Romanian Immigration Law Assumes You Already Have a Romanian Bank Account Before You Have a Visa - but the Law That Governs Opening One Could Not Be Read
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of El Salvador on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
154 exceptions recorded across 56 countries · none match El Salvador to Romania · Opening a bank account
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.
At a glance
- The Union right
- A payment account with basic features, for consumers legally resident in the Union
Article 16(2) of Directive 2014/92/EU, which states the right applies irrespective of the consumer's place of residence.
- The Romanian transposition
- Law 258/2017
Named from the Ordinance's own citations and from the consumer protection authority's listing. The text was not read.
- What Romanian immigration law assumes
- That a foreigner with no status can hold a Romanian bank account
Article 43(2)(b) of Ordinance 194/2002 requires an investor visa applicant to prove funds by a single account statement issued by a bank in Romania in their own name.
- What a bank may actually ask for
- Not stated here - Law 129/2019 was not read
The anti-money-laundering law carries the customer due diligence duties, and it is published only on legislatie.just.ro, which does not answer.
- Whether the basic account is free
- Not stated here - Law 258/2017 was not read
Article 18 of Directive 2014/92/EU leaves the fee to member states, requiring only that it be reasonable where one is charged.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of El Salvador
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Member States shall ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union, including consumers with no fixed address and asylum seekers, and consumers who are not granted a residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons, have the right to open and use a payment account with basic features with credit institutions located in their territory. Such a right shall apply irrespective of the consumer’s place of residence.»The obligation is on the member state and the right is for consumers legally resident in the Union. A directive binds Romania as to the result; what a reader relies on is the transposing law, which is Law 258/2017 and was not read.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«b) fac dovada, printr-un singur extras de cont eliberat de o bancă din România pe numele persoanei fizice cetăţean străin, solicitant al avizului, că dispun de fondurile necesare desfăşurării activităţii, în valoare de cel puţin 100.000 euro, pentru străinii asociaţi într-o societate cu răspundere limitată şi cel puţin 150.000 euro, pentru străinii acţionari într-o societate pe acţiuni;»Our translation - not official
they prove, by a single account statement issued by a bank in Romania in the name of the foreign natural person applying for the approval, that they have the funds necessary to carry on the activity, amounting to at least 100,000 euro for foreigners who are partners in a limited liability company and at least 150,000 euro for foreigners who are shareholders in a joint-stock company;
The only thing Romanian immigration law says about a bank account, and it says it by assuming the account exists.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Romanian immigration authority, a structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, created by Emergency Ordinance 55/2007 out of the Authority for Foreigners and the National Office for Refugees. It administers the regime of foreigners and decides visas, residence extensions and long-term residence. Its Legislaţie page is also, in practice, the most reliable public source of the immigration statutes themselves: it serves consolidated PDFs of Emergency Ordinance 194/2002 on the regime of foreigners, Emergency Ordinance 102/2005 on free movement of Union, EEA and Swiss citizens, Ordinance 25/2014 on employment and secondment, Emergency Ordinance 32/2026 on access to the labour market, Law 122/2006 on asylum and the implementing decisions, at stable wp-content/uploads addresses. These are the only consolidated Romanian immigration texts reachable from outside the country, because the Ministry of Justice's legislative portal answers nothing.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It is not the publisher of record and the files say so. Every consolidated PDF it serves is produced by S.C. Centrul Teritorial de Calcul Electronic S.A. Piatra-Neamţ and carries that company's disclaimer above the first article: the content belongs exclusively to CTCE and is not a document of an official character, being intended for the information of users. The official text is the Monitorul Oficial al României, Partea I, issue cited in each amendment annotation. Each file also prints a validity window with an end date, and the Inspectorate does not replace the file when the window closes: the Emergency Ordinance 194/2002 copy read on 10 October 2026 states its validity as running from 27 April 2026 until 30 April 2026, and the Emergency Ordinance 102/2005 copy states 8 to 14 March 2024. It cannot be cited for anything outside the regime of foreigners - not for tax, not for health insurance, not for road traffic, not for citizenship, which is the National Citizenship Authority's - and it cannot be cited for administrative practice: fee schedules, the Shortage Occupations List and the annual labour contingent are ministerial orders and Government decisions published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The failure here is ours, not Romania's. legislatie.just.ro accepted a TLS connection and then closed it without a reply to every request made from here, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, with browser headers and without; Firecrawl answered 500; a browser-based fetch hung up. Several other Romanian public sites - the citizenship authority, the foreign ministry, the consumer protection authority, the health insurance house - answer a JavaScript challenge or a geographic block instead. A law that cannot be read is not a law that does not exist.
Two other records rest on Portal Legislativ pages read through the Internet Archive, which did serve them. No archive capture of Law 258/2017 or Law 129/2019 was sought for this record, and that is the obvious next step.
- consolidatesDirective 2014/92/EU, article 16
EUR-Lex, Publications Office of the European Union
About this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
- administersOrdonanţa de urgenţă a Guvernului nr. 194/2002 privind regimul străinilor în România, formă consolidată
Inspectoratul General pentru Imigrări · consolidated to 2026-04-30
About this source
The Romanian immigration authority, a structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, created by Emergency Ordinance 55/2007 out of the Authority for Foreigners and the National Office for Refugees. It administers the regime of foreigners and decides visas, residence extensions and long-term residence. Its Legislaţie page is also, in practice, the most reliable public source of the immigration statutes themselves: it serves consolidated PDFs of Emergency Ordinance 194/2002 on the regime of foreigners, Emergency Ordinance 102/2005 on free movement of Union, EEA and Swiss citizens, Ordinance 25/2014 on employment and secondment, Emergency Ordinance 32/2026 on access to the labour market, Law 122/2006 on asylum and the implementing decisions, at stable wp-content/uploads addresses. These are the only consolidated Romanian immigration texts reachable from outside the country, because the Ministry of Justice's legislative portal answers nothing.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It is not the publisher of record and the files say so. Every consolidated PDF it serves is produced by S.C. Centrul Teritorial de Calcul Electronic S.A. Piatra-Neamţ and carries that company's disclaimer above the first article: the content belongs exclusively to CTCE and is not a document of an official character, being intended for the information of users. The official text is the Monitorul Oficial al României, Partea I, issue cited in each amendment annotation. Each file also prints a validity window with an end date, and the Inspectorate does not replace the file when the window closes: the Emergency Ordinance 194/2002 copy read on 10 October 2026 states its validity as running from 27 April 2026 until 30 April 2026, and the Emergency Ordinance 102/2005 copy states 8 to 14 March 2024. It cannot be cited for anything outside the regime of foreigners - not for tax, not for health insurance, not for road traffic, not for citizenship, which is the National Citizenship Authority's - and it cannot be cited for administrative practice: fee schedules, the Shortage Occupations List and the annual labour contingent are ministerial orders and Government decisions published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source