The Nordis law, voted by the Parliament, one year after the outbreak of the scandal that focused on PSD leaders

The Nordis law, submitted after the scandal related to the Nordis real estate company and the flights with this company of some important PSD politicians broke out in the public space, was adopted on Wednesday by the Chamber of Deputies.

The Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously for the Nordis law. There were 301 votes “for”, out of a total of 301 deputies present.

If it is not contested at the Constitutional Court, the law will go to President Nicușor Dan, who, in turn, will be able to either promulgate the law, refer it to the CCR, or send it to the Parliament for re-examination.

The law has nothing to do with the case in which the heads of Nordis are being investigated, but was made to protect future buyers. Specifically, the law provides:

• Registration of binding promises in the land register. With this new provision, it will no longer be possible for a developer to be able to promise an apartment to several people.
• The advance given by the buyer can be no more than 25% for the resistance part of the building and can be paid only after its completion, and an advance of no more than 20% is provided for the installation part.
• The advance is deposited in a bank account, and these amounts can only be used for the real estate project.

In the form adopted by the Senate, modified in the meantime in the Chamber of Deputies, the general advance was limited to 15%, and the following amounts that could be paid as an advance were a maximum of 25% upon completion of the structure and another 25% upon completion of the installations.

The emergency procedure that never was

The draft law was registered in the Senate on January 31, 2025, and the initiators, MPs from the PSD and the PNL, requested its adoption in an emergency procedure. But the law ended up being adopted by the Senate only on April 14. It then went to the Chamber of Deputies, where, after several months in which it remained in the drawer, it will receive the final vote today.

The project was brought back to public attention after PNL used it as a political response following the action by which PSD and AUR summoned Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan to Parliament. At the end of October, the PNL asked to put the Nordis law on the agenda as “a dedication” to Sorin Grindeanu, after the meeting of the Permanent Bureau of the Chamber of Deputies on October 31, in which PSD and AUR voted together.

However, then the PNL request did not end up being voted on. A week later, PNL did not resume the request. On Monday, November 10, PNL again requested, in the meeting of the leaders' committee, the introduction of the Nordis law project on the agenda, according to HotNews sources. No political party opposed, according to the same sources.

The opposition and the government agree: the Nordis law is needed

Also on Monday, the debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the draft law took place. During the discussions, the representatives of AUR and SOS Romania announced that they support the draft law, but attacked the parties in the governing coalition.

“It is a good law, it could come faster. We, the USR group, were the first to submit such a project to the Chamber and we would have hoped that it would have been adopted from the perspective of urgency. There is no problem, we vote with an open heart for this project initiated by PSD-PNL”, said Alexandru Dimitriu, USR deputy.

AUR deputy Dan Tanasă criticized the governing parties and reproached them that for 35 years “you sat and watched as Romanian families were destroyed by real estate sharks”.

“Why is there a need for such a law? The Nordis Law? Why is it necessary for us to vote on this law today in Parliament? It is necessary because for 35 years under your eyes, PSD, PNL, USR and UDMR, hundreds of thousands of Romanians have been stung by real estate sharks (…). We arrived here today because we started from a specific case, we know exactly which case it is among dozens of cases that have scandalized this country, mobsters who stole from people. We are here today and we have to vote for this law because there was the famous Nordis case, to which the name of Marcel Ciolacu, of Sorin Grindeanu, is linked. “Tanasă said.

PNL deputy Florin Roman claimed that “those who look at us must know that after the adoption of this law they will no longer be able to be damaged by spikes by real estate developers, regardless of which political zone they come from”.

“Because it's hard for me to believe that the political mafia, the real estate mafia, has only one color. I think there are interests from all sides. Everyone is talking about Nordis. In our county (n. ed.: Alba county) we had a case like this, where a former sub-prefect built a block in which he sold twice as many apartments as he built. Because the building permit did not mention the land deed extract. The question was raised “Why now?”. Look, there are people who have done it now. My question to you is why you didn't do it? Parliamentarianism means that when you find that something is not working, that's why we are elected, let's not criticize the others who work and who come to fix these injustices”, replied Roman to Dan.

One of the initiators of the law responds to the opposition: “We have colleagues who come to the microphone for likes”

And deputy Virginia Vedinaș, from SOS Romania, said that it was “obvious that we had to do something” regarding scams in the real estate sector.

“Better late than never. The bill we are referring to is beneficial and positive. What is not beneficial and positive in my opinion is to come to the rostrum of the Parliament and use the status of parliamentarians to attack one person or another. Especially people who are not present and who do not have the objective physical capacity to defend themselves. It seems to me that it lacks a minimum of ethics to use this rostrum to attack and to conduct a disguised electoral campaign, it does not seem right to me”, he said the deputy.

PSD representative, one of the initiators of the law, Ștefan Ovidiu Popa, stated in Monday's debates that the law does not refer to the Nordis scandal, but to the people who will no longer be harmed by different real estate developers.

“Unfortunately, we have colleagues who come to the microphone for likes, because they like it. They do absolutely nothing concrete and come to give us lessons on certain issues. Why don't you initiate a law in Parliament to change these things? You like to collect likes and that's it. As such, we, the PSD, initiated this project together with four colleagues from the PNL and we made these necessary changes for young people who want to buy a home and for other people who want to, so that they don't have problems which, unfortunately, happened. This project does not refer to what you said earlier (ed.: the case of Nordis). It has as its object the regulation of quality in construction, by no means the name you use generically for the likes”, was the reply of the deputy in the Parliament.

PSD leaders and the Nordis scandal

On October 7, 2024, the Recorder published an investigation entitled “The Nordis scheme: The money-making machine of the most powerful political-property clan”.

The journalists showed that, although millions of euros went into the company controlled by businessman Vladimir Ciorbă, the husband of Laura Vicol, the former head of the Legal Commission in the Chamber of Deputies, most of the promised investments were not realized. And in the only building erected, a hotel in Mamaia, there were “solid indications” that the apartments were sold several times, to several people.

On October 10, Laura Vicol resigned from the PSD, three days after she also resigned from the head of the Legal Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.

On November 18 last year, G4Media showed how the presidential candidate at the time Marcel Ciolacu and other PSD leaders, including Sorin Grindeanu (current president of the Social Democrats) and Alfred Simonis, flew on a private plane rented from the same Nordis group, together with the Vicol-Ciorbă spouses.