In brief
- The works on the A7 and A3 motorways get another year from the European Investment Bank, and the only thing that changes in the contracts is time. Government Decision no. 780/2026 approves an amendment letter which moves the completion date of the works from the third quarter of 2026 to the third quarter of 2027 for the two contracts tied to the A7, and from the fourth quarter of 2026 to the fourth quarter of 2027 for the contract tied to the A3. The amounts borrowed, the interest and the repayment schedules remain untouched: Article 5.2 of the letter states expressly that the remaining provisions of the contracts stay in force.
- Who is concerned. The Borrower is Romania, represented by the Ministry of Finance, and the lender is the European Investment Bank. In practice, the deadlines concern the contractors and the beneficiary of the works on the two motorways, the State budget, which pays the instalments whatever the pace on site, and the drivers who were waiting for the road. The three contracts were approved by Law no. 349/2023, Law no. 44/2024 and Law no. 189/2024, and their values, communicated by the Government when the first extension was approved, are 600 million euro for the first contract on the A7, 200 million for the A3 and 600 million for the B co-financing of the A7, that is 1.4 billion euro in all.
- The figures and the deadlines that matter. This is the second extension in 330 days: the first was published on 4 November 2025, moved completion into the third and fourth quarters of 2026, and its deadline expired on the very day the second was published, 30 September 2026. Romania asked for the new postponement by letters of 3 August 2026, 58 days before the deadline obtained in 2025 was due to run out. The date for submitting the project completion report is now worked out as 15 months from the end of the civil works, with indicative dates of 31 December 2028 for the two contracts on the A7 and 31 March 2029 for the A3. For the first contract, where the initial deadline was December 2025, the total slippage reaches 638 days, almost 21 months.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 829 of 30 September 2026, pages 3-5
In force from: 30 September 2026, the date of publication
A loan contract does not postpone itself: if the site falls behind, the date written in the contract has to be rewritten, or the State stays formally in breach towards the bank. On 30 September 2026, on the very day the deadline obtained a year earlier ran out, the Government published the second rewriting. Government Decision no. 780/2026 approves amendment no. 2 to three finance contracts concluded with the European Investment Bank for the co-financing of the works on the A7 and A3 motorways. The act has a single article and says nothing more: the whole content lies in the amendment letter reproduced after it, on pages 3-5 of the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 829.
The letter uses for the three contracts the short names Finance Contract I, II and III. The first is the one for the A7, Recovery and Resilience Facility co-financing, with operation number 2022-0839 and contract number 96.057, signed in Bucharest on 12 June 2023 and in Luxembourg on 14 June 2023, approved by Law no. 349/2023. The second is the one for the A3, with operation number 2022-0845 and contract number 96.065, signed in Bucharest on 16 November 2023 and in Luxembourg on 20 November 2023, approved by Law no. 44/2024. The third is the B co-financing for the A7, with the same operation number as the first, 2022-0839, but with contract number 96.432, signed in Bucharest on 1 February 2024 and in Luxembourg on 5 February 2024, approved by Law no. 189/2024. The first and the third carry the same operation number because they are two tranches of the same financing for the A7.
Point 2 of the letter, headed „Context”, says in two sentences how matters came to this. On 3 August 2026 Romania sent the Bank letters announcing that there had been „anumite întârzieri”, certain delays, in the implementation of the projects and asking for the completion dates to be extended. In addition, the parties agreed to extend the deadline for submitting the completion report as well, to keep the two in step. The concrete causes of the delays appear nowhere in the act.
All the amendments sit at point 3, six in number, two for each contract. For Finance Contract I, the „Calendar” paragraph of the technical description of the project takes the following form: the works began in August 2022 and are expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2027. For Finance Contract II: the construction works corresponding to the two contracts signed began in August 2021 and are expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2027. For Finance Contract III, the same wording as for the first, with the third quarter of 2027. The other three amendments replace the date on which Romania has to send the Bank the project completion report: it has become a period of 15 months from the completion of the civil works, accompanied by an indicative date, 31 December 2028 for contracts I and III and 31 March 2029 for contract II.
The indicative dates can be verified by calculation and they add up. The third quarter of 2027 ends on 30 September 2027, and 15 months later is 30 December 2028, so 31 December 2028 is exactly the result of the rule. The fourth quarter of 2027 ends on 31 December 2027, and 15 months later is precisely 31 March 2029. The same arithmetic worked at the previous extension too, where the dates were fixed: 30 September 2026 plus 15 months gives 31 December 2027, and 31 December 2026 plus 15 months gives 31 March 2028, that is exactly the dates written then.
