In brief
- The recreational fishing permit is issued annually and online, through a software application of the National Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture. Order no. 260/2026 replaces the 2017 rules and applies from 7 September 2026, across the whole country except the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve.
- Anyone fishing on waters that are not entrusted to an association fills in a catch record after every outing and sends it to the Agency by 31 December. Anyone who does not send it gets no permit the following year.
- The order sets no fee, but neither does it repeat the 2017 formula under which the permit was issued „without the levying of taxes and fees”. The same formula also disappeared from the fisheries law, in 2024.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 754 of 7 September 2026
In force from: 7 September 2026, the date of publication
From 7 September 2026, the recreational fishing permit is issued online, and anyone fishing on waters administered directly by the State has to note their catches on a record sheet and send it in by 31 December. The Ministry of Agriculture has published Order no. 260/2026, signed by interim minister Tánczos Barna, which repeals Order no. 60/2017 and rewrites the conditions under which a person may cast a line into a river, a reservoir, the Danube or the Black Sea. It is the second act this year through which the ministry rearranges the fishing rules, after the one that set out where commercially caught fish may be landed and sold.
The recreational fishing permit is the personal document, in your name, that gives you the right to fish with a rod or a spinning rod in the country’s natural waters. It is not to be confused with the commercial fishing authorisation, which is a different thing and is paid for. The natural waters are divided into two categories, and everything else in the order follows from that: some areas are entrusted by contract to angling associations, others remain under the direct administration of the National Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture, which the order calls simply „the Agency”. The Danube with its branches and the Black Sea fall into the second category.
If you want to fish on a water contracted by an association, the permit is issued by the Agency, but the association hands it to you. If you want to fish on the Danube, at sea or on a water that is not under contract, the permit is both issued and handed to you directly by the Agency. In both cases, the order says in Article 3 that issuance takes place „anual, prin intermediul unui soft informatic, online”, annually, through a software application, online. The models in Annex no. 4 show three types of permit, one each for contracted waters, for the Danube and for the Black Sea, each with surname, first name, personal identification number, validity and a QR code. The permit states that it must be carried together with the identity document with which it was issued.
The novelty that touches the ordinary angler most directly is the catch record. It forms part of the permit and is filled in after every outing, for each area, with the date, the place, the species, the quantity in kilograms and the quantity released back into the water. The „quantity released” box carries a footnote referring to the legal limit of 5 kilograms per day. The record is sent to the Agency by 31 December of the year, and Article 3(4) says directly what happens otherwise: failure to send it „duce la imposibilitatea obținerii unui nou permis de pescuit recreativ pentru anul următor”, makes it impossible to obtain a new recreational fishing permit for the following year. On contracted waters, the reporting is done by the association, by 28 February of the following year.
For associations, the order builds a competition. Anyone who wants a ten year contract files at the Agency’s headquarters an application with the area delimited by geographical coordinates and eleven documents, from the certificate issued by the registry of the district court to the tax certificates, the list of vehicles and boats, the list of employees with studies in the field and the list of those authorised for armed guarding. On top of that comes a ten year management plan, which not just any research institute may now write: the order requires it to come from an institute or a research station under the „Gheorghe Ionescu-Șișești” Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences and entered in the Register of Potential Contractors. Applications are scored on a 100 point grid, and below 50 points the application is rejected.
What it changes in practice
For the angler who goes out to the dam on a Saturday, the immediate effect is that the permit is obtained from a screen, not from a counter, and that a reporting duty appears which he did not previously have. Until now, the catch situation was collated by the association and sent in by it. From 7 September 2026, the angler on non-contracted waters answers for his own record, and the sanction is not a fine, but the loss of the right to take a permit next year.
The text itself contains no sanctions, and it could not: the fines sit in the Law on fishing and on the protection of the living aquatic resource no. 176/2024. There, in Article 51, recreational fishing by persons who do not hold the permit or do not carry it with them is sanctioned with a fine of 1,000 to 1,500 lei. The same applies to exceeding the catch limit, which in Article 30(2) is a maximum of 5 kilograms of fish per day in hill and lowland waters, on the Danube, in the Delta and in maritime waters, or a single specimen if that one weighs more than 5 kilograms. In mountain waters with salmonids the limit is 10 specimens per day. Fishing during the closed season is in another category: 6,000 to 10,000 lei and the withdrawal of the permit for 120 days.
