Historic Contamination In Romania Under Sale–Purchase Agreements

General Context

Historic contamination receives a lot of attention in Romania, particularly in the process of privatizing formerly state owned enterprises. Some of these enterprises are taken over as ongoing businesses, while others are taken over for assets such as land.

In this context, dealing with historic contamination in Romania means inter alia handling with utmost care the provisions on historic contamination under sale–purchase agreements such as:

• Romanian legislation does not provide a definition of "historic contamination."
• The liability for historic contamination follows the general rules which means that authorities can go first against the current owner of the enterprise/ asset and ask it to cover the decontamination costs, irrespective whether the current owner caused the pollution or not.