“Camil Negrea” National Land Registry Conference – Cluj-Napoca, October 30–31, 2026

The Private Law Department of the Faculty of Law announces the “Camil Negrea” National Land Registry Conference, to be held in Cluj-Napoca on October 30–31, 2026. The event is organized by the Cluj Chamber of Public Notaries in partnership with the Faculty of Law at Babeș-Bolyai University, the Center for Natural Law and Normative Analysis at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest, and the Romanian Notarial Institute; the conference theme is “The Impact of Land Registry Principles on Private Law Relations (Obligations, Family Law Relations, Successions, Insolvency).”

The conference coordinators are Prof. Dan Andrei Popescu, PhD, and Prof. Mircea Dan Bob-Bocșan, PhD.

Details regarding the organization of the conference are provided below.

Opening of the conference proceedings: October 30, 2026, Angelescu Amphitheater, Faculty of Law, 10 General Traian Moșoiu St., 8:50 AM – Brief musical interlude

– Associate Professor Șerban Diaconescu, Dean, Faculty of Law

– Dr. Laura Badiu, President of the National Union of Public Notaries of Romania

– Professor Dan Andrei Popescu – President, Chamber of Public Notaries of Cluj

– Professor Mircea Dan Bob-Bocșan, Director of the Private Law Department, Faculty of Law

Launch of the Cluj Chamber of Public Notaries’ journal – Pandectele notariale române

Section I – 9:10 AM

Moderator: Associate Professor Codrin Macovei

1. Professor Bogdan Ciucă, President of the Academy of Legal Sciences of Romania – The Land Registry: Legislative perspectives
2. Associate Professor Șerban Diaconescu, UBB Faculty of Law – Limits of the legality review regarding legal relationships arising from notarial acts. Proportionality in verifying the legality of property titles regarding the administrative issuance procedure
3. Senior Lecturer Jozsef Kocsis, UBB Faculty of Law – Succession implications of alienations regulated by Art. 1091, para. (4) of the Civil Code
4. Associate Professor Alina Oprea, UBB Faculty of Law – The protection mandate and the representation of the vulnerable adult
5. Senior Lecturer Sergiu Golub, UBB Faculty of Law – Facing the “curved mirror” of the: A critical analysis of the authentic form requirement for corporate legal acts (General Meeting of Shareholders resolutions)

Section II – 10:30 AM

Moderator: Associate Professor Șerban Diaconescu

1. Mihai Taus, Chief Registrar at OCPI Brașov, Vice-President of the Association of Property Registrars of Romania – Artificial Intelligence: benefits and challenges in the field of real estate publicity
2. Professor Mircea Dan Bob-Bocșan, UBB Faculty of Law – Is it possible to register the title to a property belonging to an estate when other heirs—erroneously included in a subsequently issued title of ownership—had expressly renounced their rights?
3. Professor Ionuț Popa, UBB Faculty of Law – Contract rescission and land registry rectification
4. Professor Dan Andrei Popescu, UBB Faculty of Law – Registration of European Certificates of Succession
5. Associate Professor Codrin Macovei, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași – Trust me, I’m a developer. What civil law textbooks say versus what is actually being built on the land

Section III – 12:30 PM  Moderator Professor Mircea Dan Bob-Bocșan

1. Vasile Varga, Vice-President of UNNPR – Issues regarding notarial practice concerning land registers
2. Mircea Popa, Director General of ANCPI – Considerations regarding the recording of possession
3. Dr. Pomeisl András József, Senior Legal Counsel – From hand-shaking to notarial deeds – The impact of principles of land registry on legal transactions in Hungary
4. Mircea Afrăsinei, President of the College of Surveyors of Romania & Professor Tudor Sălăgean, Dean, Faculty of Forestry and Cadastre, USAMV Cluj-Napoca, College of Surveyors of Romania – Recording possession through systematic cadastral works

October 31, 2026 – Aula Magna UBB, 1 M. Kogălniceanu St. (Main Building), 9:00 AM

Section IV – Moderator Professor Dan Andrei Popescu

1. Professor Marian Nicolae, Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest – The recording and transfer of possession
2. Professor Emeritus Valeriu Stoica – Recording possession in the land register: legislative ambiguities, theoretical uncertainties, and practical consequences
3. Associate Professor Liviu Zidaru, Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest; Judge at the High Court of Cassation and Justice – The evidentiary relevance of land register entries
4. Judge Dr. Ioan Ilieş Neamț – Issues and remedies regarding “lightning usucapion” (expedited adverse possession)
5. Senior Lecturer Adina Buciuman, UBB Faculty of Law – Recording possession in the land register. Benefits, precautions, and adverse effects
6. Civil Law Notary Dr. Alin Moise, INR Trainer – Aspects of notarial practice regarding land registry recording operations

Professor Camil Negrea

Camil Negrea was born on February 25, 1882, in Copăcel, Făgăraș (Austro-Hungarian Empire), and passed away on September 3, 1956, in Cluj (Romania). He graduated from high school in Blaj in 1898 and attended the Faculty of Law in Cluj, where he obtained his doctorate in 1904. He practiced law at the Făgăraș Bar between 1904 and 1919, after which he was invited to become a professor of Civil Law at the University of Cluj, a position he held from 1919 to 1948. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Law for three terms (1920–1921, 1926–1927, 1940–1942) and as Rector of the University of Cluj for a brief period (1924–1925). Professor Camil Negrea’s multilingualism and extensive knowledge of comparative law led to his selection as a specialist—delegated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—to the Commission for the Re-evaluation of Assets Ceded to Romania following the Treaty of Trianon (1922–1923) and to the Reparations Commission in Paris (1925). He also served as a temporary advisor to the Legislative Council on the drafting of the Civil Code (1936–1938) and legislation unifying the land registry system, as well as an advisor to Minister Nicolae Titulescu during the famous “Hungarian Optants” case (1922–1927).

