Hiring in Romania

Hiring in Romania in 2026 is cheaper than Western Europe on the employer side, but the employee-side wedge and a recent tax-rule reset make headline numbers misleading.

Source-verified country researchCurrency · RON

Hiring in Romania in 2026 is cheaper than Western Europe on the employer side, but the employee-side wedge and a recent tax-rule reset make headline numbers misleading.

The biggest surprise for foreign Finance teams is that Romania's IT-sector tax exemption no longer exists. Law 296/2023 capped impozit pe venit at RON 10,000 of gross monthly salary from 1 November 2023, and OUG 156/2024 abolished the exemption entirely from 1 January 2025. Once you add the employee-side wedge of CAS 25%, CASS 10%, and impozit 10% on the post-contribution base, roughly 45% comes out of gross before the employee sees a single net leu. The employer side itself is genuinely low at CAM 2.25%. That repricing is one reason many international companies keep their Romanian hires on an Employer of Record (EOR) for longer than they would in France or Germany. ANAF's posture on PFA reclassification has tightened in parallel, and Inspecția Muncii has doubled the fine for unregistered workers from January 2026. This guide explains what hiring in Romania actually costs in 2026, how Romanian payroll and employment rules work, and when it makes sense to use an EOR, run payroll through your own SRL, or hire PFA contractors instead.

Romania at a glance

Hiring an employee on a RON 18,000 monthly gross salary adds about RON 432 to RON 459 a month in mandatory employer costs, mainly through CAM and the occupational-risk surcharge. That is among the lowest employer-side burdens in the EU. Our Romania payroll and employment facts set out the CAM rate, the minimum wage and the collective-agreement basis for bonuses and severance, each with its official source and date.

The employee-side burden is the part that catches buyers out. CAS at 25%, CASS at 10%, and impozit pe venit at 10% on the post-contribution base together take roughly 45% out of gross before net pay lands.

For small teams an EOR is normally cheaper than setting up a Romanian SRL. Local entity setup tends to make financial sense at around 15 to 25 hires, earlier if your roles span more than one sectoral collective bargaining agreement.

From 1 January 2026 the Inspecția Muncii fine for an unregistered worker doubles from RON 20,000 to RON 40,000, and REGES-Online replaces the old REVISAL register. Pre-day-one registration is now load-bearing.

The 2026 Budget Law also cut the micro-enterprise revenue threshold from EUR 250,000 to EUR 100,000, which pulls more SRLs into the standard 16% corporate tax regime.

Romanian-registered EOR providers worth shortlisting

3 providers · links may include affiliate referrals

Deel

Operates via a directly-owned Romanian SRL with ONRC registration. Full CAS, CASS, and CAM handling with REGES-Online automation.

Remote

Flat monthly fee on a Romanian SRL. Strong on Codul muncii compliance and cercetare disciplinară documentation.

Multiplier

Competitive flat fee with EU-wide depth. Useful when Romania sits alongside Poland or Bulgaria on one console.

Why do international companies hire in Romania?

Romania is no longer a tax shelter wrapped around a talent pool. It now reads as a normal EU labour market with low employer-side contributions, high employee-side deductions, and four distinct city talent clusters.
  • Talent depth at a euro discount. Equivalent senior roles in backend, embedded, and product engineering price 35 to 50% below Berlin or Amsterdam. A London fintech hiring a Cluj senior engineer saves roughly 40% versus a Frankfurt equivalent on fully loaded cost.
  • Four commercial city clusters. Bucharest leads financial services, banking technology, and large-enterprise back-office work. Cluj-Napoca anchors product engineering and SaaS. Iași concentrates outsourced engineering for Western European banks. Timișoara mixes automotive software with Continental-anchored embedded systems work.
  • EU single-market access. Romanian employees can be deployed across the EU without work-permit friction. A Bucharest hire can spend two months a year in the Paris office without immigration paperwork.
  • English fluency in tech. Most Bucharest, Cluj, and Iași engineers run technical interviews, documentation, and code review in English without accent-coaching support.
  • A genuinely low employer-side cost wedge. CAM at 2.25% is among the lowest employer rates in Europe, against France at 42 to 47%, Germany around 21%, and Poland at 19 to 22%.
The trade-offs are the employee-side wedge covered in the next section, and the IT-exemption collapse that quietly inflates anything a recruiter prices off a pre-2023 spreadsheet. Both items are why Romania lands lower on gross-of-tax shortlists and higher on net-pay-sensitive ones.

