Insurance companies paid out RON 130 million in compensation based on home insurance in the first 9 months of last year, according to official data published by the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF).

According to representatives of the National Union of Insurance and Reinsurance Companies of Romania (UNSAR), the figures also show that the financial support provided by the insurance industry increased by 9% compared to the value paid in the same period of 2023.

Over 95% of the value of these compensations (i.e. RON 124 million) were paid based on voluntary home insurance, up 25% compared to those in the first 9 months of 2023.

In Romania, voluntary insurance can be concluded for those homes that are already protected by a mandatory PAD policy. Facultative policies offer an extended level of protection, at the real value of the building and/or the assets owned, and can cover damage caused by natural disasters, but also other types of risks.

The annual inflation rate in the European Union rose to 2.7% in December, from a level of 2.5% in November, and Romania is, for the tenth month in a row, the country with the highest inflation in the community block, with an annual price increase of 5.5%, according to data published by the European Statistical Office.
Last month, the lowest annual inflation rates in the EU were recorded in Ireland (1%), Italy (1.4%), Finland, Sweden and Luxembourg (all 1.6%), while the highest were in Romania (5.5%), Hungary (4.8%) and Croatia (4.5%).

In Romania, according to data published on Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the annual inflation rate rose to 5.14% in December 2024, from 5.11% in November, as food prices rose by 5.09%, non-food prices by 4.38% and services by 7.10%.

The National Bank of Romania (BNR) has revised upwards, to 4.9%, from 4% previously, the inflation forecast for the end of 2024 and anticipates that it will reach 3.5% at the end of 2025.

The Government will approve several investments in road infrastructure, carried out through the Ministry of Transport, whose total value amounts to RON 2.8 billion, declared Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. According to him, the total amount allocated for investments will be up to RON 134 million higher than last year.

“We will continue investments through the Ministry of Transport with the Brăila-Galați expressway. Also, with the construction of a new road junction in the northeast of the Capital and, last but not least, the bypass to Galați, all investments totaling RON 2.8 billion,” declared Marcel Ciolacu, during the Government meeting.

The Government’s decision on setting the date of Romania’s presidential elections was published in the Official Gazette, and the first round of the presidential elections will take place on May 4.

“Sunday, May 4, is set as the date for the first round of the presidential elections in Romania in 2025. This decision enters into force on February 18, 2025,” sais a decision signed by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu.

The presidential elections are being restarted from scratch after the Constitutional Court cancelled the second round of the Cotroceni Palace election in December 2024.

The Minister of Development, Cseke Attila, announces that the future Urban Planning Code is in the adoption procedure, and would considerably simplify the process of obtaining building permits, and for some types of construction, such as single-family houses, terraces, garages, the entire procedure currently in force for obtaining the necessary building permits may no longer be necessary.

“We talked to the mayors about categories of construction, some of which would no longer require a building permit and could be built based on a notification to the city hall – terraces, garages, summer kitchens, even smaller houses in rural areas, based on a project drawn up by a specialist, that is, by a designer or an architect, we are not talking about as the citizen wants, but if you have a project of this kind, with the signature of the specialist and so on, you notify the city hall, the city hall looks at the zonal and detailed urban plan and sees that it fits, that is, houses can be built there and I want to build houses there, then they give it the go-ahead and no longer do the current procedure for an urban planning certificate and building permit, which takes months and involves an inevitable bureaucracy,” explained the Minister of Development.

The minister emphasized that simplified procedures will also be implemented in the case of urban plans of localities. “We propose some mechanisms through which the general urban plans of localities, which today take from 4, 5, to 7, 8 years to obtain all the approvals, will be simplified. We will eliminate this approval in which you go separately after each approval, you go to the next one and by the fifth one your first approval expires, because unfortunately this happens. There will be a single approval, at once, at all ministries, to reduce the approval time”, Cseke Attila also stated.