President Klaus Iohannis expressed his worries on Wednesday that 30% of the Romanian agricultural land is owned by foreigners, arguing that the law should be amended in this area.
„It is also of utmost importance for Romania who owns the land. Now, for example, I learn from the Minister (Achim Irimescu – editor’s note.), that the owners of 30% of the agricultural land from Romania are other people than Romanians. For me, personally, this proportion is worrisome,” said Klaus Iohannis, quoted by Agerpres, at the debate „Romanian President in dialogue with farmers”, organized within the INDAGRA Fair.
He stressed that this matter requires a pragmatic approach.
„We need a pragmatic approach, but also European. We are in the EU, cannot close ourselves and get back to isolationism, but nobody stops us making laws to empower Romanians to decide what is happening in Romania. A minimum need is a pre-emption right for those who represent the state or the community; if neither the state nor the community had an interest in a particular parcel of land for sale, then we could certainly think about how we go forward. I do not think it can go on like this forever, as we shall wake up, look down to the land and wonder who owns it, as there would be no land of ours anymore. We can clearly solve this very sensitive issue with laws that protect us and are European at the same time,” concluded the President.
President’s statements came as he prepares the amend the legislation.
Preparations for amending the legislation
Achim Irimescu, Minister of Agriculture, announced on Tuesday that individuals can only purchase agricultural land in the future within 150 hectares and legal entities up to 1,500 hectares at the most. The limits have been agreed with the farmers in a discussion on a draft legislation regarding the sale of the agricultural land.
„I have discussed the draft law with farmers in this very afternoon and agreed on the limit of 150 hectares for individuals, which would be like a family farm that can also acquire this land for cereals production. For legal entities, we have established a similar measure to the one applied in Hungary. It is about 1,200 hectares and by exception we can go up to 1,500 hectares that can be acquired by entities with legal personality,” said Achim Irimescu, during the online session „Talking to Your Minister”, an initiative of the Ministry for Public Consultation and Civic Dialogue that sustains the dialogue between officials and citizens.
On the other hand, the Minister said that there have been introduced several requirements that will allow limiting the acquisition of agricultural land in Romania, but will not pose any problems at the European level.
„We have introduced several requirements that we hope to not pose any problems at the European level. The companies involved must have residence in Romania, and for that you would either have to be European citizen or have Romanian nationality. So, we also have several limitations from this point of view. For the citizens of third countries, there is the option for them to obtain the Romanian citizenship. For example, the largest local agri-food producer is of Arab nationality, but settled in Romania, and has a farm of 65,000 hectares,” said Irimescu.
The Minister also announced that there will be more conditions introduced in the law, according to which those who buy land should have been farmers for a period of at least 5 years and 75% of the firm’s income to come from agriculture. „All these requirements will set a new sale regime for the agricultural land in Romania,” added Irimescu.
Statistics of the agricultural ownership
According to an AGRO Intelligence research – the Food Security Information System (SISA), Romanians own or lease only a little over 30% of the arable land surface of about 8.3 million hectares.
According to the notarial reports, there are over one million hectares of arable land owned by foreigners (23.4% by Italians, 15.5% by Germans, 10% by Arabs, 8.2% by Hungarians, 6.2% by Spanish people, 6.1% by Austrians, 4.5% by Danish people and other shares by Dutch, Greek and Turkish people) as well as multinationals like Rabobank, Generali, ASI Europe, etc.
Romania has liberalized the land market on 1 January 2014, under the requirements from the Treaty of Accession to the European Union, which allows individuals from the EU to buy agricultural land in the country, a step that changed the regime existing until the end of 2013, when only legal entities had this legal right.
Currently, the most active three regions of the country, depending on the number of sale offer files for unincorporated areas of agricultural land are in Timis, Vaslui and Arad. Currently, the price of a hectare of agricultural land in Romania starts from 2,000 euros and can go up to 18,000 euros, while in the EU countries it can exceed 30,000 euros.
Romania has 13.298 million hectares of agricultural land, of which nearly 9 million hectares is arable land.
