In brief
- The official list of the places where fish caught by commercial fishing may be brought ashore and sold for the first time grows from 195 to 204 entries. The nine new entries are numbered 196 to 204.
- Nine of the 13 entries touched by the order are on the reservoirs along the river Olt: Strejești, Drăgășani, Băbeni and Ionești. The rest are in Pitești, in the commune of Slătioara and at Galați, on the Danube.
- The order also repeals one entry in Annex no. 3 and one in Annex no. 4, without saying what they contained. Anyone reading only this act cannot find out what has been removed.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 721 of 28 August 2026
In force from: 28 August 2026
A professional fisherman cannot bring the catch ashore just anywhere and cannot sell it just anywhere. The permitted places are set out on a list kept by the Ministry of Agriculture, and that list has just grown by nine entries. Order no. 250/2026 of the acting Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development amends and supplements Order no. 5/2026 designating the landing points and the first-sale centres for catches of fish obtained by commercial fishing in natural aquatic habitats. It is the second act this summer to make a targeted change to the fishing regime, after the derogation allowing 400 specimens of asprete to be taken from the river Vâlsan. For recreational fishing the rules changed separately: MADR Order no. 260/2026 moves the permit online and introduces the catch record.
A landing point is the place where a commercial fisherman legally unloads the catch from the boat, and a first-sale centre is the place where that catch enters trade for the first time. Both are designated by ministerial order, in application of Article 40 of Law no. 176/2024 on fishing and on the protection of living aquatic resources. The point of the designation is that the list becomes exhaustive: what is not on it is not an authorised place.
The order has two articles and takes up a single page of the Official Gazette of Romania. All of its substance sits in four points: one that rewrites four existing entries, one that adds nine new entries and two that delete one entry each from two other annexes.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is the size of the list. The nine new entries are inserted after entry no. 195, so Annex no. 2 reaches 204 entries. That is an increase of 4.6% over the list from January.
The second effect is the geographical concentration. Six of the nine new entries are on reservoirs along the river Olt: two on Lake Strejești, at Verguleasa and at Teslui, one on Lake Drăgășani, at Vulturești, one on Lake Băbeni, at Galicea, and two on Lake Ionești, at Olanu and at Ionești. The other three lie away from the Olt: the commune of Slătioara, in Olt county, and two at Galați, one on the Danube at kilometre 155, in the area where it meets the Siret, and one in a shop in the city.
The third effect concerns the operators. The nine new entries are shared between four holders: the Verguleasa Industrial Fishermen’s Association, with three entries, the Romanian professional fishermen’s association „21 septembrie”, also with three, an authorised sole trader, with one, and the Auchan group, with two, one in the name of Auchan Galați and one in the name of Auchan România.
The fourth effect is the rewriting of four existing entries. Entries no. 1, 152, 153 and 188 are given new wording, published in full. Entry no. 1 is in the city of Pitești, inside the Trivale market, Argeș county. Entries no. 152 and 153 are on the right bank of Lake Strejești, at Voicești and at Drăgășani, and entry no. 188 on the right bank of Lake Drăgășani, at Prundeni, all three in Vâlcea county.
The fifth effect is that the order does not say what changed in those four entries. It publishes the new wording, not the difference, and the old wording is to be found only in Order no. 5/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 32 of 16 January 2026.
The sixth effect is the two repeals. In Annex no. 3, entry no. 5 is repealed, and in Annex no. 4, entry no. 20. The order gives neither the titles of those annexes nor the contents of the entries removed.
The seventh effect is a practical one: from 28 August, the holders of the nine new entries may lawfully use the designated places, while the two operators whose entries were repealed from Annexes nos. 3 and 4 no longer appear on the list.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The underlying list is seven months old. It was published on 16 January 2026 and now, in August, it receives nine new entries and four rewritings, that is 13 changes to 195 entries.
Who fits on the list has changed. Alongside the associations of commercial and industrial fishermen and an authorised sole trader, two entries belonging to a retail chain appear, one tied to the bank of the Danube at Galați and one to a shop in the city. The two are ticked in different columns of the table, so they do not have the same role.
The coverage of the banks has changed as well. The rewritten entries, 152, 153 and 188, are all on the right bank of Lakes Strejești and Drăgășani, while five of the six new entries on the Olt are on the left bank of those same lakes or of the ones upstream. In practice, the order fills in the other bank of lakes that were already on the list.
The structure of the underlying act has not changed. The annexes stay the same, the numbering continues and not one annex title is amended.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- Nine additional places mean a shorter journey from the fishing ground to the first lawful unloading point, on lakes where until now only one bank was designated.
- Each entry is described by holder, lake or locality, bank, landmark and county, so identification on the ground does not depend on interpretation.
