In brief
- A machine costing 3,000 or 4,000 lei becomes a claimable expense again for social enterprises in five counties. A newer order, Order of the Minister of Investments and European Projects no. 1.426/2026, extends the same rule to recently established social enterprises. The de minimis aid scheme approved in December 2025 declared ineligible, without any exception, goods that fall in accounting terms into the category of inventory items. The present order brings back into the financing those costing more than 2,500 lei with a life of more than one year, provided they fit into one of the subgroups of the Catalogue of fixed assets.
- The money and the timetable stay exactly as they were. The scheme is worth 24,642,314 euro, of which 20,945,967 from the Just Transition Fund and 3,696,347 from the state budget, with a grant of between 50,000 and 300,000 euro per enterprise, an aid intensity of no more than 95% and an estimated maximum of 123 beneficiaries. It applies until 31 December 2028, and payments run until 31 December 2029. The order touches none of these figures.
- The programme changes its name, and the order enters into force on 15 September 2026. The „Programul Tranziție justă 2021-2027” (Just Transition Programme 2021-2027) becomes the „Programul Dezvoltare durabilă și Tranziție justă 2021-2027” (Sustainable Development and Just Transition Programme 2021-2027), following the European Commission decision by which the two financing lines were approved together. It is the third time in fourteen days that the ministry has made the same correction to a just transition scheme.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 783 of 15 September 2026
In force from: 15 September 2026, the date of publication
The Ministry of Investments and European Projects has restored to the claimable expenditure of the social enterprise scheme goods worth more than 2,500 lei that, since February 2026, are no longer fixed assets on paper but inventory items. It is the third correction of the same kind in a week and a half: on 1 September 2026 the ministry amended the microenterprise scheme in the same sense, on 9 September it did so for the 775.57 million euro scheme for SMEs in the six just transition counties, and now it has reached social enterprises.
The order has two articles and seven amending points, over a page and a half of issue no. 783. It was signed in Bucharest on 11 September 2026 by Minister Dragoș-Nicolae Pîslaru, on the basis of Opinion of the Competition Council no. RG 13.355 of 18 August 2026 and approval report no. G2026-116.664 of 7 September 2026. The act it amends, Order no. 5.980/2025, was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1186 and 1186 bis of 22 December 2025 and is cited without the words „cu modificările și completările ulterioare” (as subsequently amended and supplemented), a sign that this is the first intervention on it.
The cause of the correction has no apparent connection with European funds. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 8/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 147 of 25 February 2026, raised from 2,500 to 5,000 lei the value threshold above which an item is considered a depreciable fixed asset, under Article 28(2)(b) of the Tax Code. A device costing 3,800 lei stopped being a fixed asset overnight and became an inventory item, with nothing about it having changed. And Article 21(o) of the social enterprise scheme declared ineligible, without exception, „cheltuielile pentru procurarea de bunuri care, conform legii, intră în categoria obiectelor de inventar” (expenditure on the purchase of goods which, under the law, fall into the category of inventory items). The scheme had been published 65 days earlier, and repairing it took another 202 days.
The beneficiaries are the social enterprises and work integration social enterprises defined in Law no. 219/2015 on the social economy. A social enterprise is a private law legal person that observes the principles of the social economy and has obtained a social enterprise certificate; a work integration social enterprise is a certified social enterprise that additionally holds the social mark, the certification tied to employing people from vulnerable groups. They may be associations and foundations, cooperatives, mutual aid funds, agricultural companies or other legal persons, provided their founding documents observe cumulatively the definition and the principles of the social economy. The status must be maintained throughout the durability period of the project.
„Just transition” is the name of the European fund supporting regions hit economically by the move away from coal and polluting industries. In Romania the programme covers six counties: Dolj, Gorj, Hunedoara, Mureș, Prahova and Galați. The social enterprise scheme, however, applies in only five of them, priorities 1 Gorj, 3 Dolj, 4 Galați, 5 Prahova and 6 Mureș. Hunedoara, priority 2 of the same programme, has no allocation in this scheme, although it has one in the SME scheme.
What it changes in practice
The order enters into force on 15 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. Article II provides only for publication, with no later date, and Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 provides that ministerial normative acts enter into force on the date of publication unless they themselves provide otherwise. The three-day term concerns laws and ordinances, not ministerial orders. There is no transitional provision for projects already submitted or under assessment.
