through Decision no. 114/2026?
It upheld the objection of unconstitutionality raised by the President of Romania and found that both the law approving Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 and the ordinance itself are, in their entirety, unconstitutional, because they were adopted as ordinary acts, even though they concerned a matter reserved to organic law.
What did Government Ordinance no. 36/2024 actually provide?
It allowed ownership of buildings within national transport infrastructure projects and metro projects managed by Metrorex to be registered in the land registry without a building completion certificate, based solely on the construction permit, the completion handover report and the cadastral documentation.
Is the building completion certificate still required for Metrorex’s works after this decision?
Yes. Because the ordinance that removed this requirement was declared unconstitutional in its entirety, the earlier rule, which requires the completion certificate for any construction, including Metrorex’s, remains the only applicable one.
Why couldn’t the Government regulate this exception through a simple ordinance?
Because the rules on the documents required for registering ownership are part of the general legal regime of property, a matter that art. 73 alin. (3) lit. m) of the Constitution reserves exclusively to organic law. The enabling law under which the ordinance was issued allowed the Government to legislate only in matters of ordinary law, not organic ones.
Did the Court find that the law improperly favored Metrorex?
No. The Court rejected the objection that the law had an individual character, noting that Metrorex is currently the sole company providing public metro transport services in Romania, and that the regulation addresses a public interest of national scope, not a strictly personal benefit.
Does the decision affect registrations already made under the simplified rule?
The Constitutional Court’s decision does not, by itself, annul entries already finalized in the land registry, but it creates a theoretical risk of them being challenged, since the normative act on the basis of which they were made is declared unconstitutional in its entirety, retroactively from the date of its adoption.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations concerning the registration of buildings, land registry procedures, or infrastructure projects, consulting a lawyer specializing in real estate or administrative law is recommended.

Original text of the legal act

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

Official Gazette of Romania no. 553 of 6 July 2026 16 pages PDF, 120 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.