The rest of the letter contains the usual clauses, and two of them are worth reading. Article 5.2 states that the provisions of each contract remain in force and in full effect, save for the amendments in the letter, and that the letter does not constitute a waiver by the Bank of any right. Article 5.6 states that any breach of the letter, including a representation that becomes incorrect or misleading in any material respect, constitutes an event of default under the contracts. The law applicable to the letter is that of Luxembourg, under point 6, and point 5.7 incorporates into the letter the clauses on jurisdiction, place of performance and notices from Finance Contract III.
The letter was signed in Luxembourg on 31 August 2026, by a head of department and a portfolio management officer on behalf of the Bank, and countersigned in Bucharest on 15 September 2026 by the Minister of Finance, Alexandru Nazare. Point 7 required the two printed originals to reach the Bank by 30 September 2026 at the latest. The Government adopted the decision on 24 September 2026, and publication took place on 30 September 2026, that is on the last day of the window the Bank had set. The text reproduced in the Official Gazette of Romania carries a note saying that it is a translation, so the form that binds is the one signed by the parties.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is that the completion dates written into the contracts move by a year, each into the quarter that corresponds to it. For the two contracts on the A7 the benchmark becomes 30 September 2027, and for the contract on the A3, 31 December 2027. These are contractual deadlines, not dates for opening the road to traffic, and they are framed as a forecast: the text says „se preconizează”, it is expected.
The second effect is the one that cannot be seen from the decision. The new deadlines do not apply from the day of publication but from the „Data intrării în vigoare”, the Effective Date defined at point 1.1 of the letter, that is the date on which the Bank confirms to the Borrower, including by electronic mail, that it has received the two signed originals and the evidence that signing was authorised. Publication brings the government decision into force, on 30 September 2026, but the amendment of the contracts runs from a confirmation that is published nowhere. From the Official Gazette of Romania there is no way of finding out the day from which the new deadlines actually bind.
The third effect is that the State pays nothing for the time it has gained, at least not through this act. The letter does not touch the amounts, the interest, the fees or the repayment schedule, and it has no novating effect, under point 5.3. In exchange, Article 5.6 adds a new trigger for default: a breach of the letter itself becomes an event of default under all three contracts.
The fourth effect concerns reporting. Until now the date of the completion report was fixed, so a fresh slippage of the works called for a fresh amendment for the report as well. From now on the deadline is tied to the fact that gives rise to it, the end of the civil works, and the dates in brackets are merely indicative. In practice, a future delay on site moves the deadline for the report by itself, with no need for a government decision to do it.
The fifth effect is one of context and it stays open. The three contracts are, by their very name, co-financing under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Regulation (EU) 2021/241, which set up the facility, fixes 31 August 2026 as the deadline for meeting the milestones and targets, and 31 December 2026 for the measures in the REPowerEU chapter. Under the new timetables the works now finish 13 months later on the A7 and 16 months later on the A3 than the facility’s deadline. What happens to the part that was to be paid from the facility is said neither in the decision nor in the letter.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The previous form of the three timetables was set by Government Decision no. 921/2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1017 of 4 November 2025, pages 4-9, which approved amendment no. 1 to the same contracts. A comparison position by position shows a single type of change, repeated six times.
For Finance Contract I, the timetable said that the works began in August 2022 and were expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026; it now says the third quarter of 2027. The indicative date of the completion report was 31 December 2027; it is now 15 months from the end of the civil works, indicatively 31 December 2028. For Finance Contract II, the timetable said the fourth quarter of 2026, and the report had the date 31 March 2028; now they are the fourth quarter of 2027 and 15 months, indicatively 31 March 2029. For Finance Contract III, the timetable said the third quarter of 2026, and the report had the date 31 December 2027; now they are the third quarter of 2027 and 15 months, indicatively 31 December 2028.
The form in which the operation is carried out has changed too. In 2025 the Government approved three separate amendments, one for each contract, each with its own letter, and the title of the decision repeated the same construction three times. Now there is a single amendment letter, numbered 2, which amends all three contracts at once and defines them together as the „Contractele de finanțare”, the Finance Contracts. That means a single effective date for all three, instead of three separate confirmations.
What has also changed is the nature of the reporting deadline: from a calendar date into a period counted from an event. In 2025 the report was to be sent on 31 December 2027 or on 31 March 2028, whatever happened on site. Now the binding rule is the one of 15 months, and the date in brackets is no more than an illustration of it.
What has not changed from the beginning: the amounts. Neither of the two amendments touched them, and the pace of the works has altered neither the value of the loans nor Romania’s payment obligations towards the Bank.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It costs nothing extra, and the act says so explicitly. Point 3 lists exhaustively the six amendments, and point 5.2 keeps all the rest of the contracts in force. There is no increase in the amount, no additional interest and no amendment fee written into the text.