- The list stays published in the Official Gazette of Romania, so a buyer of fish can check whether the goods come from a designated centre.
- Bringing in centres attached to shops shortens the chain between the fisherman and the shelf, with traceability preserved through the designation.
- The new entries continue the existing numbering, from 196 to 204, so references to the old list remain valid.
- The act has a single subject matter and two articles, which makes it easy for enforcement staff to apply.
What remains a problem
- The order repeals two entries without saying what they contained, and a reader of the Gazette cannot find out what has been removed.
- The four rewritten entries appear only in their new wording, with no indication of what exactly has been changed since January.
- The published tables carry no column headings, so what the ticks mean can be established only by opening the January order.
- The act has no separate date of entry into force and says nothing about catches in transit on the date of publication.
- The list is amended through piecemeal additions, with no consolidated version published, so a user has to read two acts to arrive at one list.
- There is no public reasoning for the choice of places, even though the report of the National Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture is mentioned in the preamble.
Practical advice
- If you fish commercially on Lakes Strejești, Drăgășani, Băbeni or Ionești, check the bank. New entries 196 to 201 concern, with a single exception, the left bank, while the rewritten ones, 152, 153 and 188, concern the right bank.
- Read the complete list in both acts. No consolidated version is published, so entries 1 to 195 are to be found in Order no. 5/2026, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 32 of 16 January 2026, and entries 196 to 204 in the present order.
- If you appear in Annex no. 3 or Annex no. 4 of the underlying order, check whether your entry is no. 5 or no. 20 respectively. Both are repealed as from 28 August.
- Before using a new point, check the exact name of the holder in the table. The designation is made in the name of a holder, not merely of a place, and at Galați two different entities of the same group appear.
- If you are a wholesale buyer or a processor, ask for the first-sale documents with the annex entry number stated on them. It is the simplest way of checking whether the centre was designated on the date of the transaction.
- If you want a new entry on the list, the starting point is the National Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture, which drew up the approval report for this order.
Frequently asked questions
How many entries does the list have now?
What is a landing point and what is a first-sale centre?
Which counties are covered by the new entries?
Can a fisherman land the catch somewhere other than the designated places?
What has been repealed from Annexes nos. 3 and 4?
Why does a retail chain appear on a fishing list?
Editorial analysis
It is a small act, and a properly made one. It has a clear subject matter, a single administrative addressee and a form that leaves no room for interpretation: every entry has a holder, a place, a bank, a landmark and a county. It contains no contradiction and no impossible deadline, and whoever has to apply it, the fisherman and the inspector, has exactly the information they need in front of them. Not everything published in the Official Gazette of Romania has to be complicated in order to be good.
What does not show when the list is read from top to bottom appears when you look at which bank the entries fall on. The three rewritten entries, 152, 153 and 188, are all on the right bank of Lakes Strejești and Drăgășani, in Vâlcea county. Five of the six new entries on the Olt are on the left bank of those same lakes or of the ones upstream, and three of them fall in Olt county. The order does not add places at random: it fills in the missing bank on four reservoirs strung along the same river, Băbeni, Ionești, Drăgășani and Strejești. Nine of the 13 entries touched concern this single corridor.
The second observation concerns what cannot be read from the act. The order repeals entry no. 5 in Annex no. 3 and entry no. 20 in Annex no. 4 without saying what they contained. On a list of authorised places, a repeal means that somebody leaves the market or that a point may no longer be used, and the Official Gazette of Romania publishes the effect without the object. The same goes for the four rewritten entries, which appear only in their new wording. The technique is standard, but the consequence is that this act, on its own, tells nobody what has actually changed.
The third comes from comparing the two published tables. They have five columns, of which the last two are marked with an X or a dash, and the column headings appear nowhere in the published text, because they sit in the annex being amended. A reader who opens the Gazette of 28 August can see that entry 203 is ticked in one column and entry 204 in the other, but cannot tell which one means landing point and which means first-sale centre. For an act that designates places and holders, this is the only piece of information that really matters.
What should be changed
- Repeating the table headings at each block of amended or inserted entries. It would cost two lines and would turn the published table into a document that can be read on its own, without the January order alongside it.
- Stating, on repeal, the content of the entry removed. The formula „numărul curent 5 se abrogă”, entry no. 5 is repealed, tells nobody which place and which holder disappear from the list.
- Publishing a consolidated version of the list after each amendment. The list is an instrument of control in the field, and it now exists in two separate acts, published seven months apart.
- A short public reasoning for the new entries. The report of the fisheries agency is invoked in the preamble, but its content is not published, even though it explains why these nine places in particular appear.
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. 721 of 28 August 2026 16 pages PDF, 116 KB the act starts on page 11
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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.