In brief
- Companies selling petrol and diesel have had, since 17 September 2026, the form on which they prove they have not gone over the price cap. It is filed monthly with the Ministry of Finance, through the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF), within 20 calendar days of the end of the month, and it carries the sales revenue, the acquisition or production cost, the quantity sold, the average commercial markup and the weighted average price. The figures are given separately for petrol and for diesel, and within each of them separately for refining, wholesale and retail. Everyone who imports, produces, distributes or sells the two motor fuels is covered, from refineries down to the filling station in a village.
- The instructions settle the figure that decides the cap: 7.32%. The law allows the 2025 average markup, the one that stands in for the cap during the crisis, to be raised once by the rate of inflation. The order says that rate is the change in consumer prices in 2025 against 2024, as communicated by the National Institute of Statistics, that is 7.32%. Going over the resulting limit, measured on the average across the whole crisis period, is an administrative offence and is fined at between 1% and 2% of the annual turnover.
- The methodology came 26 days past the legal deadline and four days before the first filing. Law no. 162/2026 required the instructions within 15 days of its entry into force, that is by 22 August 2026. They appeared on 17 September, and the report for August is due by 21 September 2026, because the natural deadline, 20 September, is a Sunday.
Published: Official Gazette no. 789 of 17 September 2026
In force from: 17 September 2026, the date of publication
From 17 September 2026, anyone who imports, produces, distributes or sells petrol and diesel in Romania knows how to show that the price has not been pushed above the limit set by the state. The Ministry of Finance, the National Authority for Consumer Protection (ANPC) and the Competition Council have issued the joint order approving the reporting instructions that the August law that capped the markup on motor fuels required within no more than 15 days of its entry into force. The result is a monthly form, a single place to file it and a fixed figure for inflation.
The order has three articles and one annex. The first article approves the instructions, the second puts their implementation in the hands of the Ministry of Finance, ANAF, ANPC and the Competition Council, and the third provides for publication in the Official Gazette. The annex contains seven articles and three annexes of its own: the report form, the completion instructions and the editing and archiving specifications. The president of ANPC and the president of the Competition Council signed on 9 September 2026, the Minister of Finance on 16 September, one day before publication.
The commercial markup, the notion the whole act turns on, has an accounting definition here, not an intuitive one. It is the difference between the revenue collected from selling petrol and diesel and the acquisition or production cost of those same products, divided by the quantity sold, expressed in litres or in tonnes. Revenue is taken without value added tax and without exports and intra-Community supplies, and everything is read off the month’s accounts, not off the price displayed at the pump.
The report has a single purpose. Law no. 162/2026 froze each operator’s markup at the average it applied in 2025, and the monthly report is the proof by which the state checks whether the freeze has been observed. Without it, the cap would have stayed a rule on paper, because nobody would have had any way of knowing how much each seller puts on top of his own cost.
What it changes in practice
The reporting obligation has existed since 7 August 2026, the day the law entered into force. What the order brings is the content, the format and the route the paper takes. The report is called the „Report on the monthly average value of the commercial markup”, it is completed with assistance software provided free of charge and it is sent electronically through e-guvernare.ro. It is filed within 20 calendar days of the end of the reporting month, and for August only the period from 7 to 31 August 2026 counts, that is the days after the law entered into force.
For each type of product the form asks for five rows: sales revenue, the expenses corresponding to the acquisition or production cost, the total quantity sold, the monthly average commercial markup and the monthly weighted average price. There are six types of product, because petrol and diesel are reported separately for refining, for wholesale and for retail. To these an activity code is added: 0 for the activities that fall under the cap, 1 for refining and the first sale of the products resulting from crude oil processing, 2 for the import and first sale of imported petroleum products. The last two are taken out of the cap calculation by the law, but the instructions say plainly that the exception does not release them from reporting.
The last monthly report is also the decisive one. That is where the cumulative values for the whole crisis period are entered, from 7 August 2026 to 31 October 2026 or to the date to which the crisis is extended by government decision. The resulting average markup is compared with the cap, that is the 2025 average raised once by the 7.32%. If the average over the whole period goes above the cap, the act is an administrative offence and is sanctioned under Article 18 of Law no. 162/2026, with a fine of between 1% and 2% of the annual turnover of the year preceding the sanction.
The order also covers requests for additional information. The Ministry of Finance through ANAF, ANPC and the Competition Council may ask operators for data on how prices and markups are formed, and operators have 10 days from receiving the request to answer. The request may cover the premiums and discounts applied, the pricing formulas used, the international benchmark quotations, including Platts quotations, and the supporting documents. The point up to which such requests may be sent is tied to the 3 year limitation period the law lays down for applying the sanction.