The first effect can be read in three articles of the scheme, amended at the same time. Article 16(a), which lists the fundable activities, now counts among investments in tangible assets not only equipment „de natura mijloacelor fixe” (in the nature of fixed assets), but also goods in the inventory items category worth more than 2,500 lei with a normal operating life of more than one year. Article 19, point 1), adds them to the category of expenditure on equipment and fittings. Article 21(o) keeps its prohibition but gains an exception for the same goods. In practice, the band that had quietly dropped out of the financing, between 2,500 lei and today’s tax threshold of 5,000 lei, comes back into the project.
The second effect is more discreet and concerns machinery. In its new form, Article 19, point 1), expressly includes transport equipment classified in class 2.3.6 „Utilaje și instalații de transportat și ridicat” (transport and lifting machinery and installations) of the Catalogue approved by Government Decision no. 2.139/2004, that is forklifts, cranes, conveyors and hoists. The text existed before, but it is now restated, while Article 16(a) continues to say, in the same sentence, „cu excepția mijloacelor de transport” (except means of transport). In the Catalogue, class 2.3.6 forms part of subgroup 2.3 „Mijloace de transport” (means of transport).
The third effect is about a name, but it shows up on every piece of paper. The title of the order, Article 1 and the title of the scheme no longer say „Programul Tranziție justă 2021-2027” but „Programul Dezvoltare durabilă și Tranziție justă 2021-2027”, and the preamble invokes Commission Implementing Decision C(2022) 8.703 final of 24 November 2022, by which the programme financed from the European Regional Development Fund, the Cohesion Fund and the Just Transition Fund was approved. For an applicant, it means that documents and correspondence will from now on carry a different programme name.
The fourth effect is the one that does not happen. The scheme stays at 24,642,314 euro, with a grant of at least 50,000 and at most 300,000 euro per single undertaking, an aid intensity of no more than 95% of eligible expenditure and a de minimis ceiling of 300,000 euro over three years, set by Regulation (EU) 2023/2831, which applies until 31 December 2030. The county allocations remain those set in December 2025: Prahova 6,968,358 euro, Galați 5,642,262, Mureș 5,593,583, Gorj 3,326,573 and Dolj 3,111,538. The breakdown by year remains 18,000,000 euro in 2026, 4,500,000 in 2027 and 2,142,314 in 2028. The order extends no deadline and adds not a single leu.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until 15 September 2026, the text in force was the one published in December 2025, unamended. The differences, point by point, are as follows.
In Article 16(a), the second indent used to say „achiziționarea de echipamente tehnologice, utilaje, instalații de lucru, mobilier, echipamente informatice, de natura mijloacelor fixe, cu excepția mijloacelor de transport” (the purchase of technological equipment, machinery, working installations, furniture and IT equipment in the nature of fixed assets, except means of transport). It now says the same thing but adds „respectiv bunurile din categoria obiectelor de inventar ce au o valoare mai mare de 2.500 lei și o durată normală de funcționare mai mare de un an” (that is goods in the inventory items category worth more than 2,500 lei and with a normal operating life of more than one year), plus the condition that the item must fit into one of the subgroups of the Catalogue approved by Government Decision no. 2.139/2004 and must not fall within the ineligible categories in Article 21.
In Article 19, point 1), the old wording covered „bunuri care intră în categoria mijloacelor fixe” (goods falling into the category of fixed assets). The new one covers „bunuri de natura mijloacelor fixe și/sau din categoria obiectelor de inventar” (goods in the nature of fixed assets and/or in the inventory items category) worth more than 2,500 lei and lasting more than one year. The same point also adds, compared with the December version, the condition that machinery and equipment requiring installation must not fall within the ineligible expenditure in Article 21.
In Article 21(o), the prohibition was written in a single line and without exceptions: „cheltuielile pentru procurarea de bunuri care, conform legii, intră în categoria obiectelor de inventar”. It now has a four-line exception, built on the same two thresholds, a value above 2,500 lei and a life of more than one year.