What are the employer costs of hiring in Romania?

The main employer costs in Romania are CAM at 2.25% on the employer side, plus the employee-side wedge of CAS 25%, CASS 10%, and impozit pe venit 10% withheld from salary. On a RON 18,000 monthly gross salary, core employer costs add roughly RON 432 to RON 459 a month before any optional benefits or EOR fee. Once the net-to-gross uplift is factored in (because employees feel the 45% wedge and recruiters price against net pay), the true cost of attracting senior tech talent runs higher than the headline employer rate suggests. PFA contractor reclassification under the ANAF four-factor test is the other line that quietly inflates the budget after the fact. The table below shows the typical cost structure for a RON 18,000 monthly gross hire in Romania.
What are the employer costs of hiring in Romania?
Cost lineRateSideMonthly on RON 18,000 gross
CAM (labour insurance)2.25%EmployerRON 405
Occupational-risk surcharge0.15-0.85%EmployerRON 27-54 (IT or finance band)
CAS (pension)25%EmployeeRON 4,500
CASS (health)10%EmployeeRON 1,800
Impozit pe venit10% flatEmployeeRON 1,170
PFA contractor10% impozit + CAS/CASSContractorInvoiced separately
Combined on RON 18,000 gross~2.4-3.1% employer + ~45% employeeBoth sidesEmployer RON 432-459; net to employee around RON 10,530
Add an EOR fee of USD 449 to 650 a month per employee for the major global platforms, with regional specialists at USD 199 to 350. For a Bucharest mid-senior backend engineer on RON 18,000 a month gross, the all-in annual employer cost lands around EUR 44,000 to 44,800 before separation reserves or sectoral bonuses. A note on the 2026 minimum-wage relief. The national gross minimum holds at RON 4,050 a month through June 2026 and lifts to RON 4,325 from 1 July. For minimum-wage employees only, RON 300 a month in the first half of the year and RON 200 in the second half is waived from impozit, provided gross stays below RON 4,300 or RON 4,600 respectively. What lands cleanly in a CFO sign-off is rarely the headline CAM rate. The figure that holds up is the all-in net-pay arithmetic with CAS, CASS, and impozit pe venit explicitly modelled against the post-January-2025 fiscal regime. Anything still resting on a pre-2023 IT-exemption assumption is a placeholder, not a budget.

What changed in Romania for 2026?

Six changes that affect any 2026 hiring plan for Romania, in order of how much they shift the budget or the compliance picture.
What changed in Romania for 2026?
ChangeEffective dateWhat it doesAction for HR/Finance
IT-sector impozit exemption abolished (OUG 156/2024)1 Jan 2025, fully active in 2026 modelsFull 10% impozit applies to all IT-sector salary incomeRebuild Romanian cost models from a clean post-Jan-2025 base; legacy templates under-quote senior hires by RON 4,000 to 8,000 a year
REGES-Online transition and fine doubling1 Jan 2026Per-worker non-registration fine rises from RON 20,000 to RON 40,000Lock in a 24-hour pre-filing workflow with a backup approver before the first hire
Micro-enterprise threshold cut to EUR 100,0001 Jan 2026SRLs above EUR 100,000 revenue roll into the standard 16% CITRecheck the entity-versus-EOR break-even if revenue routes through the SRL
CASS multi-income threshold lift (Law 239/2025)1 Jan 2026Computation base rises from 60 to 72 gross minimum salariesHigh earners with secondary income reprice; brief the Comp team for affected hires
Minimum-wage tax relief (phased)1 Jan 2026RON 300 (H1) and RON 200 (H2) of impozit waived at the wage floorUpdate offer-letter calculators for any role priced at the national minimum
National minimum-wage uplift1 Jul 2026RON 4,050 lifts to RON 4,325 a month grossReprice entry-level roles and any CBA-floor positions; construction stays at RON 4,582
The legacy IT exemption sits behind most of the 2026 budget surprises in Romanian hiring plans. A finance lead pulls last year's model, applies a 5 to 10% indexation, and submits a forecast that still assumes the impozit holiday on senior tech salaries. Building the cost model on a clean post-January-2025 base is cheaper than retrofitting the budget after the offer letter lands.