On contracted waters, the person who can ask you for your permit and draw up your offence report is not necessarily a State inspector. Article 15 of the order says that associations exercise their guarding „prin personal angajat specializat, atestat și avizat pentru paza înarmată, împuternicit să constate și să sancționeze contravențiile piscicole”, through specialised employed staff, certified and authorised for armed guarding, empowered to establish and sanction fisheries offences. It is not an innovation of the order: Article 58(1) of Law no. 176/2024 puts the employed staff of associations on the same list as police officers, gendarmes and Environmental Guard commissioners, and Article 29(6) and (7) gives them a uniform, a badge and guarding weapons.
For associations, the effects are of another kind. Those that already have contracts under way lose nothing now: Article 13 says that these produce effects until the term set in the contract. But at the next round two new conditions come into play. The first, affiliation to a national federation of public utility status, entered among the eligibility criteria in Annex no. 2, which means that failing it leads straight to rejection. The second, the management plan written by an institute under the Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, that is from a very short list of suppliers. To these are added the reporting duties: the summary statement of anglers and the trial balance, 30 days after each half year, that is by 30 July and by 30 January, on pain of termination by operation of law.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Order no. 60/2017, signed by Petre Daea, was a short text, of nineteen articles and four annexes. The new one also has nineteen articles, but shifts the weight elsewhere. The first difference shows in the very first sentence of each. In 2017, Article 1 said that the permit was issued „fără perceperea de taxe și tarife”, without the levying of taxes and fees. In 2026, the formula is missing altogether, and no article replaces it with another. Nor does the order set a fee, so today the permit remains free of charge, but the written guarantee has gone.
The scoring grid, the one that decides who gets the ten year contracts, has been rearranged as well. The old version gave the number of members up to 25 points out of 100, the management plan 40, and technical and professional capacity 35. Today the members are worth at most 15, the management plan stays at 40, and technical capacity rises to 45. Ten points have moved from the size of the association towards its equipment and its people.
Inside those 45 points, a single line explains almost all the movement. Staff authorised for armed guarding was worth 6 points in 2017 and is worth 14 in 2026. It is the largest single line in the whole grid, larger than the plan of measures for protecting the resource, which takes 10 points, and than the sizing of the permissible catch, which takes 7. Over the same period, staff with studies in the fisheries field has come down from 9 points to 6. In other words, in 2017 people with a specialist education were worth more than guards, and in 2026 the guards are worth more than double them.
The rest of the changes are procedural. The minimum threshold of 50 points is new, in 2017 there was none. The eliminatory criteria have been taken out of the grid and gathered in a separate annex, with six items. The reporting deadlines have moved: associations used to send the catch situation by 31 January and the nominal lists quarterly, now they send the catches by 28 February and the summary statement every half year. Restocking may now also be done with eyed eggs, not only with fry. And the 2017 provision which said explicitly that an angler not affiliated to an association could fish on contracted waters, subject to the association’s own rules, no longer appears in the new text.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The online permit takes the trip to the counter and the opening hours of the branch out of the equation. For anyone living far from an Agency office, it is the difference between an hour and a day.
- The catch record produces, for the first time, data collected directly from the individual angler, not only figures collated by associations. Without them, the annual fishing capacity remains an estimate.
- The 50 point threshold and the separate list of eliminatory criteria make the assessment more predictable than the 2017 grid, where the eliminatory conditions were mixed in among the scored ones.
- The restocking duty can also be met with eyed eggs, which are cheaper and easier to transport than fry, so a small association has a way of carrying it through.
- Contracts under way are not broken. Whoever holds an allocated area today keeps it until the term set in the contract.
What remains a problem
- The software application through which the permit is issued has no start date in the text, and applications filed until then are left without a written procedure. The old order, which described the laminated permit, is repealed from 7 September 2026.
- The deadline of 31 December for the catch record falls on the very last day of the period reported. Anyone fishing between Christmas and New Year has to send the record on the same day they get back from the water.
- Nowhere does it say how much the permit costs. Nor that it is free. The 2017 formula was taken out, and the reader is left to infer from the silence.
