In brief
- Two occupations receive a code of their own in the official list of occupations in Romania. They are „integrated community services expert”, with code 341208, and „auction manager”, with code 122111. The first goes into unit group 3412, social work associate professionals, the second into unit group 1221, sales and marketing managers.
- A third occupation changes its name but keeps its code. „Interpreter of mime and gesture language” becomes „Romanian Sign Language interpreter”, still under code 264316 and still in unit group 2643, translators and interpreters. The new name is the one used by Law no. 27/2020, which recognised Romanian Sign Language back in March 2020.
- Those concerned are employers and the people already doing these jobs without a code of their own. The code from the Romanian Classification of Occupations goes into the individual employment contract and is transmitted to the electronic register of employees, so without a code the post cannot be registered under its real name. The order applies from 16 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial).
Published: Official Gazette of Romania no. 785 of 16 September 2026
In force from: 16 September 2026, the date of publication
The Ministry of Labour and the National Institute of Statistics have added to the official list of jobs practised in Romania two occupations that until now had no code of their own: integrated community services expert, with code 341208, and auction manager, with code 122111. The list is called the Romanian Classification of Occupations, COR for short, and its six-digit code is the one that ends up in the individual employment contract and, from there, in the electronic register of employees kept by the Labour Inspectorate. Other lists with direct effects are built on the COR groups as well, from the list of occupations open to foreign workers to labour market statistics.
The order has two articles and an annex ten lines long. Article I says that the list of occupations approved in 2011 is amended and supplemented with the occupations in the annex, and Article II orders publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. The document was signed at the Ministry of Labour on 23 July 2026, by State Secretary Silvia Monica Dinică, for the acting minister, and at the National Institute of Statistics on 30 July 2026, by President Tudorel Andrei.
The annex contains three operations, not two. Besides the two new occupations in the table, the last line changes the name of an occupation that has existed for a long time: „interpreter of mime and gesture language” becomes „Romanian Sign Language interpreter”, with the same code 264316 and in the same unit group 2643, „Translators, interpreters and other linguists”. The new name follows the one in Law no. 27/2020 on Romanian Sign Language, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 258 of 30 March 2020, which speaks of authorised Romanian Sign Language interpreters, not of mime and gesture language.
The legal basis is Article 14(2) of Law no. 76/2002 on the unemployment insurance system, Articles 9 and 10 of Government Decision no. 1.352/2010, as republished, and the COR updating procedure approved by Order no. 37/83/2022. The file that led to this order is Report no. 1.706/DGPPMOFP of 14 July 2026, drawn up for the second quarter of 2026.
What it changes in practice
From 16 September 2026, an employer with a post of integrated community services expert or of auction manager can register it under its real name, with the code from the act. Until now, such a post had to be classified under a nearby COR occupation, because Article 4(2)(e) of Government Decision no. 295/2025 requires the position or occupation to be entered in the REGES-ONLINE register „in accordance with the specification of the Romanian Classification of Occupations”, and a name not found in the classification cannot be transmitted as such.
The first new occupation, integrated community services expert, goes into unit group 3412, which already holds the social work technician (341201), the social pedagogue (341202) and the community development facilitator (341204). Integrated community services are the package that ties together community health care, social assistance and educational services in a locality, and integrated community centres operate on the basis of the rules approved by Government Decision no. 324/2019. The team of such a centre had codes up to now for the community nurse (325301), for the social worker with higher education (263501) and for the social work technician; the role that ties the three services together had none.
The second new occupation, the auction manager, goes into unit group 1221, sales and marketing managers. It is a group that includes the head of marketing department (122101), the transactions operations director (122104), the head of stock exchange agency (122106) and, worth noting, an occupation with an almost identical name: head of auction, code 122103, introduced long before. The two will coexist in the same group, and the order does not say how they differ.
The difference in major group between the two new occupations is not decorative. Code 341208 starts with the figure 3, so the occupation sits in major group 3, technicians and associate professionals. Code 122111 starts with 1, so it sits in major group 1, managers and senior officials. The methodology for the shortage occupations list, approved by Order no. 987/2026, takes into account only occupations in major groups 3 to 9, so the integrated community services expert can reach that list if it hits the thresholds for contracts and work permits, while the auction manager cannot reach it under any circumstances.
For interpreters working with deaf people, the effect is formal, but it has practical consequences. The code stays 264316, so nothing registered so far becomes wrong and nothing has to be recoded. What changes is the name that the nomenclature, and the documents filled in from it, will display from now on, and that name finally matches the law governing the profession. The order lays down no obligation to amend the addenda or the contracts already concluded under the old name, and sets no deadline for doing so.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
This is the third COR update published in 2026 and the second in less than two months. On 25 March 2026, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 230, Order no. 66/51/2026 appeared, covering the fourth quarter of 2025: it added the dental hygienist for dental practice (226931) and the licensed dental technician (226930), moved three occupations into other unit groups and removed five positions from the group of customs and border inspectors. On 22 July 2026, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 598, Order no. 629/372/2026 appeared, for the first quarter of 2026, adding five new occupations: pastoral assistant (263649), circular economy expert (242243), sustainable development specialist (242242), circular economy specialist (213313) and gemologist technician (311945).