The last point replaces, throughout the order, the phrase „Program Tranziție justă” with „Program Dezvoltare durabilă și Tranziție justă”. The rest of the scheme, that is the articles and annexes the order does not touch, stays exactly as it was: the eligibility conditions, the list of excluded NACE classes, the cumulation rules, the reporting obligations and the durability period.
A comparison with the SME scheme, amended six days earlier, shows two drafting differences. There, the upper limit of the claimable band was written as a cross-reference to Article 28(2)(b) of the Tax Code, so it moves by itself whenever the Government updates the threshold with inflation. Here there is no upper limit, because the scheme accepts both fixed assets and inventory items worth more than 2,500 lei, which covers the whole band with no cross-reference at all. On the other hand, the SME order added to its scheme definitions of „obiecte de inventar” (inventory items) and „active corporale” (tangible assets), and this one does not.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The purchasing category lost in February comes back into the project without the beneficiary having to change anything else in the proposed budget, and the correction arrives more than two years before the scheme’s application period closes.
- The thresholds are written in figures and in years, not in elastic wording: more than 2,500 lei, a normal operating life of more than one year, and a fit with one of the subgroups of the Catalogue.
- The solution chosen here has no upper limit and depends on no cross-reference to the Tax Code, so it will not have to be rewritten every time the tax threshold is updated.
- The budget, the 95% intensity, the grant of 50,000 to 300,000 euro and the deadlines are untouched, so nobody has to redo an application because of this order.
- Renaming the programme aligns the scheme with the European Commission decision invoked in the preamble, so the domestic act and the European document refer to the same thing.
- The ministry has applied the same correction to all the just transition schemes, not only to some, so an entrepreneur does not have to check each programme separately to find out what they can buy.
What remains a problem
- The correction came 202 days after the tax change pushed the category out of the financing. Throughout that interval, an identical expense was or was not claimable depending on the date it was incurred.
- There is no transitional provision. A project rejected or cut back between February and September 2026 for this reason has, on the wording of the order, no route to redress.
- The newly inserted exception in Article 21(o) is made conditional on a cross-reference to Article 21 itself, that is to the article it sits in, which makes it impossible to apply on its own terms.
- The lower threshold stays at 2,500 lei, written in figures, even though it no longer matches any limit in the Tax Code after February 2026. An item worth 2,400 lei is still not claimable.
- „Obiectele de inventar” (inventory items) now appear three times in the scheme, but are defined nowhere in the definitions article, unlike the SME scheme, where the definition was added.
- Hunedoara stays outside the social enterprise scheme, even though it is one of the six just transition counties, and the order changes nothing in that respect.
- Point 7 orders the replacement „în tot cuprinsul ordinului” (throughout the order), while points 3 to 6 say expressly „în anexă” (in the annex), so the text does not tell you whether the renaming reaches the body of the scheme as well.
Practical advice
- If you are preparing a project budget, put back into your purchasing list the equipment costing between 2,500 and 5,000 lei that you took out of it after February 2026. From 15 September 2026 it is eligible expenditure again, subject to the two conditions on operating life and on fitting into the Catalogue.
- Check the normal operating life, not just the price. The condition is that the item lasts more than one year and appears in one of the subgroups of the Catalogue approved by Government Decision no. 2.139/2004. Ask the supplier to state the Catalogue class in the quotation.
- For an item below 2,500 lei, do not press the point. The lower limit is unchanged and is written in figures, so it does not move with the tax threshold.
- If you need a forklift, a conveyor or a crane, ask the managing authority in writing to confirm that it falls within class 2.3.6 of the Catalogue. Article 19 accepts them expressly, while Article 16 contains wording that could exclude them.
- Check your status first, not your project idea. You need a social enterprise certificate or, for work integration enterprises, the social mark as well, both under Law no. 219/2015, and the status must be maintained throughout the durability period.
- Read the condition in Article 6(d) of the scheme before anything else: the enterprise must have had an average of zero employees in the tax year preceding the opening of the call, not counting the administrator or the shareholder.
- Work out your de minimis ceiling over the last three years, not the last one. The 300,000 euro is calculated on a rolling basis, per single undertaking, and covers any other de minimis aid received from any source, national or European.
- If your enterprise is based in Hunedoara, look for a different call. The social enterprise scheme does not cover priority 2, even though the county is part of the just transition programme.
