Romania

Whether a short visit needs a visa is decided by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, and Romania is unusual in this corpus in saying so by name twice over. Article 27(3) of Ordinance 194/2002 states that the list of nationalities needing a visa is the one in Annex I to the Regulation, and article 11(2) writes the allowance out in full: no more than 90 days in any 180-day period preceding each day of stay, counted across the whole Schengen area rather than across Romania. Czechia and Croatia do neither - their Acts point at the directly applicable instrument and stop. What Romania adds on top is money and paperwork. Entry requires proof of means of 50 euro a day for the whole stay and never less than 500 euro, a figure the Ordinance has carried in this form since Emergency Ordinance 32/2026 amended it on 27 April 2026. And the reporting duty falls on two people at once: under article 12(1) the foreigner who has entered lawfully and the person putting them up each have three days to tell the territorially competent police. A hotel does it for you, within 24 hours.

Romania has no residence category for living off an income from abroad in general. What it has is a digital nomad visa, added to Ordinance 194/2002 by Law 22/2022, and the definition is narrow: a foreigner employed by a company registered outside Romania who provides services through information and communications technology, or who owns such a company and works in it the same way. It sits inside the long-stay visa for other purposes, article 49(1)(f^1), and the money test is the hardest in this corpus: means from that activity of at least three times the average gross monthly wage in Romania, for each of the six months before the visa application and for the whole period written in the visa. The residence extension in article 69(1)(i) repeats it, adds that a company you own must have been registered for at least three years, and gives you six months at a time rather than a year, with a tax-office income certificate at every renewal. The reward is on the tax side: the Fiscal Code makes a digital nomad's employment income non-taxable in Romania and excludes them from the health contribution - but only while they stay under 183 days in any twelve months, which is the same line that makes everyone else a tax resident.

Article 24(1) of Ordinance 194/2002 lists the purposes for which a long-stay visa is granted - economic activities, professional activities, commercial activities, employment, secondment, studies, family reunification, religious activities, scientific research, and other purposes - and retirement is not among them. The sub-categories of other purposes are themselves a closed list, in article 49(1) for the visa and article 69(1) for the residence extension, and neither mentions a pension or a pensioner. The only door is article 69(1)(g), other activities not contrary to Romanian law, and it is not a retirement route in any sense: it asks for documents justifying the necessity of the stay, and under article 69(3) it carries a means test at the full average gross monthly wage, which is higher than the minimum wage the student and employee routes use. The word pension appears in the Ordinance five times and never as a basis for residence: three times as maintenance payments owed to a child, once as the pension rights of foreigners who have worked in Romania, and once in a list of documents that can evidence means of support.

Emergency Ordinance 32/2026 rebuilt Romanian labour migration on 27 April 2026, and it split third-country workers in two. The employment visa now comes in two kinds. D/AM1 is for a closed list of five categories - the highly qualified, people on activities requested by ministries, academic and artistic staff, professional sportspeople, and citizens of Moldova, Ukraine and Serbia on a full-time contract - and for those the employer files the single application itself, through a state platform called WorkinRomania.gov.ro. Everybody else needs D/AM2, and for D/AM2 the application is filed not by the employer and not by the worker but by a licensed placement agency, on a tripartite placement contract. Two further gates sit on top: the occupation has to be on a Shortage Occupations List approved by order of the labour minister, and the D/AM2 visa is issued only while the annual quota of newly admitted workers has not been exhausted. The transition is not over. Until 7 August 2026 the new Title I runs only so employers can register, agencies can be licensed and the platform can be tested; and a separate window, open until 31 December 2026, lets foreigners who overstayed an employment visa or single permit extend their residence without obtaining a new visa at all.

The investor route is the long-stay visa for commercial activities, D/AC, and it is open to shareholders or partners with management duties in a Romanian company. The entry conditions are a business plan, a single Romanian bank statement in the applicant's own name showing at least 100,000 euro for a limited-liability company or 150,000 euro for a joint-stock company, a promise to make that investment within twelve months of getting the residence permit, and a promise to create at least ten new jobs for a limited-liability company or fifteen for a joint-stock company in the same twelve months. The first extension of residence needs the approval of the Romanian investment agency, legal possession of premises for the registered office, and monthly means of 700 euro for a shareholder or 500 euro for a partner. From the second extension on, the promises are audited: the capital or technology actually brought in has to be 70,000 euro for a shareholder or 50,000 euro for a partner, the jobs have to exist and be full-time, and the business has to be running in line with the plan. There is a second, cheaper door in article 69(1)(d) for a company administrator who is not a shareholder, and it asks for 50,000 euro of capital or technology transfer from the company rather than from the person.