Camil Negrea was part of a group of Transylvanian jurists whose professional profile was significantly shaped by the mixed educational background of the era and the sweeping political changes resulting from the redrawing of Romanian borders after World War I. His body of work is defined by the spatio-temporal conflict between Austrian, Hungarian, and Romanian legal systems—a conflict that characterized Transylvanian law following the 1918 Union. The enduring value of his writings lies in their comparative structure and applied presentation style, all underpinned by an integrative perspective: “The Romanian people are neither intolerant nor chauvinistic in the negative sense of the word. Generally, they do not allow themselves to be blinded or guided by considerations contrary to reason, nor were they driven by such sentiments in the work that awaited them after the Union. They did not simply discard the legal framework found here in Transylvania in 1918.” (C. Negrea, *Evoluția legislației în Transilvania dela 1918 până astăzi* [The Evolution of Legislation in Transylvania from 1918 to the Present], Sibiu, “Cartea Românească din Cluj” Printing House, *Problema Transilvaniei* [The Transylvania Issue] Series, Fasc. 2, 1943, p. 5).

His works were written predominantly in Romanian. However, one finds, for instance, a work on inheritance law—*Inheritance Law: A Summary of Hungarian Law*—written in Hungarian and published in Cluj in 1922 (*Örökösödési Jogszabálya. A Magyar magánjog örökösödési jogrendszerének vázlata*, Cluj, 1922); this served as a necessary tool for resolving inter-regional conflicts of law regarding inheritance. There is also a presentation in German covering Romanian legislation and case law for the years 1927–1928 (*Gesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung in Rumänien in den Jahren 1927 und 1928*, published in *Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht* 3, 1929, No. 6, p. 966 et seq.). The issue of spatiotemporal conflicts arising in the wake of the Second World War is also addressed in French, in the 1945 work *Le problème du rétablissement de la législation roumaine en Transylvanie de Nord*. These are merely a few examples of his multilingual output.

The subject matter addressed by Camil Negrea is extensive, covering both private and public law. One example is the work *The New Penal Code and the Laws in Force in Transylvania* (*Cartea Românească*, Cluj, 1939; see especially pp. 6 et seq. regarding the classification of offenses, as well as pp. 20 et seq. concerning the new regime for civil damages in criminal proceedings and the relationship between this regime and the pre-existing Austrian regulations). Another example is found in the numerous passages of administrative law commentary arising from the extension of Romanian legislation into Transylvania (e.g., *op. cit.* – *The Evolution of Legislation in Transylvania from 1918 to the Present*, pp. 13–17). Nevertheless, the primary areas of interest in Professor Camil Negrea’s work center on three major themes: the spatial-temporal conflict of laws, the land registry, and, more broadly, comparative civil law.

Regarding the conflict of laws in time and space, the works of Professor Camil Negrea align with a European trend shaped by the same issues surrounding transitional legal situations—issues that arose from the redrawing of borders following the First and Second World Wars. A case in point is his study *Transitional Provisions and Inter-local Conflicts in the Extension Law of June 22, 1943* (“Cartea Românească din Cluj,” Sibiu, 1944, pp. 3 et seq.), in which Camil Negrea briefly compares historical methods for regulating spatio-temporal conflicts. He contrasts the “generic method”—characteristic of Article 5 of the Austrian Civil Code and Article 2 of the French and Romanian Civil Codes, which entailed merely legislating the principle (specifically, non-retroactivity) while leaving specific situations to be resolved through case law—with the “detailed method,” which involved regulating in minute detail how conflicts in space and time were to be resolved for specific legal situations enumerated by the legislator. In essence, this concerns the very technique of transitional rules, designed to obviate the need for judicial resolution—which might lack uniformity—of concrete normative conflicts. Camil Negrea considers the second method to offer genuine benefits and points out that the source of inspiration for the Law of June 22, 1943, regarding the extension of Romanian legislation (p. 5), was the Law of June 1, 1924, extending French legislation to Alsace and Lorraine. His analysis of the Romanian legislation is critical yet mindful of the exigencies of the time, and it includes a thematic presentation of the subjects addressed—as well as those that *should* have been addressed—by the transitional provisions (status of persons, civil capacity, the legal regime governing assets and property, possession, real rights, obligations and contracts, family relations, succession, and acquisitive and extinctive prescription). One’s attention is drawn to the highly topical discussion regarding the conflict of laws in time and space concerning contracts (pp. 20 et seq., no. 12 et seq.), where the author’s conclusions are carefully guided by the principle of non-retroactivity—even regarding “long-term contracts extending beyond September 15, 1943,” to which local legislation remains applicable (p. 21) (see also C. Negrea, *Local Civil Laws Remaining in Force After the Extension of the Old Kingdom’s Civil Legislation—Law No. 389 of June 22, 1943*, 2nd ed., Cluj, 1946, lithographed course notes).