What employment laws should you know before hiring in Romania?

Codul muncii (Law 53/2003 republished) is the first thing to learn, with amendments running through 2024 and 2025. It sets the rules on contracts, dismissal, working time, and the procedural chain that turns a routine performance issue into a reinstatement order if you skip a step. A provider quoting "the Romanian standard" without naming sectoral collective bargaining agreement (CBA) coverage is hiding 5 to 12% of the real cost. IT, banking, construction, automotive, and the public sector all carry sectoral wage floors above the national minimum.
What employment laws should you know before hiring in Romania?
StandardStatutory minimumCommon CBA or practice upliftPractical note
Working week40 hoursSome sectors 36 to 39 hours via CBACBA ceilings supersede statute when shorter
Annual leave20 working days plus around 15 public holidays21 to 25 days typical in IT and financeIncludes National Day (1 Dec), Orthodox Easter, Christmas 25 to 26 Dec
Probation cap90 days non-management, 120 days managementOften shorter by role gradeMust be in the contract at signature; cannot be added by addendum
Notice period (employer)20 working days45 working days for management in restructuringThe floor is statutory; longer notice is allowed, shorter is void
Notice period (employee)20 working days (Article 81)Contract may extendSame floor in both directions for non-management
Maternity leave126 days at 85% of average gross incomeCBA top-ups to 100% in some sectors63 days before plus 63 after; medically flexible split
Paternity leave10 working days, extendable to 15Mostly statutoryWithin the first 8 weeks of birth
Parental leaveUp to 2 years per parent (3 for a disabled child)85% of average net income, cappedEither parent may take; non-transferable months apply
Sick pay (split)Employer days 1 to 5; CNAS thereafterCBA top-ups to 100% in some sectors75 to 100% of base depending on condition class
Overtime cap48 hours a week averaged over 4 monthsCBA may set lowerMinimum 75% wage uplift or compensatory time off
Fixed-term contractsMaximum 36 months, maximum 3 successive contractsSpecific causal grounds requiredMisuse triggers retroactive conversion to indefinite
Telework (Law 81/2018 amended)Contractual designation onlyNo per-instance health and safety inspectionThe RON 400 a month allowance is fully taxable from January 2024
Termination protections under Codul muncii are real. Dismissal is only lawful for specified grounds (disciplinary, unsuitability, medical incapacity, or authorised business cause), and at-will termination does not exist. The procedural chain on dismissal is more onerous than the substantive grounds, and most lost cases in Romanian labour courts turn on missed cercetare disciplinară steps, not on whether the underlying cause was valid.

Should you use an EOR or set up an entity in Romania?

The numbers are more specific than the generic "10 to 15 employees" rule of thumb. The right answer depends on whether your hires sit in a single sector and how much CBA coverage applies. Entity overhead in Romania is low, which pulls the break-even earlier than in France or Italy.
Should you use an EOR or set up an entity in Romania?
FactorEOROwn Romanian SRL
Minimum capitalNone (provider's entity)RON 200 under Law 31/1990
Setup time5 to 10 business days4 to 6 weeks from ONRC to operational
First-year all-in costUSD 449 to 650 a month per hireEUR 8,000 to 12,000 (notary, ONRC, accountant, first audit)
Annual run-rate from year 2USD 449 to 650 a month per hire (flat)EUR 10,000 to 15,000 (accountant, audit, ITM, e-Factura)
Break-even headcountCheaper at 1 to 15 single-sector hiresCheaper from 15 to 25 upward, or multi-CBA
Wind-downContract notice plus any separation pay due6 to 9 month liquidation, EUR 4,000 to 8,000 legal and notary
CBA controlProvider sets default; limited overrideFull control of CBA election and benefit structure
Local payroll competence requiredLow (provider-side)High (Romanian corporate accountant or in-house specialist)
Micro-enterprise eligibilityNot applicable (provider's CIT regime)Below EUR 100,000 revenue from 1 Jan 2026 (OUG 156/2024)
Hiring-decision flexibilityConstrained by provider templatesFull control of offer, benefits, and CBA choice