- The management plan can come only from institutes in a single network, that of the Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences. The price of such a document is not public, and the association has no alternative.
- The criterion of affiliation to the „national federation of public utility status, representative at national and international level” names no entity and refers to no register, even though failing it leads to the rejection of the application.
Practical advice
- First check which category the water you fish on falls into. If it is an area contracted by an association, you take the permit from the association and you follow its rules. If it is the Danube, the sea or a water not under contract, you ask the Agency directly for the permit.
- Keep the catch record up to date, do not fill it in from memory in December. The order requires it to be completed after every outing, and next year’s permit depends on it, not a fine you might contest.
- Note down the fish you release back into the water as well. The box exists and is filled in if the specimen was not kept or if the limit of 5 kilograms per day was exceeded.
- Carry the permit together with the identity document with which it was issued. The model in the annex says so explicitly, and not having the permit on you is sanctioned in the same way as not having one at all, with 1,000 to 1,500 lei.
- If you are a member of an association and want to fish on another association’s water, ask whether there is a reciprocity agreement. The order requires it to be concluded in writing between the two associations, so it either exists or it does not, it is not assumed.
- If you are on the board of an association, put 30 July and 30 January in your calendar. The summary statement of anglers and the half-yearly trial balance are filed within 30 days of the end of the half year, and a delay brings termination of the contract by operation of law.
Frequently asked questions
From when do the new rules apply?
How much does the recreational fishing permit cost?
How long is the permit valid?
What do I risk if I fish without a permit?
How many fish may I take home?
What happens if I do not send in the catch record?
Who can ask me for my permit in the field?
Does anything change in the Danube Delta?
I am a member of an association. Do I have to do anything now?
Do the associations’ current contracts remain valid?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Annex no. 3, the scoring bands overlap. For equipment, an association with exactly 3 cars falls both into the band „3-5”, which brings 7 points, and into the band „1-3”, which brings 3. For guarding staff, two people per fishing area fall both into „2-4/zonă de pescuit”, with 9 points, and into „1-2/zonă de pescuit”, with 4. The difference is 4 and 5 points respectively, on a grid where Article 7(3) gives the ten year contract to the highest score, and the admission threshold is 50. Two panels reading the same documentation in good faith can arrive at different totals. The remaining lines of the grid are built correctly, with thresholds that do not touch: „peste 2”, „2”, „1”, „fără”, that is over 2, 2, 1, none.
- Annex no. 2, criterion 5 is worded the other way round from the rest. The five neighbouring criteria describe situations that must be true: the association is lawfully established, it is affiliated, it has no debts, it is entered in the Single Register. Criterion 5 describes a situation that must be false: „Asociația a deținut în trecut un contract pentru utilizarea resurselor acvatice vii în scop recreativ reziliat din motive imputabile acesteia.”, the association has previously held a contract for the use of living aquatic resources for recreational purposes that was terminated for reasons attributable to it. The „Da” and „Nu” columns nowhere show which answer passes. Read together with Article 6(3), which says that „neîndeplinirea unui criteriu de eligibilitate atrage după sine respingerea solicitării”, failure to meet an eligibility criterion entails the rejection of the application, the literal result is that an association with no terminated contract in its past does not meet the criterion and must be rejected. The intention is visible from Article 5(c), which requires proof of the contrary, but the annex says something other than the article.
Editorial analysis
The most important change in this order is one you do not see when you read it, because it consists of a sentence that is missing. Order no. 60/2017 said, in Article 1, that the permit is issued „fără perceperea de taxe și tarife”, without the levying of taxes and fees. The formula was not a generosity of the ministry, it came from Article X of Law no. 1/2017 on the elimination of certain taxes and fees, which had amended Article 23 of Emergency Ordinance no. 23/2008 precisely in order to remove the permit fee. Fisheries Law no. 176/2024 repealed the provisions on the living aquatic resource in that ordinance and took over almost word for word the definition of recreational fishing, in Article 29(1), without the five words about taxes. Now the order has removed them too. At the same time, Article 18(1) of the new law sets up a Fund for the development of the fisheries sector financed, among other things, from „contravaloarea taxelor de eliberare a avizelor, licențelor, autorizațiilor, permiselor și redevențelor”, the value of the fees for issuing approvals, licences, authorisations, permits and royalties, without distinguishing between commercial and recreational permits. Today the permit remains free of charge, because nobody has set one. But the framework that made the exemption compulsory was dismantled in two stages, in 2024 and in 2026, and nothing in the current texts prevents a government decision from setting a fee tomorrow.