The issue of such conflicts is also addressed specifically in monographic works. For instance, the matter of simple, *vulgar*, and *fideicommissary* substitutions—arising from the entry into force of the Law of March 29, 1926, which “abolished the institution of *fideicommissary* substitutions and *fideicommissa* provided for in the laws in force in Transylvania and Bukovina”—was the subject of a 1930 study (C. Negrea, *The New Regime of Heir Substitutions (Romanian Law of March 29, 1926)*, Cluj, 1930). This law contained a provision of great interest regarding the principle of the non-retroactivity of civil law, stipulating that “current holders of *fideicommissary* assets become owners under the terms of common law” (Art. 1 of the Law).

A second line of research pursued by Camil Negrea focused on civil law from a comparative perspective. Without neglecting the analysis of spatial-temporal conflicts and local conflicts of laws, Camil Negrea authored a four-volume work titled *Civil Law of the Transylvanian and Hungarian Regions Compared to Romanian Civil Law* (published in various editions starting in 1920, some lithographed and others printed). The subject matter of these works covers virtually the entire field of civil law, offering the reader a comparative perspective that serves as evidence of Professor Camil Negrea’s legal multiculturalism. The author’s observations—often critical—are presented with a certain sense of distance and detachment. If we consider, for instance, the topic of the *causa* (cause) of contracts (C. Negrea, *Civil Law of the Transylvanian and Hungarian Regions Compared to Romanian Civil Law*, Vol. III, *Obligationary Relationships*, Part I, *Sources of Obligations*, G. Onișor Publishing House, Cluj, 1923, pp. 82 et seq., nos. 133 et seq.), we observe a careful analysis of the doctrine of *causa* in French law, followed by analyses of Austrian law and the Hungarian system. The conclusions are presented in an almost statistical manner, reflecting a skepticism supported by the numerous codifications that have abandoned the theory of *causa* (op. cit., p. 87, no. 140).

Finally, the last line of research—and the one that garnered him the greatest renown—concerns the extensive and complex “ultra-activity” of the land registry system in Transylvania and Bukovina. The absence of systematic works on this subject earned Professor Camil Negrea special recognition in the field of land registration, although his significant contributions regarding other research topics deserve equal acknowledgment. The seminal work dedicated to land registration is *Local Civil Laws Remaining in Force After the Extension of the Old Kingdom’s Civil Legislation* (Book I, Introduction, Part I: Land Registries; a course taught at the Faculty of Law in Cluj/Sibiu during the 1943–1944 academic year; published by “Cartea Românească,” Cluj-Sibiu, 1944). However, there are also several other studies on the land registry system whose enduring relevance is evidenced by the fact that the numerous legal solutions explained by Camil Negrea are still cited today. For instance, *On the Grounds for the Action to Rectify Land Registry Entries* (“Cartea Românească din Cluj,” Sibiu, 1941) and *The Grounds for the Action to Rectify Land Registry Entries* (published in *Pandectele Române* No. IV/1942, pp. 94 et seq.) constitute valuable studies on the subject of rectification actions; they offer one of the few analyses correlating land registry legislation with the civil law of the Old Kingdom (specifically, the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure). Also worth mentioning is *Admissibility and Effects of Land Registry Entries Regarding Inherited Real Estate* (*Pandectele Române* No. IV/1947, pp. 4 et seq.).

Camil Negrea remains a prominent figure of the interwar period—an intellectual open to other legal systems and a practical comparatist, focused on identifying concrete solutions for legal practitioners. Consequently, his works are distinguished by their simplicity of exposition and clarity. The silence imposed by the communist regime regarding interwar figures delayed his rediscovery until after the 1990s; thus, reclaiming the memory of both the man and his legal scholarship represents a necessary historical recovery for the consciousness of today’s jurists.

(summary prepared by Professor Ionuț Florin Popa)

Total number of available places: 300. Places are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. The participation fee is 600 RON for the conference proceedings and 700 RON for the gala dinner at Issa Resort (on October 31); payment should be made to the account of the Chamber of Civil Law Notaries of Cluj – Banca Transilvania, IBAN RO21 BTRL RONC RT00 9269 8202.

Contact details:

– tel. 0748.220.641 – Civil Law Notary Ramona Zereș, Chamber of Civil Law Notaries of Cluj; email: zeres.ramona-maria@enp.ro

– tel. 0745.373.860 – Civil Law Notary Ioana Petrean, Chamber of Civil Law Notaries of Cluj; email: ioana_petrean@yahoo.com; petrean.ioana@enp.ro

– tel. 0264 414814 – Secretariat of the Chamber of Civil Law Notaries of Cluj; email: cnpcluj@gmail.com