In brief
- The three regional hospitals are given new completion deadlines, two to three years later than the dates written into the contracts signed with the European Investment Bank. The Iași Regional Emergency Hospital and the one in Cluj now have 31 December 2029 as their deadline, and the Craiova hospital 31 May 2029. The original contracts said „2027” for Iași, „2026” for Cluj, with 2027 as the first year of operation, and „2026” for Craiova as well. Cluj loses the most, three full years, and the hospital’s first year of operation moves from 2027 to 2030.
- Who is affected. Romania, as Borrower, through the Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Health, as Promoter of the three projects, together with the National Agency for Health Infrastructure Development (ANDIS), which becomes the financial and technical contact point in all three contracts; the European Investment Bank (EIB); the firms bidding for the three construction sites, because any self-exclusion declared by a tenderer now reaches the Bank; and, at the end of the chain, patients in Moldavia, in north-western Transylvania and in Oltenia.
- The figures and the clauses that matter. The loans are unchanged: 250 million euro for Iași, 305 million for Cluj and 368 million for Craiova, 923 million euro in total, against a net cost of the three projects of roughly 1.38 billion euro. In exchange, two disbursement conditions disappear: the ceiling of 20% of the Credit that could be drawn without matching eligible expenditure, and the proof that at least 50% of the amounts previously disbursed had actually been paid. The deadline for submitting the project completion report loses its fixed date and becomes 21 months from completion of the works.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 864 of 15 October 2026, pages 2-8
In force from: 15 October 2026, the date of publication, because the decision does not provide for a later date
On 9 April 2026 the Ministry of Finance wrote to the European Investment Bank that the implementation of certain elements of the three regional hospital projects was running late, and asked for the contractual provisions on the project and on disbursements to be amended. The Bank’s answer took the form of an amendment letter signed in Luxembourg on 3 September 2026 and countersigned in Bucharest on 8 September by Florin-Alexandru Zaharia, state secretary. The Government approved it on 9 October, by Decision no. 814/2026, and the text reached the Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) on 15 October.
The letter does two things at once, and they pull in opposite directions. On one side it moves the deadlines: the construction sites gain another two to three years, and reporting to the Bank is relaxed accordingly. On the other side it tightens compliance: the contracts acquire a sanctions regime with four sources, a definition of illegal activities built on the European anti-money-laundering directives and on the PIF Directive, an illegality clause that allows the Bank to demand early repayment, and new declaration and information duties. Between these two movements, however, the two clauses that tied the money drawn to the money spent disappear.
For a reader following the three construction sites, that means this: the official timetable has moved, the amount borrowed has not, and the mechanism through which the Bank checked whether earlier tranches had been consumed on eligible expenditure no longer exists in written form.
On 16 October 2026 the Ministry of Health rewrote the rules on working time and on-call duty in public health units.
What it changes in practice
The completion deadlines move into 2029. The „Calendar” section of the Technical Description of each contract is rewritten. For Iași: the project began in 2020 and is estimated to be completed on 31 December 2029. For Cluj: the same date, plus the statement that 2030 will be the first year of operation of the new hospital. For Craiova: 31 May 2029.
The deadline for the project completion report stops being a calendar date. In Schedule A, section A.2, the deadline for sending the report becomes, for all three contracts, 21 months from the Project Completion Date. Previously, at least for Iași and Craiova, the table carried a calendar date: 1 January 2028 and 1 September 2028 respectively.
Two disbursement conditions are deleted. Paragraph (c) of Article 1.4.C, which applied to every tranche, is deleted in full from all three contracts. It said that the amount of the Credit drawn and the amount of the Loan outstanding, without matching eligible expenditure, could not together exceed 20% of the Credit. Article 1.4.D, devoted to the second and subsequent tranches, is likewise deleted in full, with renumbering of the articles and cross-references that follow. It required the Borrower, before each disbursement after the first, to prove in writing, five working days before the scheduled date, that at least 50% of all amounts previously disbursed had actually been paid for eligible project expenditure.
