A major amendment to the Law on Industrial Parks ("LIP") is planned, which will be in the interest of the business sector. At this stage, the project has been published for public discussion in the Public Consultation Portal of the Council of Ministers.

First of all, the owners and operators of industrial parks will be able to receive financial support for the construction of elements of the internal technical infrastructure - transport infrastructure, water supply and sewage network, electricity distribution network, etc. The conditions and procedure for receiving the aid will be further regulated in a new secondary legislative act.

One of the purposes of the bill is to eliminate the possibility an industrial park to be directly owned by the state. According to the regulations currently in force, this happens through the establishment of the so-called "state industrial park".

A change is also foreseen regarding the legally permissible area of industrial parks. When the industrial park is specialized for only one type of production activities or for similar production economic activities (according to the relevant official codes), its area/territory cannot exceed 300 decares, but it cannot be less than 150 decares. In this way, the aim is to stimulate the clustering of enterprises with one type of production activity.

The regulations regarding the registration of industrial parks and the circumstances subject to registration for them are also specified. The obliged entities will also have to submit the following documents for the registration procedure: the concept of the park, the regulations for the overall organization, the detailed development plan ("DDP") of the industrial park, etc.  This will ensure full transparency regarding the activity and status of the specific park.

The project also envisages additional legal grounds for the ex officio de-registration of the industrial park. This would occur, for instance, if within two years of the registration of the industrial park, a DDP is not presented. Such a hypothesis is possible if the owner or operator of the industrial park has taken advantage of the opportunity (also provided for in the planned amendments) to submit an order for admission and a task for designing a DDP or a draft DDP instead of a final DDP. The industrial park will also have to be deregistered if, during an inspection, a discrepancy is found between the activities carried out on its territory and those specified in the DDP.

The outlined proposals for amending and supplementing LIP aim to improve the possibility for investments in industrial parks, as well as to achieve greater transparency regarding their regime and activity.