- The contract comes back into step with the reality on site. The completion date is a contractual obligation, not a press estimate. Without the amendment, Romania would have been left, from 1 October 2026, with three contracts stating a deadline that had already passed.
- One letter for three contracts, instead of three. Unlike in 2025, the operation is carried out with a single document, a single effective date and a single signature page, which also reduces the risk of the three contracts ending up on different timetables.
- The report deadline no longer depends on the calendar but on the event that gives rise to it. Tying it to the completion of the civil works means that a future delay on site no longer requires a separate amendment just to move the date of the report.
- The arithmetic is consistent and verifiable. The three indicative dates follow exactly the 15-month rule, as did the fixed dates in the previous amendment, so the reader can redo the calculation and can anticipate the deadline under any completion scenario.
What remains a problem
- The second extension in 330 days, and the first expired on the day the second was published. Amendment no. 1 was published on 4 November 2025 and moved completion into the third quarter of 2026, which ended on 30 September 2026. Amendment no. 2 appears on exactly 30 September 2026. The time gained in 2025 has been used up in full.
- The day from which the new deadlines bind is not published. The „Data intrării în vigoare” depends on a confirmation that the Bank may send by electronic mail. A reader of the Official Gazette of Romania has no way of finding it out, even though the whole effect of the act hangs on it.
- The works began before the contracts that finance them. On the A3, the timetable says August 2021, while the contract was signed in Luxembourg on 20 November 2023, that is 27 months later. On the A7, the works began in August 2022, and the two contracts were signed 10 and 18 months after that. The financing settled on top of a timetable that was already running and that it could not influence.
- The timetable runs well past the deadline of the facility it co-finances. The deadline for the milestones and targets under the Recovery and Resilience Facility is 31 August 2026, while the works now end in the third and fourth quarters of 2027. The act does not say what happens to the part of the financing tied to the facility.
- The reasons for the delay are entirely absent from the act. The letter speaks of „anumite întârzieri”, certain delays, without naming a single one. A government decision extending the deadlines of a State loan explains nothing about what went wrong.
- The State gains time and gives in exchange a new trigger for default. Under point 5.6, any breach of the letter becomes an event of default under all three contracts, while point 5.1 leaves untouched the Bank’s rights in respect of any earlier undisclosed non-compliance.
- The timetable of the contracts for a Romanian motorway is judged somewhere else. The letter is governed by the law of Luxembourg, and the applicable clauses on jurisdiction and place of performance are those in Finance Contract III.
Practical advice
- Do not read the dates in the act as dates for opening the road to traffic. The third quarter of 2027 for the A7 and the fourth quarter of 2027 for the A3 refer to the completion of the works within the meaning of the finance contracts, and the text frames them as a forecast. Acceptance, authorisation and opening to use are later steps, with deadlines of their own.
- If you want to know the date from which the new deadlines bind, ask the Ministry of Finance in writing. It is the „Data intrării în vigoare” from the letter, that is the date of the confirmation sent by the Bank, and it does not appear in the Official Gazette of Romania. A request for information of public interest is the only way of finding it out.
- If you have contracts on these sections, recalculate the reporting deadline yourself. The binding deadline is counted from the completion of the civil works, 15 months, and the date in brackets stays indicative. Keep the documents that establish that completion, because the deadline hangs on them.
- For the amounts, go to the approving laws, not to the amendment. The values of the loans are in Law no. 349/2023, Law no. 44/2024 and Law no. 189/2024, together with the text of the contracts. The amendment does not touch them, so it does not repeat them.
- For the previous timetable, read Government Decision no. 921/2025. It is published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1017 of 4 November 2025, pages 4-9, and contains the forms that the present text replaces. Without it there is no way of seeing what has actually changed.
- Bear in mind that the text in the Official Gazette is a translation. The letter carries a note to that effect, so in case of doubt the form that binds is the one signed by the parties, not the Romanian version published.
- If you follow public debt, look at the disbursement schedule. Extending the completion date does not change the amounts, but it changes the pace at which funds are drawn and repaid, and that shows up in the periodic reports of the Ministry of Finance, not in this act.
Frequently asked questions
Does the loan become more expensive because of the postponement?
Does that mean the A7 opens in 2027?
From what date do the new deadlines apply?
How many extensions have the contracts been given?
How much has the first contract been postponed in total?
What is the project completion report?
Why does it say „Traducere” at the start of the letter?
Which law applies to the letter?
Who signed for Romania?