Compared with those, the present order is the thinnest in the series: two new occupations and one renaming. On the other hand, it is the only one of the three that touches an old occupation without moving it and without removing it, that is, the only one that changes the name under which a job appears in employment documents.
For the two new jobs, the substantive change is that they no longer have to be approximated. An integrated community centre wanting to hire a coordinator of integrated services used to classify the person under one of the neighbouring occupations in group 3412 or under a social work occupation requiring higher education, which described something other than what the person actually did. In the same way, a company organising sales by auction used the head of auction code, the only close one.
For interpreters, the change comes very late. Law no. 27/2020 recognised Romanian Sign Language on 30 March 2020, and Article 9 of that law gave ministries and their subordinate bodies two years to bring their own rules into line with it, that is, until 30 March 2022. The COR renaming reaches the Official Gazette of Romania 1,631 days after that deadline expired and 2,361 days after the law was published.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The two jobs can be named in documents exactly as they are named in reality. The post appears in the contract and in the register of employees under its own name, not under a nearby one, and that counts in recruitment, in the recognition of seniority in the occupation and in any inspection.
- Renaming the interpreters brings the nomenclature into line with the law. An employer no longer has to write into a contract a name the legislature replaced in 2020, and the deaf community no longer sees in official documents a term it does not use.
- The code does not change with the renaming. Those who already have contracts under 264316 do not have to recode anything, and the continuity of the register data is not broken.
- The integrated community services expert goes into major group 3, so it can in principle reach the list of jobs open to foreign workers, if it hits the thresholds of 10 contracts and 10 work permits a year.
- The codes could be used even before 16 September. Article 11(2) of the procedure approved by Order no. 37/83/2022 allows provisional use of codes for which the ministry has given its agreement, until the joint order is published, so the delay did not block hiring.
What remains a problem
- The act gives a name and a code, but no description. What exactly an integrated community services expert does, what qualifications are needed and how the job differs from the social work technician is written nowhere in the order.
- Group 1221 now contains two occupations with almost identical names, head of auction (122103) and auction manager (122111). The employer chooses between them with no published criterion.
- The occupation description sheet, which would answer these questions, has to be filed with the application under Article 8(1)(b) of the procedure, but is published nowhere. The Ministry of Labour’s website shows the COR structure and the list of approved occupations, but not the sheets.
- The annex is called the „list of occupations supplementing” the classification, although its last line supplements nothing and instead renames an existing occupation. There is a mismatch between the title of the annex and its content, and the consequence is that it is not clear which provision effects the renaming.
- The pace stays slow. The order was signed in full on 30 July 2026 and reached the Official Gazette of Romania on 16 September, 48 days after the last signature.
Practical advice
- If you are hiring for one of the two new posts, use the exact code from the act: 341208 for integrated community services expert and 122111 for auction manager. The nearby codes remain valid for other occupations, but they describe something else.
- Before choosing between head of auction (122103) and auction manager (122111), check the unit group and the real content of the post. Both are in group 1221, that is, in major group 1, managers, and neither fits a non-managerial post in procurement.
- For interpreters already employed, nothing urgent has to be done. The code stays 264316, and the order does not require existing contracts to be amended. If you do draw up an addendum for another reason, that is the moment to enter the new name.
- If you need an occupation that does not exist in the COR, you can ask for it to be introduced. The application and the description sheet are filed with the registry of the Ministry of Labour, under Article 8 of the procedure approved by Order no. 37/83/2022, and Article 10(1) requires the ministry to settle the application within 20 working days of registration.
- Do not wait for the joint order to appear before using a new code obtained through this procedure. Article 11(2) of the same procedure allows the code to be used provisionally from the moment the ministry gives its agreement.
- Check the list of approved occupations on the Ministry of Labour’s website before building a staffing schedule on a new name. It shows the occupations that have received a favourable endorsement, that is, the ones due to be published in a future order.
Frequently asked questions
What are COR codes, in fact, and where are they used?
From when can I use codes 341208 and 122111?
Do I have to change the contracts of interpreters holding code 264316?
What does „integrated community services expert” mean?
How does the auction manager differ from the head of auction?
Who can ask for a new occupation to be introduced into the COR?
Does the order change pay or oblige anyone to create these posts?