The second observation comes from the arithmetic of the grid. The minimum score of 50 is new, and the structure it sits on makes it less selective than it looks. The number of members brings at most 15 points, technical capacity 45, the management plan 40. A newly established association, a „start-up” in the language of the annex, automatically falls into the „up to 1,000 members” category and gets 5 points. If it has its equipment and its people at maximum, it adds 45 and reaches exactly 50, that is it passes the threshold without a single point on the management plan, the document that describes what it actually intends to do with the fish. Symmetrically, an association with more than 5,000 members and a flawless plan makes 55 without a single car and without a single guard. The threshold can be reached from both extremes, and within those 45 technical points, a single line, staff authorised for armed guarding, is worth 14. That is more than the plan of measures for protecting the resource, which takes 10, more than the sizing of the permissible catch, which takes 7, and more than twice all the employees with studies in the fisheries field put together, who take 6. In 2017 the ratio was the other way round: 6 points for guarding, 9 points for studies. An order that sets out in its preamble to ensure „the protection and conservation of the living aquatic resources” gives its highest score to the capacity to guard the water, not to the capacity to understand it.
The third observation concerns time, in both directions. Law no. 176/2024 entered into force on 6 June 2024 and gave the ministry, in Article 60, a deadline of 180 days to harmonise the secondary legislation. The deadline expired on 3 December 2024. The order appeared on 7 September 2026, that is 643 days later, during which the 2017 order continued to apply, exactly as the transitional rule provided. The deadlines the order imposes on its addressees, by contrast, are tight and unevenly distributed. The individual angler sends the catch record by 31 December, that is on the last day of the period he is reporting, with zero days of leeway, and the sanction is automatic: he gets no further permit. The association reports the same catches by 28 February of the following year, with 59 days of leeway, and the sanction is discretionary, because Article 3(6) says that failure to send „poate conduce”, may lead, to termination. There is, however, one document about which the order does not hesitate: the half-yearly trial balance, an accounting document, whose non-submission brings termination „de drept”, by operation of law, under Article 16(2). In an act that declares in its preamble the aim of strengthening data collection, the accounting paperwork is protected more firmly than the data about the fish.
It is also worth saying that the reference to Law no. 333/2003 on the guarding of premises, which is surprising in an order about fishing rods, is not new: it appears in identical form in the preamble of the 2017 order as well. Article 17 of that law lists hunting and fishing grounds among the assets whose guarding „se asigură de către operatorii economici de profil”, is ensured by the economic operators in the field. The wording is questionable when applied here, because an association of recreational anglers is a non-profit organisation, not an economic operator. Yet it is on this basis that the order builds the best scored line in the grid.
What should be changed
- State in the order whether the permit is free of charge. A single sentence in Article 3 would close the discussion for hundreds of thousands of people and would spare the Agency the questions at the start of every season.
- Close the bands in the scoring grid. „3-5” and „1-3” cannot coexist, nor can „2-4/area” and „1-2/area”. Worded as „over 5”, „4-5”, „2-3”, „1”, they give the same score in any panel, and challenges over points disappear.
- Correct criterion 5 in Annex no. 2 and mark the answer that passes. Reworded as „The association has not had a contract terminated for reasons attributable to it”, the criterion reads like the other five and no longer contradicts Article 5(c).
- Name the entity in the affiliation criterion or publish the list of federations that meet the condition. An eliminatory criterion that does not say whom you have to affiliate with leaves the admission decision to the panel’s discretion.
- Move the catch record deadline to 31 January of the following year. It would also cover outings in the last week of the year and would bring the individual angler’s leeway closer to the 59 days the association has.
- Announce the date from which the software application works and the regime of applications until then. The 2017 order, with its laminated permit, is repealed from 7 September 2026, so between the repeal and the launch of the software there is no written procedure.
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. 754 of 7 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 270 KB the act starts on page 2
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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.