Valeriu Tabără: Foreigners will not have restriction-free access to Romanian farmland during my term

Agriculture Minister Valeriu Tabără said yesterday that as long as he was in office, foreigners would not be allowed to buy farming land in Romania without restrictions.
“Foreigners can buy farming land in Romania with some restrictions (i.e. only through a company, not as individuals). They will not be lifted as long as I am a minister. Romania’s agricultural security will not be affected,” says Valeriu Tabără, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The statement comes after the European Commission recently requested Bulgaria and Romania to shorten the period during which foreign nationals are not allowed to buy land in Romania directly, and after talks on a new tax on untilled farm land, possibly of 400 RON per hectare, could determine the massive sale of plots to subsistence farmers. Already, foreign companies, with Danish ones being the most aggressive, have bought hundreds of thousands of hectares of arable land and forest in Romania. The discussion is all the more important since there has been increasingly more talk of a prospective food crisis internationally, with grain becoming 40-50% more expensive in the past year.