Romania Says What a Bank Must Establish About You, and the Basic Account Right Is Still Out of Reach
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Iceland on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
195 exceptions recorded across 74 countries · none match Iceland to Romania · Opening a bank account
Law 129/2019 governs what a credit institution must do before it takes a customer, and it applies at the moment an account is opened: standard customer due diligence is owed at the establishment of a business relationship, and to every new client without exception. The institution must identify the person and verify that identity against documents, data or information from reliable and independent sources, electronic identification included. What it must collect from a natural person is written narrowly - all the civil status data appearing in the identity documents the law provides for - with anything further left to sectoral regulation and to the institution's own assessment of risk. Anonymous accounts and accounts in fictitious names are forbidden outright. None of this turns on nationality or on holding a residence permit; it turns on being identifiable. What is still not stated here is the other half: the right to a payment account with basic features, which the Union requires member states to grant to consumers legally resident in the Union and which Romania transposed by Law 258/2017. That Law was not read.
At a glance
- When a bank must run customer due diligence
- At the establishment of a business relationship, and on every new client
Article 13(1)(a) sets the trigger, article 14 extends it to all new clients. Opening an account is the establishment of a business relationship.
- What the bank must do
- Identify the person and verify that identity against documents, data or information from reliable and independent sources
Article 11(1)(a). Electronic identification under Regulation 910/2014 is named as an accepted means, as is any other secure remote or electronic process recognised nationally.
- What a natural person must produce
- All the civil status data appearing in the identity documents the law provides for
Article 15(1)(a). The Act asks for nothing beyond that for a natural person; article 15(1)(c) sends anything further to sectoral regulation, which was not read.
- Whether an anonymous account is possible
- No - anonymous accounts, anonymous savings books and fictitious names are prohibited
Article 10(1), addressed to credit and financial institutions.
- Whether nationality or a permit is a condition in this Act
- Neither appears - the test is whether the person can be identified
Recorded as an absence from the chapter on customer due diligence, which was read. A condition of that kind could sit in Law 258/2017 or in sectoral regulation, neither of which was read.
- Whether a non-resident may open an account
- Not stated here
It is the question Law 258/2017 answers and that Law could not be reached.
- What the basic account costs
- Not stated here
Same reason.
- What Romanian immigration law assumes
- That a foreigner with no status can already hold a Romanian account
Article 43(2)(b) of Ordinance 194/2002 requires an investor visa applicant to produce a statement from a bank in Romania in their own name, before any visa and from outside the country.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Iceland
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
«Instituţiile de credit şi instituţiile financiare nu vor furniza produse persoanelor cu nume fictive, conturi anonime, carnete de economii anonime sau casete de valori anonime şi nici servicii de acceptare la plată a cardurilor preplătite anonime.»The consolidation's own amendment table runs to Law 86 of 22 May 2025, applicable from 26 May 2025.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Romania's financial intelligence unit, and the only route found from here to the text of the money laundering Act. Its 'Legislație' page carries the instruments it works from as PDFs on its own servers, each in consolidated form with a table of the amending Acts at the head: the copy of Law 129/2019 opens with sixteen rows naming every Act and Emergency Ordinance folded into it and the date each applied from. It publishes its own President's Orders beside them, and the European Directives and Regulations the regime implements.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It carries what this authority needs and nothing else, so it answers what a bank must verify about a customer and not what a customer may demand of a bank. The PDFs are attachments under hashed file names with no document numbers in the address, so a new consolidation appears as a new file rather than a new version of one, and the old address is not redirected. Nothing on the page states when a given PDF was uploaded; the only date inside is the amendment table. The authority is not the publisher of the Act - that is the Official Gazette - and legislatie.just.ro, which would normally carry the consolidation, answers this project nothing at all.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«identificarea clientului şi verificarea identităţii acestuia pe baza documentelor, datelor sau informaţiilor obţinute din surse sigure şi independente»About this source
Romania's financial intelligence unit, and the only route found from here to the text of the money laundering Act. Its 'Legislație' page carries the instruments it works from as PDFs on its own servers, each in consolidated form with a table of the amending Acts at the head: the copy of Law 129/2019 opens with sixteen rows naming every Act and Emergency Ordinance folded into it and the date each applied from. It publishes its own President's Orders beside them, and the European Directives and Regulations the regime implements.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It carries what this authority needs and nothing else, so it answers what a bank must verify about a customer and not what a customer may demand of a bank. The PDFs are attachments under hashed file names with no document numbers in the address, so a new consolidation appears as a new file rather than a new version of one, and the old address is not redirected. Nothing on the page states when a given PDF was uploaded; the only date inside is the amendment table. The authority is not the publisher of the Act - that is the Official Gazette - and legislatie.just.ro, which would normally carry the consolidation, answers this project nothing at all.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«Entităţile raportoare au obligaţia de a aplica măsurile standard de cunoaştere a clientelei în următoarele situaţii: a) la stabilirea unei relaţii de afaceri;»About this source