- Watch for documents that will from now on carry the new programme name. The call codes stay the old ones, so do not be alarmed if a notice gives one name and your file number gives another.
- Do not build your payment schedule around the 2028 deadline. The scheme applies until 31 December 2028, but payments for eligible expenditure can be made until 31 December 2029, and the two dates are easily confused.
Frequently asked questions
What has changed, in short, for someone preparing a project?
Why was this amendment needed?
Does the scheme’s budget change?
How much can a social enterprise receive?
Which counties are covered?
Who can apply for the financing?
What does „inventory item” mean in this discussion?
Can a forklift be bought with this money?
From when does the new text apply?
What happens to projects submitted earlier?
Why is the programme changing its name?
How long is there left to apply?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Point 6, Article 21(o): the exception that brings the goods back into the financing is made conditional on a cross-reference to the article containing it. The new text provides that expenditure on the purchase of goods falling into the inventory items category is ineligible, „cu excepția bunurilor ce au o valoare mai mare de 2.500 lei și o durată normală de funcționare mai mare de un an […] și nu fac obiectul categoriilor de cheltuieli neeligibile prevăzute la art. 21” (except goods worth more than 2,500 lei with a normal operating life of more than one year […] and which do not fall within the categories of ineligible expenditure laid down in Article 21). Point (o) is itself a point of Article 21, and expenditure on the purchase of an inventory item is precisely the ineligible category laid down there. Read literally, the third condition cannot be met by any item, the exception is left without object, and the scheme continues to exclude exactly what the order set out to bring back. The result contradicts point 5 of the same order, which puts the same goods among the eligible expenditure in Article 19, point 1). The formula works in points 4 and 5, where the amended text sits in Articles 16 and 19, so the cross-reference to Article 21 has a target; copied inside Article 21, it closes in a circle. The difference decides whether a machine worth 3,000 lei is claimable or not.
- Point 4, Article 16(a), second indent: the same sentence excludes all means of transport and, at the same time, refers to an article that admits one class of them. The rewritten indent ends with „cu excepția mijloacelor de transport, și care nu fac obiectul categoriilor de cheltuieli neeligibile prevăzute la art. 21” (except means of transport, and which do not fall within the categories of ineligible expenditure laid down in Article 21). Article 21(h) of the scheme excludes the purchase of means of transport from subgroup 2.3 of the Catalogue approved by Government Decision no. 2.139/2004, but „cu excepția Clasei 2.3.6 «Utilaje și instalații de transportat și ridicat»” (except class 2.3.6, transport and lifting machinery and installations). The very same class is expressly admitted, by point 5 of the order, in Article 19, point 1), where it is also identified as forming part of subgroup 2.3 „Mijloace de transport”. An applicant who wants to buy a forklift finds, in the same act, one provision refusing it as a fundable activity and two accepting it as eligible expenditure. The contradiction comes from the original version of the scheme, but the order rewrites both texts without removing it.
Editorial analysis
The correction was necessary and, in substance, it is well thought out. A tax threshold moved from 2,500 to 5,000 lei has nothing to do with cohesion policy, but overnight it pushed out of the financing exactly the class of purchases a social enterprise makes when starting out: an industrial sewing machine, a bakery oven, a joinery tool. The solution chosen here is, technically, cleaner than the one used six days earlier in the SME scheme: there, the claimable band was capped at the top by a cross-reference to the Tax Code, so it will shift with every update; here the scheme accepts both fixed assets and inventory items worth more than 2,500 lei, which covers the whole band with no moving cross-reference. The weak part is not the idea but the execution and, above all, the pace.
The first observation concerns the calendar and is not visible from reading the order. The scheme was published on 22 December 2025. The tax threshold changed on 25 February 2026, 65 days later. The repair came on 15 September 2026, another 202 days after that. Of the scheme’s 267 days of life, three quarters were spent with a category of expenditure unintentionally cut out of the financing. And the correction did not come on its own: on 1 September 2026 the ministry amended the microenterprise scheme in the same sense, on 9 September the SME scheme, and on 15 September this one. Three orders in fourteen days, for an effect produced by a single emergency ordinance in February, point to a problem discovered late and solved scheme by scheme, rather than through one review covering all the programmes.
