In brief

  • 1,100,000 doses of vaccine for sheep and goats, received free of charge from the European Commission. The annex to the decision has two items: 800,000 doses of JOVIVAC, against sheep pox and goat pox, and 300,000 doses of PESTEVAC, against peste des petits ruminants. Both at USD 0.25 a dose, so USD 275,000, that is 1,312,135 lei at the National Bank of Romania exchange rate of 12 October 2026, of 4.7714 lei to the dollar.
  • The farmer does not pay for the dose. The doses become private property of the State and pass into the administration of the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority (ANSVSA), which then distributes them to the county sanitary veterinary and food safety directorates and to the one for the Bucharest municipality. The decision places no obligation and no cost on the holding.
  • The 800,000 doses against sheep pox and goat pox cover 6.5% of the national flock. Romania had 12.227 million sheep and goats on 1 December 2025, according to the National Institute of Statistics. The European rule for emergency vaccination against sheep pox and goat pox requires at least 95% of holdings and 80% of the target animals, that is around 9.8 million doses. The donation covers 8% of that requirement; the rest has to be bought.
  • The 300,000 doses against peste des petits ruminants go to Constanța and Tulcea, the only area where the plan approved by the European Commission provides for both vaccines. Tulcea alone had 355,212 sheep and goats at the end of August 2026, so more animals than the whole batch of doses.
Act: Government Decision no. 840 of 23 October 2026 on the acceptance by the Romanian State of the donation of certain movable goods, with a view to carrying out vaccination against infection with peste des petits ruminants virus and against sheep pox and goat pox, and on the transfer of those goods into the administration of the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 889 of 23 October 2026, page 6
In force from: 23 October 2026, the date of publication, since it is a Government Decision

The Government signed and published on the same day, 23 October 2026, the decision by which the Romanian State accepts from the European Commission a batch of 1,100,000 doses of vaccine for sheep and goats. It is the second act in a week on the supply of vaccine to the sanitary veterinary directorates, after ANSVSA Order no. 968/2026, which gave them the right to buy, during epidemics, vaccines not authorised in the European Union. The difference is that nothing is being bought this time: the doses come from the European Union vaccine bank, and the State receives them without payment.

Peste des petits ruminants and sheep pox and goat pox are two different viral diseases, both without treatment and both notifiable. The first hits sheep and goats with fever, nasal and ocular discharge, lesions in the mouth and diarrhoea, and in an unprotected flock it can kill half or more of the sick animals. The second produces nodules on the skin, on the eyelids and on the udder, cuts milk yield, ruins the hide and kills young lambs. Neither is transmissible to humans, but both close export markets: the European Commission has extended until 31 December 2026 the ban on moving sheep and goats out of Romania, after the sheep pox and goat pox outbreaks confirmed in the summer and autumn of 2026 in Constanța, Tulcea, Vâlcea, Gorj, Mureș and Iași.

How close the diseases are can be read from the plan itself. Sheep pox and goat pox is present across the whole country, which is why the vaccine against it was requested for the entire territory. Peste des petits ruminants is treated as a Dobrogea problem: the action plan that the European Commission approved in September 2026 provides for vaccination against it only in Constanța and Tulcea, while the rest of the country keeps its disease-free status. Hence the proportion between the two items in the annex, 800,000 against 300,000.

On 29 October the ANSVSA put every sheep and goat on pox vaccination: the order does not say who pays.

What it changes in practice

The decision does three things, all of them on the property side and none on the side of the farmer’s obligations.

First, it accepts the donation. Article 1 accepts for the Romanian State the goods listed in the annex, with a total market value of 1,312,135 lei, and Article 2 leaves ANSVSA to complete the acceptance formalities on behalf of the State. A Government Decision was needed precisely because of the amount: Article 291(1)(b) of the Administrative Code requires a Government Decision for the acceptance of donations of movable goods whose market value exceeds 500,000 lei. Here the value is 2.6 times the threshold. Below 500,000 lei, acceptance would have been settled at the level of an order, without the Government.

Then, it moves the doses into the assets of the State. Article 3(1) says that the goods become private property of the State and are transferred into the administration of ANSVSA, to be used by the county sanitary veterinary and food safety directorates and by the one for the Bucharest municipality. The legal chain runs through Article 362(1) and (3) of the Administrative Code, which extends to goods in the private domain the rules written for the transfer into administration of goods in public ownership, and through Article 299 of the same code, which is the basis on which the right of administration is established by Government Decision. Article 3641(1) completes the list of ways in which the right of private ownership may be exercised, and the act picks administration out of that list.

