New Spatial Planning Framework: Major shifts in out-of-plan development, a halt to active building permits, and all the changes affecting the real estate market

🛑 1. Suspension of construction work, even at legally permitted sites

• What is changing: In areas where Special Urban Plans (SUPs) are being developed, the administration will now be able—via a specific administrative act—to "freeze" construction work, even for projects that already hold a valid building permit.

• The impact: This creates significant investment risk, which is expected to lead banks to impose stricter financing terms.

  
  

🛣️2. “Crackdown” on construction outside town plans & unauthorized structures

• Recognition of roads: The recognition of municipal/community roads located outside town plans will be carried out exclusively via Presidential Decree. If multiple routes exist between settlements, only the primary route will be recognized; consequently, plots of land adjacent to the alternative routes will lose their right to build.

• Minimum plot size requirements: For settlements that were delineated in the past, the minimum plot size is set between 2,000 and 4,000 square meters, subject to the mandatory requirement of having a frontage of at least 15 meters on a public road. It is clarified that there is no blanket right to build on 2,000-square-meter (2-stremma) plots.

• Category 5 unauthorized structures: The submission platform for the regularization of such structures remains firmly closed for private properties.

✍️ 3. Transfer of responsibility to private-sector engineers

• Abolition of prior review: In the case of special investment permits, the state is withdrawing from the prior review of supporting documentation in the interest of speed.

• Full risk: The engineers who prepare the studies become solely accountable for the accuracy and legality of the data, assuming the full burden of any civil and criminal consequences.

⚠️ The major market challenges

• Delays: The involvement of the Council of State (CoS) to issue Presidential Decrees in street recognition threatens to strand owners for years.

• Ambiguity: Having engineers assume full responsibility, in an environment with often unclear ownership status, dramatically increases their occupational risk.