Corbeanca City Hall, Ilfov County, imposed almost 1,800 fines on residents for lack of mandatory home insurance, a first at the national level. Some of the locals claim, however, that they were sanctioned even though they have an active policy.
Image from Corbeanca. PHOTO: landforinvestors.org
What the locals are advertising
The municipality of Corbeanca, located a few kilometers from Bucharest, issued this month 1,793 fines for homeowners who did not have mandatory PAD insurance, being the first locality in the country to apply this sanction, although the law has allowed this for over 15 years.
Residents say, however, that the system was applied chaotically, and some were fined, although their houses were insured, only that the policy was concluded in the name of another co-owner. On the local Facebook network “Corbeanca social community”, dozens of complaints and messages of revolt appeared.
A resident told how he found himself fined because the insurance policy was made only in his wife’s name, not in his, who is a co-owner.
“I also submit a problem for debate. I have PAD insurance valid until February 2026. I received information about the fine from Corbeanca City Hall, because the insurance is in the name of the wife. I ask: what do we insure, the house or the individual? The answer of the city hall: “The husband should also be included on the insurance policy”. Will that be okay?”.
Another citizen reported that he was fined for a non-residential building, for which there is no insurance obligation.
“I received it today too!! It’s a building declared non-residential! Mr. Senior Inspector (???) doesn’t know the law under which he imposes fines? The law is clear: non-residential buildings (for example: commercial premises, offices, halls, warehouses, etc.) are not required by law to have a PAD policy, but can optionally be insured with other types of policies (for example, complex property insurance)”.
PAID: “An erroneous interpretation”
PAID Romania, which issues PAD policies and manages compensation in case of disasters, confirmed that it has received numerous complaints from residents of Corbeanca in this situation.
“They only bring discomfort to the insured, since the insurance obligation is already fulfilled, on the PAD contract it is enough to mention one of the co-owners in the insured column (filling in the rest of the co-owners being optional) since, in case of damage, it is mandatory by law to verify the right of ownership in order to establish the right to compensation. In the event of the existence of several co-owners, the due compensation will be thus divide between the co-owners according to the share of the property held”, said Cosmin Tudor, the deputy general director of PAID Romania, for HotNews.
“Fining co-owners who do not appear on the PAD contract in force is an erroneous interpretation”, the PAID official added, explaining that verification should be “at the home level and not at the owner level.”
“PAID sent the town hall an address in which it mentioned all this and, in addition, recommended that the check between the list of insured houses in the commune (to which the town hall has digitized access) and the list of houses registered for fees and taxes should be done at the level of the house and not at the level of the owner since the object of the insurance is the housing unit”,
the PAID representative also stated.
What the mayor of Corbeanca says
The mayor of Corbeanca commune, Ștefan Apăteanu (USR), claims that he started applying the fines after receiving an address from the Ilfov Prefecture, which obliged the mayors to implement the mandatory insurance law and that PAID Romania has a section for town halls, where, based on some access data, the mayors can authenticate.
“From there I can download a spreadsheet when I want to apply the measure so that I know who has paid this policy. Then by comparing with the fiscal ROLs that we have at the town hall, we know who have not paid this policy“, explained the mayor.
He admitted, however, that problems have arisen in the application of fines, but believes that it is the fault of the insurance company.
“Here is a vulnerability of the list we receive from PAID. Normally, it should not only contain the identification data of the owner or co-owner, but the land registry code of the property. We have taken the measure of doing another check in these cases to eliminate these situations that are the exception, not the rule, where they have indeed paid the insurance, but also received a fine notice”. mayor Ștefan Apăteanu justified himself, stating that in cases where it is proven that the fines were wrongly applied, they will be withdrawn and the money returned.
“At the time of issuing the insurance policy, the co-owners may not be included on it, if no mention is made of them, since the policy cannot be modified after issuance, there is only the way of issuing an addendum for them. Where we find that due to the problems already reported previously, fines were issued based on a material error, the hypothesis of withdrawing the fines thus issued was also taken into account”. according to a press release from the Corbeanca City Hall..
1,793 fines, in total value of almost 900,000 lei
According to the data subsequently transmitted by the Corbeanca City Hall, in this first stage 1,793 fines were issued, totaling 896,500 lei.
The city hall states that the sanctions were applied “per real estate”, based on the address, and admits that “certain situations have been identified that generate problems in the application of the law, especially for co-owners”.
The chaos of home insurance policies
The local administration claims that PAID admitted the lack of obligation to transfer all co-owners to the policy, but that the database sent to the municipalities “allows for multiple errors”, which led to the erroneous sanctioning of some people.
Among the problems reported by the mayor’s office are:
* incomplete or non-updated addresses, due to cadastral changes (dismemberment, pasting, postal code changes);
* lack of application rules regarding the identification of fined co-owners;
* cases where an owner has several buildings at the same address, but only one valid PAD policy.
“The PAD policy is drawn up on the basis of the data provided by the owner (in most cases not with official documents), or the address of the building is the one sent by the owner. If he does not communicate the exact address that also appears at the town hall (and in this hypothesis, it may appear erroneous if documents were issued that generated the change of address and which were not submitted by the owners: e.g. disassembly, bonding, changes of postal numbers, etc.), when these bases cross, it appears that the property has a different address in the town hall database and appears as uninsured.
If there are several co-owners on a property, there are no rules issued that state how to identify the co-owner who will be fined for not having the PAD policy.
If there are several co-owners of several buildings, who in turn are also exclusive owners with a 100% share of other buildings, the law does not mention how the fine is individualized for each individual building and which person is liable for committing the contravention.
If there are several buildings at the same address, the law requires the conclusion of the PAD policy for each individual building. If the owner communicated at the conclusion of the PAD policy only one address, without the individualization of each home, errors from the PAID can again be detected in the database, since the owner submits a policy on that address and we can actually have 3 or more buildings, or the PAD policy is concluded only one policy on a single address”. explained the mayor of Corbeanca.
All these discussions come in the context where, for 15 years, the law stipulates the obligation to insure homes against three natural risks: earthquakes, floods and landslides. The PAD policy costs 50 or 130 lei per year, depending on the type of construction, and offers compensation of up to 100,000 lei.
The fines for lack of insurance also vary between 100 and 500 lei, but so far no mayor in Romania has actually applied the sanctions, Corbeanca thus becoming the first locality to put the law into practice, but also the first to discover how confusing the insurance system can be.