Finally, it ties the handover to a handover report. Article 3(2) provides that the handover takes place on the date the handover report is signed. The moment is fixed, the deadline is not: the act does not say by when that report has to be signed.

The annex also has a function that the act does not name. Article 1,011(1) of the Civil Code requires authentic form for a donation, on pain of absolute nullity, and paragraph (3) requires the donated movable goods to be listed and valued in a written instrument, also on pain of nullity. The table setting out the product name, the number of doses, the unit price and the value in lei is precisely that instrument. Paragraph (4) of the same article, which allows a manual gift for tangible movable goods worth up to 25,000 lei, cannot possibly apply here: the value is more than 52 times that ceiling.

For the sheep and goat farmer the practical effect is single and indirect: the doses that the veterinarian will bring to the sheepfold exist, they belong to the State and they are not invoiced to him. The act asks nothing of him, gives him no deadline and changes none of his identification, movement or notification obligations.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until 23 October 2026 the doses had been requested, promised on paper and released in Brussels, but the Romanian State held no title to them. ANSVSA had asked the European Commission, on 21 September 2026, for as many doses as possible from the European vaccine bank, and the Commission activated the banks on 8 October. The campaign had been announced to start by 1 October 2026 at the latest, depending on when the doses arrived. The decision closes that gap between announcement and ownership: from the date of publication the batch belongs to the State and can be distributed.

The supply route has changed too. On 16 October 2026, ANSVSA Order no. 968/2026 opened up for the sanitary veterinary directorates the possibility of buying, during epidemics, vaccines that hold no marketing authorisation in the European Union. That was a purchasing solution, with public money. A week later, the same requirement also gets a free solution, from the European reserve. The two instruments do not cancel each other out, they add up: 1.1 million doses arriving free of charge and the rest left to be bought.

What has not changed is the export regime. The European Commission’s ban on moving sheep and goats out of Romania stays in force until 31 December 2026, and the decision does not touch it. Vaccination is the condition the plan sets for unblocking exports, not the effect of this act, and in the area where vaccination against peste des petits ruminants is carried out, exports will be possible only to those third countries that accept animals from vaccinated zones.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • Zero cost. 1,100,000 doses with a market value of 1,312,135 lei enter the assets of the State without payment, so with no budget line and no procurement procedure.
  • The valuation can be checked down to the last leu. USD 0.25 a dose, at an exchange rate of 4.7714 lei to the dollar, gives 1.19285 lei a dose, and the two items, 954,280 and 357,855 lei, add up exactly to the total in Article 1.
  • Both vaccines come in the same batch, which makes the differentiated scheme in the plan possible: sheep pox and goat pox across the whole country, peste des petits ruminants only in Dobrogea, where both diseases are present.
  • The annex with the product name, the number of doses, the unit price and the value satisfies the listing and valuation requirement of Article 1,011(3) of the Civil Code, so the donation has the written instrument that the law demands for it to be valid.
  • The transfer into administration goes straight to ANSVSA, with the purpose written into the act, so the county directorates need no further act in order to receive the doses.

What remains a problem

  • There is no handover deadline, although Article 299 of the Administrative Code, invoked in the preamble of the decision itself, requires one as a mandatory element of the act.
  • The act does not say which vaccine is for which disease. The trade names JOVIVAC and PESTEVAC are defined nowhere in the text, and the allocation emerges only by cross-reading with the plan approved by the European Commission.
  • There is neither a shelf life nor storage conditions set out for either item. With a live attenuated vaccine, the cold chain and the expiry date decide whether the doses are still usable when vaccination takes place.
  • Coverage is thin against the health target. 800,000 doses amount to 6.5% of the country’s 12.227 million sheep and goats and 8% of the roughly 9.8 million doses that the 80% coverage in the European emergency vaccination rule would require.
  • The 300,000 doses against peste des petits ruminants are fewer than the flock of a single county in the targeted area: Tulcea had 355,212 sheep and goats at the end of August 2026, and Constanța queues up behind it.
  • Nothing is said about the act of vaccination itself: who carries it out, in what time, at whose expense and with what records. The free dose for the farmer follows from an ANSVSA communication, not from the decision.

