The regulation of the Civil Code on periodic ownership was preceded by the Law No 282/2002 and by the Government Emergency Ordinance No 14/2011, which have transposed the European Directives concerning consumer protection with regard to the utilisation or time-limited use of movable and immovable assets.
As a legal modality of the ownership right, the characters of the periodic ownership, although qualified by Article 646 (1) of the Civil Code, which refers to Article 687 of the Civil Code, as a form of forced co-ownership, is delimited by it. The present study outlines these elements of difference, the specificity of periodic ownership as real right, the rights and obligations of the co-owners in the exercise of the prerogatives arising from this quality.
Periodic ownership is a particular case of forced co-ownership, of a temporary nature, because several people successively and repetitively exercise the attribute of use, specific to the ownership right, over a movable or immovable asset, at fixed intervals of equal or unequal duration. This form of ownership implies an overlapping of the real right of each co-owner over the entire asset, but whose use is limited during one year to the duration indicated in the ownership title.
The critical aspects concerning the relations between the co-owners are cantoned to the provisions of Article 691 (2) of the Civil Code on the sanction of excluding the co-owner who, through his conduct, causes to another co-owner a serious disturbance in the exercise of the prerogatives of the periodic ownership right.