Between institutions, the order builds a mechanism with short deadlines. ANAF makes the data available to ANPC and to the Competition Council, on request, by electronic mail, within no more than 5 working days, and if the data are complicated it announces, again within 5 working days, the deadline it is taking for itself. ANPC and the Competition Council forward to each other the complaints they receive by mistake, within 5 working days, and inform each other about the cases they are handling, on the first working day of each week, by 12:00 at the latest.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until 17 September 2026, a fuel seller had an obligation without instructions. Article 15(1) of Law no. 162/2026 had required him, as early as 7 August, to send monthly reports on how he applies the law, including data on the prices charged, but nobody had said what exactly goes into the report, on what form and by what route. Article 15(2) of the same law left that to joint instructions of the Ministry of Finance, ANPC and the Competition Council, to be issued within 15 days.
The only piece that had appeared before covered something else. Order of the Minister of Finance no. 1.019/2026, published in Official Gazette no. 669 of 12 August 2026, approved form 183, the „Declaration on the annual average value of the commercial markup”, through which each operator declared its own 2025 average. That was a one off declaration, with a five day deadline, and it fixed the starting point of the cap. The monthly reporting, the one that shows how the markup moves during the crisis, had no form until now.
The second thing that changes is the practical recipient of the report. The law names four institutions that receive the monthly reports: the Competition Council, the Ministry of Finance, ANPC and the Ministry of Energy. The instructions take the report to a single place, ANAF, and leave the other authorities to ask for the data from there. For the operator that means one filing instead of four, and for the Ministry of Energy it means that it no longer appears anywhere in the procedure.
Finally, an ambiguity worth money is closed. The law spoke about raising the cap „by the rate of inflation”, without saying which of the figures published by the National Institute of Statistics that is. The instructions pick the annual change in consumer prices in 2025 against 2024 and write it into the text: 7.32%. Anyone calculating his cap now no longer has to choose between two figures.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- One filing for everyone. The operator sends the report to ANAF, and ANPC and the Competition Council take the data from there, instead of asking for the same figures separately.
- The rate of inflation is a figure written down, not a cross reference. The 7.32% appears in the definitions of the instructions themselves, so each firm’s cap can be calculated without interpretation and without the risk of picking the wrong one among the indicators published by the National Institute of Statistics.
- The cap is checked on the average over the whole crisis period, not month by month. A more expensive month followed by a cheaper one does not automatically bring a fine, which leaves room for the ordinary swings in crude oil quotations.
- The form asks for accounting figures, not estimates. Revenue, costs and quantities sold are taken from the month’s records, and the assistance software works out the average markup and the weighted average price by itself.
- Mistakes are put right without a separate procedure. The corrective report is filed on the same form, with a tick box, and is completed in full, including the data that do not change.
What remains a problem
- The rules came four days before the first filing. The report for August is due by 21 September 2026, and firms learned how to complete it only on 17 September, although the law required the instructions by 22 August.
- Filing depends on assistance software that has to exist. The instructions say the form is completed only with this software and sent through e-guvernare.ro, but they do not say from what date it is available.
- The deadlines are not equal. The operator has a firm 10 days to answer a request for information, while the administration has 5 working days, with the right to announce, again within 5 working days, a different deadline, whatever that may be.
- The Ministry of Energy, which the law lists among the recipients of the monthly report, appears in no article of the order and in no annex.
- The check closes after the period it supervises. The cumulative figure that decides whether the cap was observed reaches the state with the last report, that is on 20 November 2026, three weeks after the crisis declared until 31 October is over.
Practical advice
- Prepare the figures on six lines, not two. Petrol and diesel are reported separately for refining, for wholesale and for retail, and if you carry on activities under different codes, the data are entered separately for each code.
- The first deadline is 21 September 2026. The 20 calendar days from the end of August fall due on 20 September, a Sunday, and tax deadlines ending on a non working day run to the first working day, under Article 75 of the Code of Fiscal Procedure, which refers to Article 181(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure.
- Take value added tax, exports and intra-Community supplies out of your revenue. They are expressly excluded from the formula, and a gross figure entered on row 1 needlessly pushes up both your average markup and your weighted average price.
- Do not draw conclusions from a single month. The offence is established against the average markup over the whole duration of the crisis, so a month above the cap can be offset, but it still goes into the final average in the last month’s report.
- Keep at hand the documents that explain the price. Requests for information may cover premiums and discounts, pricing formulas, Platts quotations and supporting documents, and the time to answer is 10 days from receiving the request.
- If you are a refinery or an importer making the first sale, file anyway. The instructions say expressly that the exception from the cap does not release you from reporting, and the form has activity codes precisely for your situation.
Frequently asked questions
Who has to file the monthly report?
By when and how is it filed?
What figures go into the form?
By how much can the cap inherited from 2025 rise?
What happens if I went over the cap in a single month?
What fine does anyone going over the cap face?
Who sees the data in the report?