Decision rule

Choose an EOR if:

  • Your Romanian headcount is 1 to 15 hires on a single sector or CBA
  • You do not yet have a Romanian corporate accountant or HR partner
  • The roles are short-term, pilot-phase, or split across multiple EU jurisdictions
  • You need to run payroll within two weeks

Set up your own Romanian SRL if:

  • Headcount is 15 to 25 or above, or spans two or more CBA-covered sectors
  • You want direct control of CBA choice, benefits, and the termination process
  • The Romanian operation includes client-facing, VAT-registered work
  • Your legal team has flagged the risk of a partner-network arrangement
Five major EORs operate through directly owned Romanian SRL entities with verifiable ONRC registration. That regulatory anchor separates a directly registered Romanian operator from a partner-network reseller. One procurement detail that catches buyers out is the SRL routing trick between an EOR's group parent and its Romanian operating entity. Some platforms route Romanian hires through a sister SRL that holds the ONRC registration, while billing and the master agreement flow through a different group entity altogether. Ask which CUI sits on the employment contract itself, then cross-check it against the ONRC public register before signature.

What are the biggest compliance risks when hiring in Romania?

Three risks, in order of how often they catch our readers out: REVISAL and REGES-Online day-before filing failures, PFA contractor reclassification under the ANAF four-factor dependent-activity test, and dismissal-procedure errors that hand a labour court the reinstatement remedy. The REGES-Online transition on 1 January 2026 doubles the fine schedule. Employment contracts must be registered before the day work begins, so a worker starting on Monday requires Sunday-end-of-day registration. Inspecția Muncii fines for non-registration sat at RON 20,000 per worker through December 2025 and rise to RON 40,000 from January 2026, with a 48-hour early-payment discount that halves the imposed amount. The fine is per worker, not per company. An audit that identifies five unregistered employees triggers RON 200,000 in penalties under the post-January-2026 schedule, before the early-payment discount and before any aggregate ceiling. ITM inspections concentrate on IT, BPO, and shared-services sectors with foreign parent entities. PFA reclassification is the second risk line. ANAF applies a four-factor dependent-activity test: subordination, integration into the client organisation, fixed working hours, and exclusivity of the relationship. Any combination of factors that resembles employment can be requalified as dependent activity, with retroactive employer contributions, late-payment penalties, and impozit re-assessment over the standard 5-year fiscal limitation period. The misclassification penalty stack, if it lands, runs as follows:
  • Retroactive employer CAM plus the equivalent of the CAS and CASS the PFA paid as a sole trader, reclaimed and replaced.
  • Late-payment penalties on the underlying contributions over the 5-year reach-back.
  • Impozit re-assessment for the reclassified period.
  • e-Factura non-compliance fines layered on top where invoice flow failed the OUG 131/2023 mandate (RON 5,000 to 10,000 for large taxpayers).
  • Reinstatement plus full back-wages if the relationship is treated as an unlawful sham employment.

Whichapp editorial view

If a vendor says they cover Romania "via a partner network", treat that as a warning sign during procurement, not a feature. A partner-network arrangement keeps the actual employment liability with a counterparty you have not contracted directly with. That is the exact structure ANAF and ITM tighten against on cross-border IT engagements.

Ask for the ONRC registration of the entity that will actually employ your hire. If it is anything other than a directly owned Romanian SRL you can verify on the ONRC register, spend the money with someone else.

In our view, that one question clears every legal review on this market and is the single most useful filter you can use when shortlisting providers for Romania.

The third risk line is the dismissal procedural chain. Disciplinary dismissal requires a formal cercetare disciplinară: written notification of the allegations, an employee hearing with optional union representation, and a written termination decision (decizie de concediere) that cites the specific Codul muncii article violated. Procedural error voids the dismissal and triggers reinstatement plus full back-wages from the dismissal date. Five agencies your Romanian payroll touches every month: ANAF (impozit and CASS reporting), CNPP (pension contributions), CNAS (health insurance), ITM and REGES (employee register), and AJOFM (employment agency for collective notifications). None of them coordinates with the others by default, and the reconciliation work lands on the EOR or the in-house payroll lead either way.

Which hiring model fits your Romania plans?