The sanctions regime is unified and widened. The definitions of „US Sanctions” and „US Sanctioned Persons” are removed from the Cluj and Craiova contracts, together with every reference to them. In their place comes a single definition of „Sanctions”, covering measures adopted by the United Nations, by the European Union, by the government of the United States, including the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and by the government of the United Kingdom, including the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation of His Majesty’s Treasury.
The Iași contract receives an illegality clause with immediate effect. Article 4.3.A(4) is rewritten: the moment it becomes aware of an Illegality Event, the Bank notifies the Borrower without delay and may, immediately, either suspend or cancel the undisbursed portion of the Credit, or demand early repayment of the Loan together with accrued interest and all other amounts, on the date it indicates in the notice. An Illegality Event means that it becomes unlawful in an applicable jurisdiction, or contrary to sanctions, for the Bank to perform its obligations under the contract or to fund or maintain the Loan.
The information duties expand. The Iași contract gains a new Article 6.9 on sanctions, under which the Borrower undertakes, and undertakes to secure the same from the Promoter, not to enter into business relations with sanctioned persons in connection with the project, not to use the proceeds of the Loan in a way that would breach sanctions, and not to fund payments under the contract with money coming from dealings with sanctioned persons. Article 6.10 gains the representation that neither the Borrower, nor the Promoter, nor any relevant person is a sanctioned person or is in breach of any sanction. Article 8.2 gains the duty to report any claim, action, proceeding, official notice or investigation concerning sanctions. And Article 8.1(c) gains the duty to inform the Bank of any self-exclusion declared by a tenderer, that is, any statement by a bidder that it finds itself in a situation of exclusion, before the contract is awarded, in accordance with the Bank’s Exclusion Policy.
Communication moves onto the Bank’s portal. Article 12.1 of the Iași contract is replaced in full. The EIB Group Client Portal becomes the preferred channel of communication, and messages sent by electronic mail or through the portal acquire the same evidential value as a hand-signed agreement. Notices sent by the Borrower by email must carry the contract number in the subject line and must be attached as an unalterable electronic image, in PDF or TIF format, of the signed document. Disbursement requests, revocations, deferments, cancellations, suspensions, interest revisions and prepayment notices must in addition be sent by registered letter, at the latest on the following working day, unless they carry a qualified electronic signature.
The contact points pass to ANDIS. In all three contracts the persons responsible for transmitting information change, and the institution named becomes the Ministry of Health together with the National Agency for Health Infrastructure Development, instead of the ministry alone, at the same address at 1 Piața Presei Libere, building B, 4th floor, sector 1, Bucharest.
The schedule containing the EURIBOR definition is replaced. The new schedule adds what happens if the reference rate becomes permanently unavailable: there apply, in order, the rate officially recommended by the working group on euro risk-free rates set up by the European Central Bank together with the European Supervisory Authorities and the European Commission, then the rate recommended by the European Money Markets Institute as administrator of EURIBOR, then by the competent authority under Regulation (EU) 2016/1011, then by the competent national authorities, then by the European Central Bank. If no replacement rate is officially recommended, EURIBOR becomes the Bank’s total cost of funding the tranche concerned, as determined by the Bank itself.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The timetables in the original contracts, published together with the laws approving them, said something else. The Technical Description of the Iași contract, approved by Law no. 285/2021, said that the project had begun in January 2020 and was estimated to be completed in 2027. The Cluj contract, approved by Law no. 113/2022 and published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 470 bis of 11 May 2022, said that the project had begun in May 2020, that it would be completed in 2026 and that 2027 would be the first year of operation. The Craiova contract, approved by Law no. 338/2022, said that preparation had begun in April 2020, that implementation was to start in 2022 and that completion was estimated for 2026 as well.
Measured from the last day of the year given in the old contract, the postponement is two years at Iași, that is 731 days, three years at Cluj, that is 1,096 days, and two years and five months at Craiova, that is 882 days. The first year of operation of the Cluj hospital moves by three years, from 2027 to 2030.
