Nicușor Dan appealed to the CCR a law that allows the reorganization of agricultural research institutions even if their lands are not registered in the land register
President Nicușor Dan. Photo: Presidency.ro
The President of Romania, Nicușor Dan, sent the Constitutional Court on Monday a notice of unconstitutionality regarding a law that allows the reorganization of the “Gheorghe Ionescu-Sișești” Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences and the research-development system in the fields of agriculture, forestry and the food industry, even if their lands have not yet been registered in the land register.
In the notification sent to the Court, the president shows that the law “establishes a derogatory way” from the current procedure for updating the inventory of state assets, by removing the condition to create and identify the lands through land records, notes Agerpres.
According to the document, public authorities and property rights holders have the obligation to support the creation and updating of the cadastre by making available, free of charge, the data and information held. Local public administration authorities are obliged to provide informational, technical and other support, within the limits of competence, for the creation and updating of the cadastre and land book system.
Under these conditions, the complaint states, “the amendments brought by the law subject to constitutionality control implicitly derogate from the general framework established by Law no. 7/1996”.
The argument of unconstitutionality
Given the impact of the law under promulgation, the category of land concerned, a category of land with a special regime, including regarding the change of the holder of the right of administration, being “goods belonging to the public domain of the state, indispensable for the research-development and multiplication of biological material” – such a modification “does not represent a simple technical operation, but a change in the general protection regime of these agricultural lands of a value significant for the Romanian state, by reference to its obligations to protect public property and protect national interests in economic activity”, the document emphasizes.
“In the conditions of a derogation, such as the one previously mentioned, the law subject to constitutionality control must be adopted with the majority required for an organic law, according to article 76 paragraph (1) of the Constitution. Under these conditions, we appreciate that the law is unconstitutional in its entirety and for the wrong qualification given to it by the Parliament, its attestation formula being that of an ordinary law”, states the president.
On June 22, 2020, the Parliament of Romania submitted to the President of Romania, for promulgation, the normative act, which completes article 3 of Law no. 72/2011 and introduces a provision by which the research-development units can be reorganized “even without the existence of land records”, including in the case of changes to the centralized inventory of assets in the public domain of the state, until the completion of the registration works in the integrated system of cadastre and land registry of immovable assets in the public domain of the state under the administration of research-development units.
