Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

Abstract

The article provides an overview of property reforms in Romania with a focus on collective/community forests. We start by a macro analysis of the laws and their results in the distribution of community forests and a longue-durée description of the principal legal forms of collective forests, such as pădure comunală, obşte and composesorat. Furthermore, we concentrate on two case studies form Bukovina region to reveal the conflicts around the restitution process from an actor-oriented perspective. The conclusions point to the problems of the property laws and stress the fact that, in the context of indeterminate laws, restitution is a perpetual negotiation, influenced by mechanisms such as networking or power relations.