Romania's financial intelligence unit, and the only route found from here to the text of the money laundering Act. Its 'Legislație' page carries the instruments it works from as PDFs on its own servers, each in consolidated form with a table of the amending Acts at the head: the copy of Law 129/2019 opens with sixteen rows naming every Act and Emergency Ordinance folded into it and the date each applied from. It publishes its own President's Orders beside them, and the European Directives and Regulations the regime implements.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It carries what this authority needs and nothing else, so it answers what a bank must verify about a customer and not what a customer may demand of a bank. The PDFs are attachments under hashed file names with no document numbers in the address, so a new consolidation appears as a new file rather than a new version of one, and the old address is not redirected. Nothing on the page states when a given PDF was uploaded; the only date inside is the amendment table. The authority is not the publisher of the Act - that is the Official Gazette - and legislatie.just.ro, which would normally carry the consolidation, answers this project nothing at all.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«Entităţile raportoare aplică măsurile de cunoaştere a clientelei tuturor clienţilor noi.»About this source
Romania's financial intelligence unit, and the only route found from here to the text of the money laundering Act. Its 'Legislație' page carries the instruments it works from as PDFs on its own servers, each in consolidated form with a table of the amending Acts at the head: the copy of Law 129/2019 opens with sixteen rows naming every Act and Emergency Ordinance folded into it and the date each applied from. It publishes its own President's Orders beside them, and the European Directives and Regulations the regime implements.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It carries what this authority needs and nothing else, so it answers what a bank must verify about a customer and not what a customer may demand of a bank. The PDFs are attachments under hashed file names with no document numbers in the address, so a new consolidation appears as a new file rather than a new version of one, and the old address is not redirected. Nothing on the page states when a given PDF was uploaded; the only date inside is the amendment table. The authority is not the publisher of the Act - that is the Official Gazette - and legislatie.just.ro, which would normally carry the consolidation, answers this project nothing at all.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«Identificarea clienţilor şi a beneficiarilor reali cuprinde cel puţin: a) în cazul persoanelor fizice - toate datele de stare civilă prevăzute în documentele de identitate prevăzute de lege;»The floor, not the ceiling - the article says cel puţin. What sits above it is in sectoral regulation, which this record has not read.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Romania's financial intelligence unit, and the only route found from here to the text of the money laundering Act. Its 'Legislație' page carries the instruments it works from as PDFs on its own servers, each in consolidated form with a table of the amending Acts at the head: the copy of Law 129/2019 opens with sixteen rows naming every Act and Emergency Ordinance folded into it and the date each applied from. It publishes its own President's Orders beside them, and the European Directives and Regulations the regime implements.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It carries what this authority needs and nothing else, so it answers what a bank must verify about a customer and not what a customer may demand of a bank. The PDFs are attachments under hashed file names with no document numbers in the address, so a new consolidation appears as a new file rather than a new version of one, and the old address is not redirected. Nothing on the page states when a given PDF was uploaded; the only date inside is the amendment table. The authority is not the publisher of the Act - that is the Official Gazette - and legislatie.just.ro, which would normally carry the consolidation, answers this project nothing at all.
We re-read it every 90 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.
The Act read here binds the bank and not the customer. It says what the bank must establish; it does not grant anyone an account, and a bank that cannot complete identification has a reason to refuse that this record can now name.
The financial intelligence unit publishes its own consolidation of the Act as a PDF with the amendment table at the head. That is the only route found from here to the text, and it exists because the authority needs the Act, not because anyone decided to republish the law.
- 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
- administersLegea nr. 129/2019 pentru prevenirea şi combaterea spălării banilor şi finanţării terorismului, formă consolidată, Oficiul Naţional de Prevenire şi Combatere a Spălării Banilor
Oficiul Naţional de Prevenire şi Combatere a Spălării Banilor · consolidated to 2025-05-26
About this source
Romania's financial intelligence unit, and the only route found from here to the text of the money laundering Act. Its 'Legislație' page carries the instruments it works from as PDFs on its own servers, each in consolidated form with a table of the amending Acts at the head: the copy of Law 129/2019 opens with sixteen rows naming every Act and Emergency Ordinance folded into it and the date each applied from. It publishes its own President's Orders beside them, and the European Directives and Regulations the regime implements.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It carries what this authority needs and nothing else, so it answers what a bank must verify about a customer and not what a customer may demand of a bank. The PDFs are attachments under hashed file names with no document numbers in the address, so a new consolidation appears as a new file rather than a new version of one, and the old address is not redirected. Nothing on the page states when a given PDF was uploaded; the only date inside is the amendment table. The authority is not the publisher of the Act - that is the Official Gazette - and legislatie.just.ro, which would normally carry the consolidation, answers this project nothing at all.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source