The long-stay visa for studies, D/SD, is granted to students, trainees and school pupils. For a university student the documents are a letter of acceptance issued by the Ministry of Education for a full-time programme at an accredited or provisionally authorised institution, proof that tuition has been paid for at least one year of study, means of support of at least the guaranteed national minimum gross base salary per month for the whole period in the visa, a criminal record certificate, medical insurance with minimum cover of 30,000 euro, parental consent for a minor, and proof of knowing the language the programme is taught in - waived for the preparatory year of Romanian. The residence permit then runs for the whole length of the course plus three months, which is longer than almost anything else in the Ordinance, and the means test at extension drops to the minimum wage for six months rather than for the whole period. The sting is at the end: article 70(2)(a) bars a student permit holder from long-term residence outright, and article 71(1)(a)(iii) counts only half of the time spent studying towards the five years.

There is no long-stay visa for ancestry in Romania: article 24(1) lists ten purposes and descent is not one of them. What Romanian origin does is skip the hard part. Article 71(2) of Ordinance 194/2002 says that foreigners of Romanian origin may be granted the right of long-term residence without meeting the conditions in article 71(1)(a) to (e) - which is to say without the five years of continuous prior residence, without proof of means at the minimum wage for twelve months, without proof of health insurance, without legal possession of accommodation and without knowing Romanian at a satisfactory level. The only conditions left are the two in letters (f) and (g): no danger to national security and no threat to public order. For stateless people of Romanian origin there is a second provision, article 69(1)(h), which grants temporary residence without any of the general conditions, exempts them from proving means of support and from consular fees, and renews in four-year blocks. Neither provision defines Romanian origin, and the Ordinance leaves that to be established elsewhere. For a descendant whose ancestor lost Romanian citizenship against their will, the stronger answer is usually not residence at all but article 11 of the citizenship law, which reaches three degrees of descent and asks for no residence whatever.

Romania runs two family routes side by side and they are not the same deal. Reunification with a foreign sponsor under article 46(1) is the ordinary Directive regime: the sponsor needs a permit valid for a year, accommodation considered normal for a comparable family, health insurance and means of support on top of their own at the level of the guaranteed minimum wage for each family member for three months. Marriage to a Romanian citizen is governed by article 46(16) for the visa and article 62(3) for the residence permit, and the difference is what is missing. Article 62(3)(a) asks a foreign spouse of a Romanian citizen for two things only: the marriage certificate in the form the law requires, and the absence of bigamy or polygamy. No income, no accommodation test, no insurance condition of its own. Article 62(5) extends such a permit for up to five years at a time rather than one, article 62(6) waives consular fees, article 71(1)(b) excuses family members of Romanian citizens from the twelve-month means test for long-term residence, and article 110(1)(a) issues their long-term permit for ten years rather than five. What it does ask is that the marriage be real: article 63 lets the Inspectorate refuse an extension where the marriage is one of convenience, and article 62(4)(b) refuses it where the two spouses no longer have an effective conjugal or family relationship in Romania.

A Union, EEA or Swiss citizen is not a foreigner in Romanian immigration law at all: article 2(a) of Ordinance 194/2002 defines a foreigner as a person who has neither Romanian citizenship nor that of another member state of the Union or the European Economic Area nor Swiss citizenship, which takes them out of that Ordinance entirely and puts them under Emergency Ordinance 102/2005. That Ordinance gives three months of residence on entry with no further condition, and six months - written into the statute, not left to an administrative practice - to a Union citizen who comes looking for work. Beyond three months the usual four grounds apply: worker status, sufficient means with health insurance, enrolment at an accredited institution, or being the family member of someone in one of those or of a Romanian citizen with domicile or residence in Romania. The resources benchmark is the softest in this corpus: not a minimum wage and not a subsistence minimum but the venitul minim garantat, the guaranteed minimum income, and even that only de regulă - as a rule. Registration is a duty with a three-month deadline, permanent residence comes after five years of continuous and lawful residence, and it is lost by two consecutive years of absence.

Law 21/1991 has three doors and the one that asks for least is the last of them. Ordinary naturalisation under article 8 needs eight years of lawful domicile in Romania, or five years from the marriage if you are married to and living with a Romanian citizen, plus loyalty, age, lawful means for a decent existence, good conduct, Romanian language and elementary notions of Romanian culture and civilisation, and knowledge of the Constitution and the national anthem. Those periods halve for an internationally recognised figure, a Union citizen, a recognised refugee, or someone who has invested more than 1,000,000 euro. Article 10 lets a former Romanian citizen and their descendants to the second degree reacquire citizenship on conditions (b) to (e) of article 8 - which drops the residence period and the language test but keeps the means test. And article 11 goes further than either: a person who lost Romanian citizenship for reasons not attributable to them, or from whom it was taken without their will, and their descendants to the third degree, may reacquire or be granted citizenship on conditions (b), (c) and (e) alone. That is loyalty, being eighteen, and good conduct. No residence, no means, no language, no renunciation of the foreign passport, and domicile may be kept abroad. Applications under the law carry no fees or charges.