Does the order change the price at the pump?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Annex, Article 3(1), against Article 15(1) of Law no. 162/2026. The instructions provide that economic operators „are obliged to send monthly to the Ministry of Finance, through the National Agency for Fiscal Administration” the report on the monthly average values of the commercial markup. The law under which they are issued obliges those same operators to send the monthly report to the Competition Council, the Ministry of Finance, the National Authority for Consumer Protection and the Ministry of Energy. For two of the three institutions left aside, Article 6 of the instructions solves the problem indirectly: the National Authority for Consumer Protection and the Competition Council get the data from the National Agency for Fiscal Administration, on request. For the Ministry of Energy there is nothing. The institution appears in no article and in no annex of the order, even though Article 15(2) of the law asks these very instructions to establish the „transmission channels”. An operator who does exactly what the instructions say sends nothing to the Ministry of Energy, although the law requires it; one who wants to comply with the law finds in the instructions neither the format nor the channel.
Editorial analysis
The act was needed and it does what it had to do. A price cap without a form on which compliance can be proved stays a statement of intent, and from 7 August 2026 to 17 September that is exactly what the cap on motor fuels was. The instructions bring an accounting definition of the markup, a form with five rows and six types of product, a single place to file and a fixed figure for inflation. The problem is the clock. The law required them within 15 days of its entry into force, that is by 22 August 2026, and they appeared 41 days after that moment, 26 days past the deadline and four days before the first report fell due. It shows in the signatures too: the president of ANPC and the president of the Competition Council signed on 9 September, and the Minister of Finance only on 16 September. The last signature came a week after the other two, on a deadline that had long passed.
The observation that does not show on reading the act from start to finish lies in the second definition. The law allows the cap to be raised „by the rate of inflation”, without saying which of the figures published by the National Institute of Statistics that is, and for 2025 the institute communicated two very different numbers: 7.32%, the 2025 average against the 2024 average, and almost 9.7%, the rise in December 2025 against December 2024. The instructions pick the first. The gap between them is almost 2.4 percentage points, which means that, on an average markup of one leu per litre in 2025, the cap rises to 1.0732 lei instead of 1.097 lei, so every litre sold has almost 2.4 bani less room for manoeuvre. The choice has a justification, because the crisis period is compared with a whole year, and the annual average is the indicator that describes the year. What is missing is the reasoning: the figure appears in a list of definitions, as if it had been the only one possible.
The second observation concerns the control architecture, which separates the data from the sanction. The report goes to ANAF, but the fines for exceeding the cap are handed down by ANPC and the Competition Council, each in its own field. The two authorities do not receive the data automatically, but on request, and the 5 working day deadline within which they should receive them has a loophole: depending on how complex the data are, ANAF may communicate, again within 5 working days, a different deadline for answering, with no ceiling at all. The asymmetry shows when you set side by side the two deadlines in the same act: the operator has a firm 10 days to answer a request, the administration has 5 working days that it may replace by others of its own choosing. And the general clock pulls the same way: the figure that decides whether the cap was observed becomes known only from the last month’s report, that is on 20 November 2026, three weeks after the crisis declared until 31 October has ended.
The third observation is about a borrowed deadline. Article 4(4) of the instructions ties requests for information to the „3 year limitation period laid down in Article 18(14) of Law no. 162/2026” and adds that once it expires every step taken by the authorities to apply the law ceases. The text cited exists and does provide for 3 years, but only for the sanctions in Article 18(2), (3) and (5) and in Article 19(2), that is for exceeding the markup, for price increases more frequent than once a day and for unauthorised exports. Reporting offences, that is inaccurate, incomplete or missing information, sit in Article 20 of the law and do not figure in that list, so they follow the general 6 month rule in Article 13 of Government Ordinance no. 2/2001. The instructions, however, speak precisely about requests for information, the subject matter sanctioned by Article 20, and tie them to the 3 year period. An authority reading only the order may believe it has three years to sanction a report that was never filed, when it has six months.
What should be changed
- Add the Ministry of Energy to the mechanism in Article 6 of the instructions. The practical effect: the ministry would receive the data by the same route as ANPC and the Competition Council, and the operator would no longer have to choose between what the law says and what the order says.
- Write into the instructions from what date the assistance software on e-guvernare.ro is available. The practical effect: a firm would know whether the 21 September 2026 deadline can be met and, if not, from when filing actually becomes possible.
- Give reasons for the choice of inflation rate, not just the figure. The practical effect: anyone challenging the cap would have the reasoning in front of him, instead of a value that turned up in a list of definitions, and the gap of almost 2.4 percentage points against the other indicator of the National Institute of Statistics would stop looking like a silent choice.
- Put a limit on the deadline ANAF may set for itself. The practical effect: ANPC and the Competition Council would know when they get the data, and a complaint could no longer wait indefinitely in an exchange of messages between institutions.
- Correct Article 4(4) and tie the limitation period to each category of offence separately. The practical effect: nobody could still believe that the reporting offences in Article 20 of the law are time barred after 3 years, when the general rule bars them after 6 months.
- Say clearly whether the operators taken out of the cap calculation by the law also complete the column for the crisis period. The practical effect: refineries and importers making the first sale would know whether they enter the cumulative figure or leave the column empty, instead of choosing between Article 3(4) of the instructions, which takes them out of the calculation, and annex no. 2, which asks everyone to complete the column.
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 no. 789 of 17 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 106 KB the act starts on page 5
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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.