Here is how we think about the choice, matched to the questions People Ops leads bring to us.
Which hiring model fits your Romania plans?
If you...Best modelWhySee also
Are hiring 1 to 3 hires to test the Romanian marketEORNo wind-down liability; payroll live in days; no CBA learning curveRomania EOR providers and pricing
Have 4 to 15 hires on a single sector (e.g. all IT)EOR still cheaper, but model the SRL break-evenBreak-even sits at 15 to 25; run the named-CBA cost stack before lockingRomania EOR providers and pricing
Have 15 or more hires, or roles across 2 or more CBA sectorsOwn SRL plus global payrollYear-2 run-rate is lower; direct CBA choice; no provider template frictionRomania global payroll providers
Engage a genuinely independent PFA with multiple clientsContractor (PFA)Four-factor test passes if there is no exclusivity, scheduling, or tooling-mediated controlRomania contractor management guide
Run short-tenure regional sales or seasonal rolesEOR (even alongside an SRL)Avoids the cost of cercetare disciplinară and ONRC overhead on short engagementsRomania EOR providers and pricing
Are running a role-based PFA workforce on client toolsConvert to employment nowThe four-factor test will reclassify; the 5-year reach-back compounds the costRomania EOR providers and pricing
Have crossed 15 heads and want Romanian-language client operationsSRL plus local labour-law counselVAT registration, e-Factura, and CBA scaffolding all land cleaner inside an SRLRomania global payroll providers
The single most useful thing a People Ops lead can do on this market is rebuild the cost stack from a clean post-January-2025 base for the exact role on the hiring slate, rather than re-running last year's template with an indexation slapped on top. Sector CBA coverage drives the floor wage, leave ladder, and notice protections, and the IT impozit holiday no longer exists in any form. That single piece of work pulls 80% of the budget-review surprises out of the pipeline before they reach quarter-end. These five providers operate directly owned Romanian SRL entities with verifiable ONRC registration. Anything described as "Romanian coverage via a partner network" should be treated as an extra layer of counterparty risk, not as the same thing as the five below.
Recommended Romanian EOR providers
ProviderRomanian entityHubPricing bandBest forView provider
DeelDirectly owned Romanian SRL (ONRC registered)Bucharest~USD 599/moBroadest 150+ country coverage with a full Romanian entityView Deel →
RemoteDirectly owned Romanian SRL (ONRC registered)Bucharest~USD 599/mo (flat)Direct compliance chain; owned entity, not a partner networkView Remote →
MultiplierDirectly owned Romanian SRL (ONRC registered)Bucharest~USD 400 to 499/moBest value; useful when Romania sits alongside Poland or HungaryView Multiplier →
Papaya GlobalDirectly owned Romanian SRL (ONRC registered)Bucharest~USD 599 to 799/moSectoral CBA handling and enterprise reportingView Papaya →
Velocity GlobalDirectly owned Romanian SRL (ONRC registered)Bucharest~USD 650 to 799/moEnterprise-grade compliance documentation and audit trailView Velocity →

Before you send the Romanian offer letter

  • Confirm sectoral CBA coverage (IT, banking, construction, automotive, or public-sector floors).
  • Verify the all-in cost model is post-January-2025, with the IT impozit exemption stripped out.
  • Confirm the EOR runs REGES-Online registration the day before start, not on or after day one.
  • Get the ONRC registration of the actual employing SRL, not just the master services agreement counterparty.
  • Cross-check that registration on the ONRC public register.
  • Confirm the probation period (90 days non-management, 120 days management) and the 20 business-day notice ladder.

First 90 days after the Romanian hire starts

  • Confirm REGES-Online registration completed before day one (Sunday for a Monday start).
  • File the first Declaration 112 by the 25th of the month following the first payroll run.
  • Brief the hire on the net-pay arithmetic (CAS 25% plus CASS 10% plus impozit 10% on the post-contribution base).
  • Confirm the e-Factura workflow if any PFA contractors sit alongside the employment relationship.
  • Audit any contractor-style tooling against the four-factor dependent-activity test indicators.
  • Set up the cercetare disciplinară template with local labour counsel before any performance issue arises.

Frequently asked questions about hiring in Romania

What is the total employer cost in Romania on a typical hire?