Reporting slips further still. At Iași the project completion report had a fixed deadline, 1 January 2028. With the new timetable and the new formula of 21 months from completion, it lands around 30 September 2031, that is 1,368 days later. At Craiova the fixed deadline was 1 September 2028; with completion on 31 May 2029, the report lands around 28 February 2031, 910 days later.
On the compliance side, the Iași and Cluj contracts lose the definition of „Criminal Offence”, and every reference to it is deemed replaced by a reference to „Illegal Activities”, a new term built on three legs: fraud, corruption, coercion, collusion or obstruction; money laundering, terrorist financing and tax crimes, as defined in the anti-money-laundering directives; and other illegal activities against the financial interests of the European Union, as defined in the PIF Directive. The Craiova contract already contained these notions, which is why it does not appear under this point.
The environmental definitions are replaced with environmental and social definitions in all three contracts, and the notion of „Social Matters” enters for the first time: working and labour conditions, occupational health and safety, the rights of vulnerable groups and of indigenous peoples, gender equality, public health, prevention of forced evictions and mitigation of the hardship caused by involuntary resettlement, stakeholder engagement.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The credits stay open. Without new deadlines, the delay on site would have collided with an expired contractual timetable, and an expired timetable is, in a loan contract, material for renegotiation under pressure, not a mere formality.
- The amount borrowed does not rise. The 923 million euro stay the same, so the postponement is not paid for, at least not through the principal, with additional public debt.
- The sanctions regime becomes a single one instead of two running in parallel. Until now the Cluj and Craiova contracts had a separate definition for US sanctions; now there is one notion, verifiable against the same criteria, for all four sources.
- The environmental duties acquire an explicit social dimension, with a list of eight items, from occupational health to involuntary resettlement. On a hospital site worth hundreds of millions of euro, that is not decoration.
- A tenderer’s self-exclusion reaches the Bank before the contract is awarded rather than afterwards. That is the only moment at which the information can still change the outcome of a tender.
- Communication through the portal and by electronic mail is given express evidential value, which shortens the journey of a disbursement request from several days of courier service to a few hours.
What remains a problem
- The two clauses that were deleted were the only ones tying the drawing of the money to the spending of it. The 20% ceiling and the 50% proof are replaced by nothing in the published text.
- The reporting deadline moves from a fixed date to a relative term. If the site slips once more, the project completion report slips automatically, without another government decision and without anyone having to ask for it.
- The amendment does not take effect on publication but from a date the public will not learn from the Official Gazette of Romania: the date on which the European Investment Bank confirms, including by electronic mail, that it has received the two signed originals.
- The published Romanian text names the same environmental definitions in two different ways in two consecutive sentences, and the new sub-paragraph added to Article 8.1 is announced under one number and reproduced under another. Both situations are set out below.
- Any breach of the letter, including a representation in it that becomes incorrect, incomplete or misleading in a material respect, constitutes an Event of Default under the finance contract. The letter is therefore not merely an act adjusting the timetable.
- The letter is governed by the law of Luxembourg, and the text in the Official Gazette of Romania is a translation. Where the two do not coincide, the text that decides is not the one the Romanian reader has in front of them.
Practical advice
- If your company is bidding for one of the three hospitals, bear in mind that a self-exclusion declared before the award reaches the European Investment Bank. Check the Exclusion Policy published on the Bank’s website beforehand, so that you know what falls into this category and what does not.
- If you already hold a contract or a subcontract on these sites, ask the contracting authority for the international sanctions clauses it will introduce into the supply chain. The new Article 6.9 of the Iași contract obliges the Borrower to ensure that the Promoter too does not enter into business relations with sanctioned persons, and the duty travels on down the chain.
- Do not treat the date of publication as the date of the change. The government decision enters into force on 15 October 2026, but the contractual amendments take effect from the Effective Date defined in the letter, that is, from the moment the Bank gives its confirmation. If you need certainty, ask the Directorate-General for International Financial Relations of the Ministry of Finance for that confirmation.
