The role of the notary public is very important in today’s society. Notary services must be performed in good faith, conscientiously and in compliance with all incidental legal norms. Moreover, the assessment made by the Constitutional Court that notaries public are public officials imposes a more rigorous selection on objective criteria, after some tests that may be organized at national level, also given the invalidation cases of locally organized competitions1. However, the notary public profession requires careful attention on behalf of the national guardianship authority in overseeing their careers, so that sanctions are to be imposed to those less prepared, or having reputation problems or incursions into committing criminal acts, and thus the Romanian notary system to be more reliable and increase its quality.

The Union and the Member States shall counter fraud and any other illegal activities affecting the financial interests of the Union through measures to be taken in accordance with Art 325 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which shall act as a deterrent and be such as to afford effective protection in the Member States, and in all the Union’s institutions, bodies, offices and agencies. For this purpose, Member States shall coordinate their actions and shall organize, together with the Commission, a tight and constant cooperation between competent authorities and shall take measures to counter fraud affecting their own financial interests. Romania, by adopting Law No 78/2000 on preventing, discovering and sanctioning corruption acts, the Law No 161/2003 on regarding certain measures for ensuring transparent exercise of public dignities, positions and business transparency, by prevention and sanctioning corruption, the Law No 61/2011 on the fight against fraud department, Government Decision No 215/2012 on the National Strategy for 2012-2015 and other normative acts, has created the legal framework necessary for the protection of the European Union’s financial interests.

The author aims to discern the will of the legislator, expressed in the text of the art. 1856 of the new Civil Code, titled marginally “workers’ direct action”. This approach has led to some recent doctrinal views by which the direct action is recognized to subcontractors as well, including those who have the status of legal entity. The author argues that the mentioned legal text has to be interpreted as meaning to the recognition of the direct action only to certain individuals, i.e. to workers and subcontractors-individuals (the latter under certain conditions: working alone or employing workers, working with them to achieve the work / to render the services). In the study, certain practical situations are brought to light, in which the question of determining the holders of direct action is raised, in case of the subcontractor agreements. The author considers as possible, “de lege ferenda”, regulating a direct action both in favour of the subcontractors-individuals using workers and in favour of the subcontractors-legal entities, but only for the price of work/rendering of services which excludes the price of the workers’ activity.

Reiterating his view [in that the commercial law is not an autonomous branch of law, but is part of the Romanian civil law, with effect from 1 October 2011, since the new Romanian Civil Code entered into force (Law no. 287/2009, as republished) Code essentially “of monistic nature”], the author criticizes the view (to the contrary) of certain theorists and practitioners, focusing on art. 2557 para. (2) of the Code, as well as the existence – undisputed – of the legal discipline called the international trade law.

This paper aims to address some issues encountered in the control/audit activity that the Romanian Court of Accounts performs on public authorities and institutions, which aims the disputes arising from breaching by them of the provisions of Law no. 544/2001 on free access to public information. The law provides, in art. 22, that the person who considers himself injured in his rights may appeal to the legal administrative department in whose territorial jurisdiction is residing or the authority or public institution is situated, and the court may require the defendant authority to provide the requested information and pay moral and/or property damages. The defendant in this litigation is the territorial administrative unit (village, town, city, county), and the obligation to pay any compensation falls to it.

This paper presents propter rem obligations in terms of their distinctive characteristics that prevent their inclusion in the classical categories of property rights and obligations. The incidental nature of these obligations is emphasized in relation to the real right on which the prevalence if the intuitu rei nature is grafted in relation to that of intuitu personae and, as a consequence of these, the propter rem obligation perpetuity. The purpose of the propter rem obligation, is to facilitate the operation of real estate that is subject to real right on which is grafted, helps us decipher the accesoriality relation concerning the real right, the transmission mechanism of these obligations, and the abandon as a sanction occurring in case of failure to comply with these obligations. Recourse to abandon is not only the sanction for the non-performance of these obligations, but also the individual having the propter rem obligation, who releases himself from the performance of the obligation in this way. The last part of the paper helps to explain how certain propter rem obligations set forth in the Civil Code or in certain special laws are created and transmitted, which raises questions on the propter rem nature of some of these.