The employer-side statutory cost is CAM at 2.25% of gross plus an occupational-risk surcharge of 0.15 to 0.85% depending on the NACE risk class. Total employer-side burden lands at roughly 2.4 to 3.1% of gross, among the lowest in the EU. The employee-side burden is high: CAS at 25%, CASS at 10%, and impozit pe venit at 10% on the post-contribution base, for a combined deduction of around 41.5 to 45%. For a Bucharest mid-senior engineer at RON 18,000 a month gross, the all-in annual employer cost lands around EUR 44,000 to 44,800 before EOR fees or sectoral bonuses.

What happened to the Romanian IT-sector tax exemption?

From the early 2000s until 31 October 2023, qualifying IT employees paid zero impozit pe venit on salary income earned at qualifying employers. Law 296/2023, published in the Official Gazette on 27 October 2023, capped the exemption at RON 10,000 of gross monthly salary from 1 November 2023, with income above the cap taxed at the standard 10%. OUG 156/2024 went further and abolished the exemption entirely from 1 January 2025, alongside parallel exemptions for construction and agri-food workers. Cost models built before October 2023 that still assume the impozit holiday materially understate the all-in cost of senior Romanian tech hires by RON 4,000 to 8,000 a year.

What changed in Romania for 2026 that affects employment costs?

Five items move the budget or the compliance perimeter. REGES-Online took over from REVISAL on 1 January 2026, doubling the per-worker non-registration fine from RON 20,000 to RON 40,000. The micro-enterprise threshold dropped from EUR 250,000 to EUR 100,000 from 1 January 2026 under OUG 156/2024, pulling more SRLs into the standard 16% CIT regime.

Law 239/2025 raised the CASS multi-income computation threshold from 60 to 72 gross minimum salaries. A phased minimum-wage tax relief waives RON 300 (H1) and RON 200 (H2) of impozit for minimum-wage employees only. The national minimum gross lifts to RON 4,325 a month from 1 July 2026.

What is REVISAL or REGES-Online and when is the registration deadline?

REVISAL (Registrul General de Evidență a Salariaților) was the central employee register operated by Inspecția Muncii under Decision 905/2017. From 1 January 2026 it transitions to REGES-Online with the same operating logic and a doubled fine schedule. Employment contracts must be registered in the system before the day work begins, so a Monday start requires Sunday-end-of-day registration.

ITM fines for non-registration sat at RON 20,000 per unregistered worker through December 2025 and rise to RON 40,000 from January 2026. A 48-hour early-payment discount halves the imposed amount. The fine is per worker, not per company.

Are PFA contractors safe in Romania, and what is the four-factor test?

The PFA (Persoană Fizică Autorizată) regime is Romania's authorised sole-trader contractor structure. PFAs invoice for services, pay their own 10% impozit, CAS, and CASS contributions, and operate under their own ANAF registration. ANAF applies a four-factor dependent-activity test: subordination, integration into the client organisation, fixed working hours, and exclusivity of relationship. Any combination of factors that resembles employment can be requalified as dependent activity, with retroactive employer CAM, late-payment penalties, and impozit re-assessment over the standard 5-year fiscal limitation period. For ongoing, full-time, role-based work supervised by client managers and using client tools, the PFA route is high-risk and an EOR is the safer default.

How does the e-Factura mandate affect Romanian employers?

From 1 January 2024, all B2B invoicing between Romanian-established businesses must flow through the ANAF e-Factura platform under OUG 131/2023. A grace period through 31 May 2024 allowed bedding-in. The mandate affects employer entities on the procurement side (supplier invoices, expense reimbursements via vendor invoices) and on any PFA contractor payment workflow. Non-compliance fines run RON 5,000 to 10,000 for large taxpayers, RON 2,500 to 5,000 for medium, and RON 1,000 to 2,500 for small. Any EOR or SRL operating in Romania needs an e-Factura-compatible invoice ingestion workflow on the procurement side, not just the sales side.

Which EOR providers operate a directly owned Romanian SRL?