- If you follow the budget execution of the three projects, add to your checklist the ratio between the amounts disbursed and the eligible expenditure actually incurred. Until now that ratio was capped by contract; from now on it is not, so the only measurement left is the one published in the budget and in the execution reports.
- For the official completion dates, use the amended technical descriptions rather than press releases. The published text says 31 December 2029 for Iași and Cluj and 31 May 2029 for Craiova, and these are the only dates with contractual value.
- If you work in health administration and send information to the Bank, update your internal procedures to match the new Article 12.1: the contract number in the subject line, the signed document attached as an unalterable PDF or TIF, and, for notices subject to a deadline, a duplicate by registered letter on the following working day unless you use a qualified electronic signature.
Frequently asked questions
When will the regional hospitals in Iași, Cluj and Craiova open?
Is Romania borrowing extra money?
What did the 20% ceiling that disappears actually mean?
And the 50% proof?
From when do the amendments take effect?
Does this mean that US sanctions no longer apply at Cluj and Craiova?
What is the Bank’s Exclusion Policy and why does it appear here?
What does Romania risk if an Illegality Event occurs?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article 3(g) of the letter names the same three definitions in two different ways, in consecutive sentences, and the text defined does not match the text announced. The first sentence says that the definitions are replaced with the corresponding definitions of „Mediu” (Environment), „Aprobare de mediu și socială” (Environmental and Social Approval), „Pretenție de mediu sau socială” (Environmental or Social Claim) and „Legislație de mediu și socială” (Environmental and Social Legislation), „astfel cum sunt prezentate mai jos”, as set out below. The definitions set out below, however, carry different names: „Autorizație de mediu și socială” (Environmental and Social Permit), „Plângere de mediu sau socială” (Environmental or Social Complaint) and „Dreptul mediului și social” (Environmental and Social Law). The second sentence, which establishes which references are deemed replaced, uses the second series of names instead of the first. The result is that three terms declared to have been introduced have no definition anywhere, while three definitions that are introduced are not announced by the sentence ordering the replacement. The point applies to all three finance contracts and touches notions on which the Promoter’s environmental and social obligations depend.
- Article 3(q) announces a sub-paragraph (vi) and reproduces a text numbered (iv), in a position that is already occupied. The published text says that a new sub-paragraph (vi) is added to Article 8.1(c), „Informații privind proiectul” (Project information), of Finance Contract I, and the content reproduced begins with „(iv) orice autoexcludere declarată de un ofertant”, any self-exclusion declared by a tenderer. In the finance contract for the Iași Regional Emergency Hospital, approved by Law no. 285/2021, Article 8.1(c) has five sub-paragraphs, from (i) to (v), and sub-paragraph (iv) is the duty to inform the Bank of any failure to comply with applicable environmental law. From the published text it cannot be established whether the new duty is added after (v), as sub-paragraph (vi), or whether it takes the place of the existing sub-paragraph (iv), in which case the duty to report environmental non-compliance would disappear without the letter expressly repealing it.
Editorial analysis
The amendment solves a real problem, and it solves it in the only way it could be solved: the construction sites are not finished, the contractual timetable said otherwise, and a loan contract with expired deadlines becomes, at the first refused disbursement, a far more expensive problem than a negotiated postponement. Three years lost at Cluj, two at Iași and two years and five months at Craiova are acknowledged in writing, with calendar dates rather than formulas. Up to that point the act is sound and useful.
The problem starts with the price of the postponement, and the price lies in two deleted clauses, not in figures. Article 1.4.C(c) capped at 20% of the Credit the advance the Bank tolerated without matching eligible expenditure, while Article 1.4.D made every disbursement after the first conditional on proof that half the money previously drawn had already gone into eligible expenditure. Across the three credits combined, the 20% ceiling meant roughly 184.6 million euro, the upper limit of the money that could sit in the treasury without cover in invoices. Both clauses are deleted in full, and the letter puts nothing in their place. The mechanism through which the Bank checked the spending pace of the loan disappears at the precise moment when the spending pace has proved to be the problem.