Do the two new occupations enter the list of jobs open to foreign workers?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- The annex, its title and its last line. The annex is entitled „Lista ocupațiilor practicate în cadrul economiei naționale care completează Clasificarea ocupațiilor din România”, the list of occupations practised in the national economy that supplement the Romanian Classification of Occupations, and Article I of the order says that this classification „se modifică și se completează cu noile ocupații practicate în cadrul economiei naționale, prevăzute în lista din anexa”, is amended and supplemented with the new occupations practised in the national economy set out in the list in the annex. The last line of the annex, however, adds no new occupation; it renames an existing one, occupation 264316. Neither the title of the annex nor Article I covers the renaming operation, which Article 10(c) of Government Decision no. 1.352/2010, as republished, treats separately from the introduction of new occupations. The result is that two readers acting in good faith can reach different conclusions about the date from which occupation 264316 officially bears the new name, and that is the name entered in the individual employment contract and in the register of employees. That the mismatch belongs to this act is clear from the comparison with the previous order in the same series: Order no. 66/51/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 230 of 25 March 2026, which contained transfers and removals, had its annex entitled „lista ocupațiilor care modifică și completează”, the list of occupations that amend and supplement, a wording of which only the supplementing half survives here.
Editorial analysis
The order solves a small, real problem. Someone coordinating the integrated services of a commune and someone organising sales by auction existed before 16 September 2026 too, but could not be entered in documents under their own names, because the register of employees accepts only names from the nomenclature. Renaming the interpreters goes in the same direction: it puts into the nomenclature the term the law has used since 2020.
The first observation you do not get from reading the act concerns the pace. The COR updating procedure approved by Order no. 37/83/2022 is full of short deadlines, but all of them fall on someone other than the final step: ministries regulating a new occupation have 30 days to ask for the update, the endorsement of the competent ministry is requested within 2 working days and given within 5, and a user’s application is settled within at most 20 working days. For the step that produces the legal effect, publication of the joint order, the procedure lays down no deadline at all. The figures show what that means: this order was signed in full on 30 July 2026 and appeared on 16 September, 48 days, that is, 34 working days, longer than the maximum deadline the same procedure imposes on the ministry for settling an application. The order for the first quarter of 2026 took exactly the same interval, 48 days from the second signature, and the one for the fourth quarter of 2025 took 54. This is not an accidental delay, it is the usual cadence of a step with no deadline.
The second observation comes from putting this order next to the methodology for the shortage occupations list. The two new occupations look as though they receive the same treatment, but the codes separate them: 341208 is in major group 3, 122111 in major group 1, and the list of jobs open to foreign workers is built only from major groups 3 to 9. By the mere choice of unit group, one occupation becomes eligible for recruitment from outside the European Union and the other never will be. The choice of group is nowhere justified in the act and can be challenged by nobody, because the description sheet on which the classification was based is not published.
The third observation concerns what is missing from all three updates this year. The act gives a name and a code, and that is all. In a unit group that already contains „head of auction” under code 122103, adding an „auction manager” under 122111 leaves the employer to choose on the basis of how the name sounds. Yet one of the principles on which the classification is built, written into Article 3(c) of Government Decision no. 1.352/2010, as republished, is the principle of univocity: each unit to be classified must be assigned to a single place, without ambiguity. Two almost identical names in the same unit group, with no published description, are the exact opposite of that principle.
Finally, the renaming of the interpreters shows how long the road can be from a law to the nomenclature that applies it. Law no. 27/2020 was published on 30 March 2020, and Article 9 of it gave ministries two years to bring their own rules into line with it. The deadline expired on 30 March 2022, and the COR name changes 1,631 days later. Through all those years, an employer wanting to comply with both texts had to choose between the name in the law and the name in the nomenclature, and the register of employees accepted only the second.
What should be changed
- Put every operation the annex contains into the annex’s title. The full wording, „the list of occupations that amend and supplement”, existed in the order of March 2026 and was shortened here. Restoring it would remove the question of whether the renaming of occupation 264316 takes effect through this act or not, a question that matters for the name entered in employment contracts.
- Publish the description sheet of each new occupation alongside the order. The document already exists, it is compulsory in the file and it contains the duties, the level of education and the related jobs. The practical effect would be that an employer would know why to choose 122111 rather than 122103, and a jobseeker would know what is required for the post.
- Put a publication deadline into the updating procedure. A deadline of 15 working days from the last signature would cut the current interval of 48 days to less than a third and would make provisional use of codes what it ought to be, a short exception rather than the rule for two months.
- State in the act the reasons for the unit group chosen for each new occupation. A line of justification for each position would show why the auction manager ends up among managers rather than among sales professionals, a classification that also decides its access to the list of jobs open to foreign workers.
- Run the nomenclature systematically against the legislation adopted since 2011. The present renaming comes more than four years after the deadline in Law no. 27/2020 and was possible only because somebody asked for it. A scheduled review would also bring to light the other occupations whose names no longer match the laws governing them.
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. 785 of 16 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 110 KB the act starts on page 13
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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.