Five major providers operate through verifiable Romanian SRL entities with ONRC registration: Deel, Remote, Multiplier, Papaya Global, and Velocity Global. Each hub is in Bucharest, with active ONRC entries and direct CAM, CAS, CASS, and impozit remittance to ANAF and the relevant agencies. Anything described as "Romanian coverage via partner network" should be treated as a counterparty-risk position, not the same thing as these five. Ask for the ONRC registration of the entity that will employ your hire, not just the group parent name on the master services agreement.

How do I verify an EOR's Romanian entity at ONRC?

Ask the EOR for the legal name of the employing SRL (not the group parent) and its CUI or fiscal identification code. Search the ONRC (Oficiul Național al Registrului Comerțului) public register at portal.onrc.ro for the SRL by name or CUI. The basic listing confirms the entity is active, identifies the legal representative, and lists registered NACE activity codes. Do this before signing the employment contract, not after, because the entity name on the contract is the counterparty Romanian courts will look at if the relationship is disputed. A provider routing your hire through a sister entity that holds a different CUI from the master services agreement counterparty is a procurement red flag.

Can I dismiss a Romanian employee for poor performance, and at what cost?

Dismissal under Codul muncii is only lawful for specified grounds: disciplinary (for-cause), unsuitability or performance, medical incapacity, or authorised business cause (collective redundancy or individual position elimination). At-will termination does not exist. Disciplinary dismissal requires a formal cercetare disciplinară: written notification of allegations, an employee hearing with optional union representation, and a written termination decision that cites the specific Codul muncii article.

Authorised-cause dismissal requires 20 business days' written notice. Procedural error voids the dismissal and exposes the employer to reinstatement plus full back-wages from dismissal to reinstatement. Budget at least 6 to 12 months of total compensation plus legal costs for a contested case, and run the process with Romanian labour-law counsel from week one.

When does my Romanian headcount trigger collective consultation obligations?

Collective consultation under Codul muncii triggers in collective redundancies of 10 or more employees within a 30-day window. It carries formal consultation rights for employee representatives or the union, notification to ITM, notification to the local AJOFM employment agency, and a 30-day pre-notice consultation period. Below the 10-employee threshold, individual termination under authorised-cause grounds follows the 20 business-day notice rule without the consultation overlay. Sectoral CBAs in IT, banking, construction, and automotive can lower the consultation threshold or extend the notice period; check the applicable CBA before any restructuring plan. Trying to retrofit consultation after a complaint is the expensive route.

Shortlist these Romanian-registered EOR providers

3 providers · links may include affiliate referrals

Deel

Operates via a directly-owned Romanian SRL with ONRC registration. Broadest 150+ country coverage with full Romanian entity.

Remote

Directly-owned Romanian SRL, flat monthly fee. Strong on Codul muncii compliance and cercetare disciplinară documentation.

Papaya Global

Directly-owned Romanian SRL with ONRC registration. Sectoral CBA handling and enterprise reporting.

Our verdict for People Ops leads

If your Romanian headcount is 1 to 15 and sits in a single sector, use an EOR and pick one of the five providers above with a verified Romanian SRL. If you have 15 or more hires, or roles spread across more than one CBA, setting up your own SRL usually pays back within 18 months on direct cost alone given the low Romanian entity overhead. If you are leaning on PFA contractors, run the four-factor dependent-activity test against the post-2024 ANAF posture before signing anything. The 5-year fiscal reach-back compounds the cost every quarter you let the relationship drift. The first practical step is to rebuild the role-specific cost stack from a clean post-January-2025 base, with the IT impozit holiday fully stripped out. That single piece of work clears every Treasury and Legal review on the way to the offer letter, and it removes roughly four-fifths of the late-stage budget surprises that show up at quarter-end.
Last reviewed: May 2026. Sources: Romanian Codul muncii (Law 53/2003 republished), Codul fiscal (Law 227/2015), Law 296/2023, OUG 156/2024, Law 239/2025 (KPMG Pachet 2), ANAF IT-sector guidance, Inspecția Muncii REVISAL and REGES-Online regulations (Decision 905/2017), Law 81/2018 on telework as amended by OUG 36/2021, the e-Factura mandate under OUG 131/2023, PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries Romania 2026, Accace 2026 Tax Guideline, and verified ONRC entity records for the major EOR providers.

Running payroll for Romanian employees? See our guide to payroll in Romania.

Running payroll for Romania employees? See our guide to payroll in Romania.