Editorial analysis
The act does exactly what it has to do, and it does it better than its predecessor. A completion date written into a loan contract is not a public promise, it is an obligation, and a State that overshoots it without renegotiating stays formally at fault towards its creditor. The Government renegotiated, paid nothing extra for it and, unlike in 2025, gathered the operation into a single letter for all three contracts. From the point of view of contractual technique, the present version is the better one.
The problem is not the amendment, it is what the sequence of amendments shows. The first extension was requested by letter of 8 April 2025 and published on 4 November 2025, moving completion into the third quarter of 2026. The second was requested by letters of 3 August 2026, that is 482 days after the first request and 58 days before the deadline the first had obtained was due to expire. Publication came on 30 September 2026, the last day of that deadline. In other words, the windows of time obtained from the Bank have left no reserve at all: the one from 2025 was used up in full, down to the day.
A second observation comes from calculation, not from reading. The new rule, the 15 months from the completion of the civil works, is not an invention of this amendment: it was already the arithmetic hidden behind the fixed dates of 2025. The end of the third quarter of 2026, that is 30 September 2026, plus 15 months gives 31 December 2027, exactly the date written then for contracts I and III; the end of the fourth quarter of 2026 plus 15 months gives 31 March 2028, exactly the date written then for contract II. What amendment no. 2 does is to bring the rule into the open and tie it to the event rather than to the calendar. The practical effect is that a third slippage of the works will require an amendment only for the timetable of the works, because the deadline of the report moves by itself.
A third observation comes from combining the name of the contracts with their own dates. All three are, by title, co-financing under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Regulation (EU) 2021/241 fixes 31 August 2026 as the deadline for meeting the milestones and targets, and 31 December 2026 for the measures in the REPowerEU chapter. The new timetables take completion to 30 September 2027 for the A7 and to 31 December 2027 for the A3, that is 13 and 16 months after the facility’s deadline. The loan from the Bank therefore outlives the facility it was called upon to co-finance, and neither of the two acts, neither the decision nor the letter, says what happens to the part of the financing that depended on it. For the reader, that is the question that stays open once the Official Gazette is closed.
It is also worth looking at the relationship between the deadlines the act imposes and those it allows itself. The Bank is given a strict window: the two originals had to reach it by 30 September 2026, and Romania signed them on 15 September, 15 days early. The government decision was adopted on 24 September and published on 30 September, that is on the very last day of the same window. The chronological order is therefore the reverse of the intuitive one: the minister signed the letter nine days before the Government approved the amendment, and publication closed the sequence.
No errata section has been written for this act, and the reason has to do with the threshold. The only defects found are typographical and editorial, not matters of legal meaning: in the new text of the timetable for Finance Contract II, the paragraph marker begins with a letter from another alphabet, and the name of the same paragraph in Annex A appears once as „primul an de exploatare” and twice as „primul an de funcționare”, the first year of operation in two different wordings. Neither changes the outcome: the amended paragraph is identified by its number and by the title in brackets, and the 15-month period is the same in all three. The six amendments fit together, the indicative dates add up on calculation, and the references to the articles of Finance Contract III, checked against the structure of the letter, each have a counterpart.
What should be changed
- The decision should say from what date the amendment produces effects, or should require the Bank’s confirmation to be published. Today the effect of the whole act hangs on a confirmation that may come by electronic mail and that nobody publishes. A paragraph obliging the Ministry of Finance to communicate the date, in a press release or on its own website, would make the deadlines verifiable without a request for public information.
- The causes of the delay should enter the act, not merely the explanatory memorandum. „Certain delays in the implementation of the projects” says nothing. If the reason is expropriation, redesign, a dispute or the contractor’s capacity, naming it in the preamble would allow both Parliament and the public to follow whether the second extension was avoidable.
- The indicative dates should be accompanied by the rule that produces them, in the very sentence in which they appear. Written as in the present text, „indicatively, 31 December 2028” is read by most people as a deadline. The wording ought to show that the deadline is 15 months from the completion of the civil works and that the date in brackets is merely its illustration against the current calendar.
- A consolidated text of the three contracts should be published after each amendment. Today, anyone wanting to know the timetable in force for a single contract has to gather three issues of the Official Gazette of Romania: the approving law, the decision of 4 November 2025 and the present one. By the third amendment, the exercise becomes impracticable for anyone who is not a lawyer.
- The link between the contracts and the calendar of the facility should be dealt with expressly. If the completion of the works runs past the deadline of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the act that extends the deadline is precisely the place to say what happens to the part of the financing affected and from what sources it is covered. Otherwise the extension solves the contractual problem and leaves the budgetary one unsolved.
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. 829 of 30 September 2026, pages 3-5 16 pages PDF, 315 KB the act starts on page 3
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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.