Article 7 point 28 of the Fiscal Code makes an individual a Romanian tax resident on any one of four tests: domicile in Romania, the centre of vital interests in Romania, presence of more than 183 days in total in any 12 consecutive months ending in the calendar year concerned, or being a Romanian citizen working abroad for the Romanian state. The 183-day test is the one most people meet, and article 59(2^1) makes it retroactive: a non-resident who satisfies it is taxed on worldwide income from the first day of arrival in Romania, not from the day the threshold is crossed. The centre of vital interests test bites from the first day the person declares it. Leaving is harder than arriving. Article 59(5) and (7) keep a Romanian resident with domicile in Romania liable on worldwide income after a move: until the date of the change of residence where there is a double taxation treaty, and for the calendar year of the move plus the following three calendar years where there is not. In both cases a form has to be filed 30 days before departure. The one group the 183 days work for rather than against is digital nomads: the Fiscal Code exempts their foreign salary income and excuses them from the health contribution precisely while they stay under it.

Two things can be said and the third cannot. The first is a Union obligation: article 16(2) of Directive 2014/92/EU requires member states to ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union have the right to open and use a payment account with basic features with credit institutions in their territory, and says that right applies irrespective of the consumer's place of residence. Romania transposed it by Law 258/2017. The second is a Romanian assumption that cuts the other way: article 43(2)(b) of Ordinance 194/2002 requires an applicant for an investor visa to produce a single bank statement issued by a bank in Romania in their own name - before any visa, before any permit, from outside the country. Romanian immigration law takes it as given that a foreigner with no status can hold a Romanian account. The third thing is what the conditions actually are, and this record does not state them. Law 258/2017, which carries the basic-account right, and Law 129/2019, which carries the identification duties a bank must discharge, are published by legislatie.just.ro, and that site answers nothing: not Firecrawl, not a direct fetch, not a browser-shaped request. The consumer protection authority's copy of Law 258/2017 is behind a JavaScript challenge that returns the same error page to every tool.

Romanian health insurance is tied to immigration status rather than to contributions or to a waiting period. Article 222(1)(b) of Law 95/2006 says that foreign citizens and stateless persons who have applied for and obtained an extension of the right of temporary residence, or who have domicile in Romania, are insured under the law. Union, EEA and Swiss citizens are in letter (c) on a different test: they are insured if they do not hold cover in another member state that has effect in Romania and have obtained a right of residence in Romania for more than three months. The link runs both ways. Article 50(2)(g) of Ordinance 194/2002 makes proof of health insurance a general condition of every extension of temporary residence, with a concession at the first extension only, where private insurance covering all the risks normally covered for Romanian citizens will do; and article 222(5)(b) of Law 95/2006 ends insured status the moment the right of residence in Romania is lost. Separately, article 80^1(3)(f) of the Ordinance gives temporary residents who are employed, registered unemployed or researchers equal treatment with Romanian citizens in public health assistance, and that entitlement is not cut back for any of them. The carve-out in article 80^1(4) is next door and is about something else: it takes social assistance and protection, letter (e), away from seasonal workers and from posted workers, the latter added on 27 April 2026.

Driving in Romania is governed by Emergency Ordinance 195/2002 on traffic on public roads and by the Regulation approving its application, Government Decision 1,391/2006. Neither could be read. Both are published on legislatie.just.ro, the Ministry of Justice's legislative portal, and that site answered nothing to any route tried: a direct request completes the TLS handshake and then the connection closes without a reply, Firecrawl returns 500, and a browser-shaped fetch hangs up. The licensing authority's own site, drpciv.ro, is a single-page JavaScript application that serves 1,381 bytes of shell and no text. The Internet Archive does hold captures of the Portal Legislativ page for Government Decision 1,391/2006, and every one of them is the same shell: thirteen kilobytes of page furniture with the consolidation history and no article text. So this record names the instruments and states nothing about them. Whether a licence issued outside the European Union can be exchanged, on what terms, after what period of residence, and whether an international driving permit is accepted, are all unanswered here. The only thing in any instrument read for Romania that mentions a driving licence is article 49(2^1)(e) of the immigration Ordinance, which accepts one as proof of onward travel from a digital nomad who is driving.

Romania does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties on conditions set by a directly applicable Union regulation: six months' possession and, for durable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all. Schengen is about border checks and customs relief is about duties, and the two do not move together: a move from another member state is not an import at all, because Romania is inside the Union's customs territory.