Eight Years to Naturalise, Five if You Marry a Romanian - and None At All if Your Family Lost Its Citizenship Against Its Will
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Haiti 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 Haiti to Romania · Becoming a citizen
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.
At a glance
- Ordinary naturalisation
- 8 years of domicile in Romania
Article 8(1)(a) of Law 21/1991, or birth on Romanian territory with domicile there at the date of the application.
- Married to a Romanian citizen
- 5 years from the date of the marriage
Article 8(1)(a) of Law 21/1991, which also requires cohabitation with the Romanian spouse.
- Halved periods
- For an internationally recognised figure, a Union citizen, a refugee, or an investor above 1,000,000 euro
Article 8(2) of Law 21/1991, which reduces the periods in paragraph (1)(a) by up to half.
- Time abroad
- A year with more than 6 months outside Romania does not count
Article 8(3) of Law 21/1991, in establishing the period under paragraph (1)(a).
- Reacquisition by a former citizen
- Second degree of descent, on conditions (b) to (e)
Article 10(1) of Law 21/1991, which keeps the means test in condition (d) and drops the residence period and the language test.
- Restoration after involuntary loss
- Third degree of descent, on conditions (b), (c) and (e)
Article 11(1) of Law 21/1991. Condition (d), lawful means for a decent existence, is not among them, so there is no means test.
- Residence required under article 11
- None - domicile may be kept abroad
Article 11(1) of Law 21/1991 says in terms that citizenship may be reacquired or granted with the establishment of domicile in the country or with its retention abroad.
- Giving up your other citizenship
- Not required under article 11
Article 11(1) of Law 21/1991 provides for reacquisition cu posibilitatea păstrării cetăţeniei străine, with the possibility of keeping the foreign citizenship.
- Fees
- None are charged on the application
Article 12(2) of Law 21/1991, added by article II of Law 1/2017. The cost of the citizenship card is separate and is charged under article 22^1.
Requirements
- For article 11: that an ancestor within three degrees lost Romanian citizenship for reasons not attributable to them or had it taken without their will
- Loyalty to the Romanian state, evidenced by conduct, actions and attitude
- Being at least 18 years old
- Good conduct and no conviction, at home or abroad, for an offence making you unworthy of Romanian citizenship
- For ordinary naturalisation only: eight years of domicile in Romania, or five from marriage to a Romanian citizen, plus language, culture, Constitution and anthem
Country-level policy
Romania publishes its law in Monitorul Oficial al României, Partea I, and that is the only text with legal force. Everything a reader can actually open is a consolidation, and Romanian consolidations are unusually honest about what they are. The consolidated text of Emergency Ordinance 194/2002 that the immigration authority itself publishes prints, above the first article, that the content of this act belongs exclusively to S.C. Centrul Teritorial de Calcul Electronic S.A. Piatra-Neamţ and is not a document of an official character, being intended for the information of users. It then prints something more useful still: a window. The copy read for these records states that it is valid from 27 April 2026 until 30 April 2026 - a four-day window that closed more than five months before it was read, because an amendment took effect on 1 May 2026 and this file was never replaced. The consolidation of Emergency Ordinance 102/2005 on the same site carries a window that closed on 14 March 2024. The tax administration says the same thing in its own words about the Fiscal Code: the text is updated by electronic means and is not a republication, and it names the last amending law rather than a date to which anything was swept. A Romanian text that looks current is making two separate claims, and the smaller print tells you which one has expired.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Haiti
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
«Articolul 8 (1) Cetățenia română se poate acorda, la cerere, persoanei fără cetățenie sau cetățeanului străin, dacă îndeplinește următoarele condiții: a) s-a născut și domiciliază, la data cererii, pe teritoriul României sau, deși nu s-a născut pe acest teritoriu, domiciliază în condițiile legii pe teritoriul statului român de cel puțin 8 ani sau, în cazul în care este căsătorit și conviețuiește cu un cetățean român, de cel puțin 5 ani de la data căsătoriei;»The residence condition and the marriage alternative. Conditions (b) to (g) follow in the same paragraph: loyalty, age, means, good conduct, language and culture, Constitution and anthem.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«f) cunoaște limba română și posedă noțiuni elementare de cultură și civilizație românească, în măsură suficientă pentru a se integra în viața socială; ... g) cunoaște prevederile Constituției României și imnul național.»Our translation - not official
f) knows the Romanian language and possesses elementary notions of Romanian culture and civilisation, to an extent sufficient to integrate into social life; g) knows the provisions of the Constitution of Romania and the national anthem.
The two tests article 11 does not apply.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(2) Termenele prevăzute la alin. (1) lit. a) pot fi reduse până la jumătate în următoarele situații: a) solicitantul este o personalitate recunoscută pe plan internațional; ... b) solicitantul este cetățeanul unui stat membru al Uniunii Europene; ... c) solicitantul a dobândit statut de refugiat potrivit prevederilor legale în vigoare; ... d) solicitantul a investit în România sume care depășesc 1.000.000 de euro.»Four ways to halve the period, the last of them an investment above 1,000,000 euro.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(3) Dacă cetățeanul străin sau persoana fără cetățenie care a solicitat să i se acorde cetățenia română se află în afara teritoriului statului român o perioadă mai mare de 6 luni în cursul unui an, anul respectiv nu se ia în calcul la stabilirea perioadei prevăzute la alin. (1) lit. a) .»A year in which the applicant was outside Romania for more than six months is not counted at all.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(1) Cetățenia română se poate acorda și persoanelor care au pierdut această cetățenie, precum și descendenților acestora până la gradul II inclusiv și care cer redobândirea ei, cu păstrarea cetățeniei străine și stabilirea domiciliului în țară sau cu menținerea acestuia în străinătate, dacă îndeplinesc în mod corespunzător condițiile prevăzute la art. 8 alin. (1) lit. b)-e) .»Reacquisition for a former citizen and descendants to the second degree, on conditions (b) to (e) - which includes the means test in (d).