The second observation comes from dividing the money by the number of files. The scheme is worth 24,642,314 euro and expects at most 123 beneficiaries, which works out at an average of 200,344 euro per social enterprise, two thirds of the 300,000 euro ceiling and four times the minimum grant of 50,000. At the maximum intensity of 95%, such a grant corresponds to a project of around 210,888 euro, in which the enterprise puts in roughly 10,544 euro of its own. The estimated figure is therefore built on the assumption that most applications will be large ones. If they all took the ceiling, the money would reach 82 enterprises; if they all took the minimum, 493. The distance between the two ends is so wide that the figure of 123 says more about the kind of projects the ministry expects than about how many social enterprises exist in the five counties.
The third observation comes from setting the annual breakdown against the date of publication. Of the 24.6 million euro, 18 million, or 73% of the total, are indicatively programmed for 2026. From the publication of this order to 31 December 2026 there are 107 days left. At the average grant the scheme itself assumes, 18 million means almost 90 contracts, in a window that would have to accommodate the opening of the calls, the submissions, the assessment, any appeals and the signing of contracts. The annual breakdown is stated to be indicative, which solves the problem on paper, but it shows how little is left of the timetable the scheme was built on in December 2025.
The fourth observation concerns an absence. The six just transition counties are Dolj, Gorj, Hunedoara, Mureș, Prahova and Galați, and the preamble to the scheme names all of them. Article 4 of the scheme, however, applies it in only five. Hunedoara, the county with the most brutal exit from mining and with an allocation of almost 132 million euro in the SME scheme, gets not a single leu in the scheme intended for the social economy. The present order does not touch the subject, but it makes it visible, because it renames the programme throughout without touching the scope.
Finally, the drafting. Points 3 to 6 say each time „în anexă” (in the annex), to show that the intervention is made in the scheme rather than in the order. Point 7 says only „în tot cuprinsul ordinului” (throughout the order), even though the intended effect is precisely to change the name in the body of the scheme, where it appears dozens of times, including in the article setting the scope. What is more, the phrase put up for replacement is „Program Tranziție justă”, with a lower-case „justă”, whereas the scheme writes „Programul Tranziție Justă” and uses the abbreviation PTJ throughout. A replacement ordered on a phrase that does not appear as such in the target text risks producing no effect at all.
What should be changed
- Rewriting the exception in Article 21(o), with a cross-reference to Article 19, point 1), instead of to Article 21. Effect: the exception becomes workable, and the machine worth 3,000 lei is claimable by virtue of the same text that declares it eligible, rather than in spite of it.
- Replacing, in Article 16(a), the formula „cu excepția mijloacelor de transport” with the one already used in Article 21(h), which carves out class 2.3.6. Effect: an applicant buying a forklift or a crane no longer needs confirmation from the managing authority, because all three articles say the same thing.
- Adding to Article 3 of the scheme definitions of „obiecte de inventar” (inventory items) and „active corporale” (tangible assets), as in the order of 9 September 2026 on the SME scheme. Effect: the three amended articles can be read without reference to accounting rules outside the scheme, and the assessor and the applicant start from the same meaning.
- Recasting point 7 as „throughout the order and the annex” and putting up for replacement the forms that actually appear in the text, including the abbreviation PTJ. Effect: the new name reaches the articles of the scheme as well, not only the titles, and the scope provision stops referring to a programme with a name other than the one in the title.
- Introducing a transitional provision for expenditure incurred between 25 February and 15 September 2026. Effect: a beneficiary who had a 3,500 lei piece of equipment rejected in that interval has a basis for asking for reassessment, instead of depending on an administrative interpretation.
- Revising the annual breakdown in Article 23(3), which today puts 73% of the budget in 2026. Effect: the schedule against which the scheme’s implementation is measured becomes achievable again, and the gap between the planned and the contracted allocation stops looking like under-implementation.
- Reviewing, once and for all, every financing scheme that refers to the notion of a fixed asset, instead of making successive corrections scheme by scheme. Effect: a future update of the Tax Code threshold, which is to be made annually in line with inflation, no longer quietly removes a category of expenditure from several programmes at once, for seven months.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 783 of 15 September 2026 8 pages PDF, 83 KB the act starts on page 6
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.