The second shift of weight becomes visible if points (i) and (j) are read together. The first removes from the Cluj and Craiova contracts the definitions of „US Sanctions” and „US Sanctioned Persons”, together with every reference to them, which at first glance looks like a relaxation. The second introduces a single definition of „Sanctions”, with four sources: the United Nations, the European Union, the government of the United States and the government of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom did not figure at all until now. The deletion of US sanctions is therefore, in fact, an extension, and anyone who reads point (i) alone understands the exact opposite. On top of that come, in the Iași contract, a compliance Article 6.9, a new representation in 6.10, an information duty in 8.2 and the illegality clause in 4.3.A(4), which allows the Bank to demand early repayment immediately. The sum of these movements is a transfer of control: the Bank gives up checking the money spent and gains the power to check the partners it is spent with.
The third observation concerns deadlines and can be verified on a calendar. At Iași the project completion report had a fixed date: 1 January 2028. The new formula, 21 months from project completion, applied to the new deadline of 31 December 2029, carries it to around 30 September 2031, that is 1,368 days later. At Craiova the fixed date was 1 September 2028; with completion on 31 May 2029, the report lands around 28 February 2031, 910 days later. The substantive difference, however, lies in the change in the nature of the deadline rather than in the size of the shift. A fixed date moves only through a new amendment, approved by government decision and published in the Official Gazette of Romania. A relative term moves on its own, together with the construction site, without any act and without anyone finding out. If completion slips another year, the report slips another year, and the public has no way of seeing it except through budget execution.
There is also a drafting matter that does not belong in the errata but deserves saying. Point (f) defines the „Illegality Event” by reference to „articolul 43.A(4)”, an article that exists in none of the contracts; point (n), in the same letter, amends Article 4.3.A(4) and defines precisely that term there, so the meaning is recovered without doubt. In the same way, the amended timetable of the Cluj contract announces that „2030 va fi primul an de funcționare al noii REH”, the year the new REH is to start operating, leaving an English abbreviation untranslated in a Romanian text that everywhere else writes „Spitalul Regional de Urgență”, Regional Emergency Hospital. Neither point changes any legal solution, but both show that the published translation was not reread term by term, and the two points in the errata section above come from the same place.
What should be changed
- The advance ceiling should be replaced, not merely deleted. If the old 20% mechanism and the 50% proof were no longer workable on a site running late, their place could have been taken by quarterly reporting of cumulative eligible expenditure, without any blocking effect on disbursement. In practice, the Bank and the Ministry of Finance would keep the measurement that flagged the problem, without stopping the financing at the moment it flags it.
- The deadline for the project completion report should stay a calendar date. A fixed date, recalculated now to 30 September 2031 for Iași and Cluj and 28 February 2031 for Craiova, would mean that any future slippage required a public act. Subsequent postponements would thus become visible in the Official Gazette of Romania, not only in the correspondence between the ministry and the Bank.
- The date from which the amendment takes effect should be made public. The decision approves a change that enters into force on a date confirmed by electronic mail between the Bank and the ministry. A simple notice on the Ministry of Finance website, giving the date of confirmation, would settle the matter. Anyone opening a clause would then know whether they have the old version or the new one in front of them.
- The published translation should be checked against the defined terms before approval. The two inconsistencies in the errata section are repaired by one hour spent going through the list of capitalised terms. A text in which every defined term has a single name and every sub-paragraph a single number applies itself without interpretation.
- The explanatory memorandum of the decision should include the disbursement record to date. The Government is approving the postponement of a project worth 923 million euro without the published act saying how much has been drawn and how much spent from each credit. The reader could then judge whether the new deadlines are realistic, instead of receiving them as the simple consequence of a letter dated 9 April 2026.
- The laws approving the three contracts should provide for annual reporting to Parliament. The contracts were approved by law, while the amendments are approved by government decision, on the basis of art. 6 para. (2) of each law. The body that authorised the loans would learn of the postponements by some route other than the Official Gazette of Romania, and a three-year delay would reach debate rather than only the archive.
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. 864 of 15 October 2026, pages 2-8 16 pages PDF, 106 KB the act starts on page 2
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