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(1) Persoanele care au fost cetățeni români, dar au pierdut cetățenia română din motive neimputabile lor sau cărora această cetățenie le-a fost ridicată fără voia lor, precum și descendenții acestora până la gradul III, la cerere, pot redobândi sau li se poate acorda cetățenia română, cu posibilitatea păstrării cetățeniei străine și stabilirea domiciliului în țară sau cu menținerea acestuia în străinătate, dacă îndeplinesc condițiile prevăzute la art. 8 alin. (1) lit. b) , c) și e) .»Our translation - not official
Persons who were Romanian citizens but lost Romanian citizenship for reasons not attributable to them, or from whom that citizenship was taken without their will, as well as their descendants up to the third degree, may on application reacquire or be granted Romanian citizenship, with the possibility of keeping the foreign citizenship and with the establishment of domicile in the country or with its retention abroad, if they meet the conditions laid down in article 8(1)(b), (c) and (e).
Three degrees rather than two, and three conditions rather than four. The difference from article 10 is the means test, which is condition (d) and is absent here.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«Articolul 12 (1) Aprobarea cererilor de acordare ori de redobândire a cetățeniei române se face prin ordin al președintelui Autorității Naționale pentru Cetățenie, pe baza propunerilor Comisiei pentru cetățenie. (2) Pentru cererile prevăzute la alin. (1) nu se percep taxe și tarife.»Our translation - not official
(1) Approval of applications for the grant or reacquisition of Romanian citizenship is made by order of the president of the National Citizenship Authority, on the basis of the proposals of the Citizenship Commission. (2) No taxes or charges are levied on the applications provided for in paragraph (1).
The decision is an administrative order of the National Citizenship Authority, not a court judgment, and the application itself is free.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
Article 10 and article 11 look alike and are not. Article 10 is the general reacquisition provision: two degrees of descent, and conditions (b) to (e), which include lawful means for a decent existence. Article 11 is for involuntary loss: three degrees, and conditions (b), (c) and (e) only. A reader descending from someone who gave up Romanian citizenship voluntarily is on article 10 and will be asked for means; a reader descending from someone stripped of it is on article 11 and will not.
Neither article defines what makes a loss not attributable to the person or taken without their will, and this record does not establish how the Citizenship Commission reads it. That is the question on which an article 11 application turns and it is not answered in the statute.
The reading behind this record is the Portal Legislativ page for Law 21/1991 as the Internet Archive captured it on 11 July 2026, because the publisher's own site answers nothing to any tool available here. The consolidation history on that page runs to 15 March 2025 and no later, which is the date carried on every citation.
Law 14/2025 is the amendment that produced the 15 March 2025 consolidation, and the citizenship card in articles 20 and 22^1 comes from it. The amending law itself was not read; what is quoted here is the consolidated text it produced.
- consolidatesLegea cetăţeniei române nr. 21/1991, republicată, formă consolidată
Portal Legislativ, Ministerul Justiţiei · consolidated to 2025-03-15
About this source
The Ministry of Justice's legislative portal at legislatie.just.ro, and the publisher of record for consolidated Romanian law. Every act has a document id and is addressed as /Public/DetaliiDocument/<id>; the page carries the republication history, the full consolidation history as a list of dates, the amendment annotations inline in the article text, and a Fişă act panel listing what the act changed and what changed it. Romanian statutes are republished rather than re-enacted, so the page states which republication the text is - Law 21/1991 is Republication 2, from Monitorul Oficial no. 576 of 13 August 2010 - and the consolidation list runs forward from there.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **It could not be reached at all.** From this infrastructure a direct request completes the TLS handshake and the server then closes the connection with no reply, over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 alike, with browser headers and without, at several TLS versions; Firecrawl answers 500; a browser-based fetch hangs up. Every reading attributed to this publisher here was taken from an Internet Archive capture of its page, and the citation url is the archive address rather than the publisher's. That is not a substitute: the archive's captures are inconsistent in a way the publisher's own pages presumably are not. The captures of Law 21/1991 and Law 95/2006 carry the whole text; every capture of Government Decision 1,391/2006 is a thirteen-kilobyte shell with the consolidation history and no article text at all, which is why Romania's driving licence topic is unanswered. The consolidations are also not official in their own right: the legal force is in the Monitorul Oficial issue, and the consolidation engine behind this portal is the same CTCE company whose disclaimer appears on the files the immigration authority publishes. A reading from an archive capture carries two dates that must not be confused - the capture date, which is when we read it, and the consolidation date at the head of the history list, which is what the text is current to.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source