Romania’s free land registration program, through which the National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI) is supposed to systematically register all properties across the country’s 2,618 administrative-territorial units, reached an unflattering milestone in May 2026. According to data published by Agrointeligența on May 11, 2026, during the first month of intensive implementation the agency managed to complete works in only 4 out of the 2,618 UATs. At this pace, the program would take more than 54 years to finalize — a simple calculation that illustrates the enormous gap between the program’s declared ambitions and its actual execution capacity.

The importance of land registration for Romanian agriculture cannot be overstated. Unregistered land cannot be used as collateral for bank loans, cannot support access to European funds, generates disputes between heirs, and blocks sale-purchase or lease transactions. Romania has one of the lowest levels of cadastral registration in the European Union — estimates vary, but between one-third and one-half of agricultural land remains outside systematic registration. Large farms have solved the issue through private cadastral services at their own expense. Small landowners, including many who lease their land to farmers, often lack the resources or knowledge necessary to initiate the procedure individually.

The free cadastral registration program was announced with great enthusiasm and presented as the solution to one of Romanian agriculture’s oldest vulnerabilities. The reality on the ground shows that bureaucracy, the lack of specialized personnel, resistance from some owners to register their properties, and the absence of a clear prioritization strategy for productive agricultural areas are turning a legitimate objective into a communication exercise. ANCPI announced that it intends to accelerate the pace by contracting private surveying companies and digitizing the validation process — but without a realistic timeline and penalties for missing intermediate deadlines, the program risks consuming funds without delivering the intended impact.

For farmers leasing land from owners without registered properties, the situation creates concrete vulnerabilities: lease agreements for unregistered land are more difficult to defend legally, access to area-based APIA subsidies may be challenged, and any ownership dispute can block agricultural activity without any fault on the farmer’s side. The short-term solution remains private cadastral registration, financed either by the farmer or through negotiation with the owner. The long-term solution is a functional national program — not merely an announced one.

(Photo: AI GENERATED)