Practical advice

  1. Check before the team arrives that all animals are identified and correctly registered, with legible ear tags and an up-to-date headcount. A dose given to an animal that does not appear in the holding’s records cannot be entered against your holding, and vaccination coverage is calculated on registered animals.
  2. Ask your county sanitary veterinary directorate which scheme you fall under. In Constanța and Tulcea the plan provides for both vaccines, in the rest of the country only the one against sheep pox and goat pox. Do not assume you are getting both.
  3. Ask for the vaccination to be recorded in the holding’s documents and for written proof, with the date, the product and the number of animals. Vaccinated status matters later on for movement and for export, and an undocumented vaccination exists for nobody except you.
  4. The dose is not paid for. If you are asked for money for the dose itself, ask for the legal basis: the doses in this batch are the property of the State and were received without payment. Any discussion about labour costs is a separate matter, to be taken up with the county directorate.
  5. Do not move animals outside the restrictions and do not accept consignments unaccompanied by documents. Clandestine movements prolong the export ban for every farmer, you included.
  6. If you see fever, nasal or ocular discharge, lesions in the mouth, diarrhoea or nodules on the skin and on the udder, call the veterinarian at once. Both diseases are notifiable, and a delay of a few days changes the size of the outbreak and the size of the restriction zone.

Frequently asked questions

What is peste des petits ruminants?
A viral disease of sheep and goats, with fever, nasal and ocular discharge, ulcerative lesions in the oral cavity, diarrhoea and pneumonia. There is no treatment, and in an unprotected flock mortality can exceed half of the sick animals. It is not transmissible to humans and does not affect the safety of meat and milk, but it is a notifiable disease and it triggers movement restrictions.
What is sheep pox and goat pox?
Also a viral disease of sheep and goats, with nodules on the skin, on the eyelids, on the udder and on the woolless areas, fever and a drop in milk production. The hide loses value, young lambs die, and the disease spreads fast through an unimmunised flock. This one too is not transmissible to humans and this one too has no treatment, vaccination being the only preventive measure.
How close are the diseases to Romania?
They are already in the country. Sheep pox and goat pox produced confirmed outbreaks in 2026 in Constanța, Tulcea, Vâlcea, Gorj, Mureș and Iași, and in Tulcea alone 355,212 sheep and goats were under monitoring at the end of August 2026, after four outbreaks were confirmed. For peste des petits ruminants, the plan approved by the European Commission treats Constanța and Tulcea as the risk area, while the rest of the country keeps its disease-free status.
What exactly was donated?
Two products, in a total of 1,100,000 doses: 800,000 doses of JOVIVAC, at USD 0.25 a dose, worth 954,280 lei, and 300,000 doses of PESTEVAC, at the same unit price, worth 357,855 lei. According to the allocation in the vaccination plan, the 800,000 doses are for sheep pox and goat pox and the 300,000 for peste des petits ruminants. That correspondence does not, however, appear in the text of the decision.
Who pays for the vaccine?
Nobody, at the level of the dose. The donor is the European Commission, through the European Union vaccine bank, and the goods enter the private property of the Romanian State free of charge. The decision provides for no contribution from the farmer and no expenditure from the State budget for the purchase of these doses. About the cost of administering the vaccine the act says nothing.
Is vaccination compulsory for the farmer?
Decision no. 840/2026 creates no vaccination obligation: it accepts a donation and transfers the goods into administration. The obligation, where it exists, comes from the sanitary veterinary programme and from the vaccination plan approved by the European Commission, not from this act. For the scheme that applies to you, your county sanitary veterinary directorate is the only source that can answer for your holding.
Why did a donation need a Government Decision?
Because of the value. Article 291(1)(b) of the Administrative Code requires a Government Decision for the acceptance of donations of movable goods with a market value of more than 500,000 lei, and here the value is 1,312,135 lei, that is 2.6 times the threshold. On top of that, the right of administration over goods in the private property of the State is established by Government Decision, under Article 299 read together with Article 362(3) of the same code.
How much do the 800,000 doses cover?
Roughly 6.5% of the national flock of sheep and goats, which stood at 12.227 million head on 1 December 2025, according to the National Institute of Statistics. The European rule for emergency vaccination against sheep pox and goat pox requires coverage of at least 95% of holdings, representing a minimum of 80% of the target animals, that is around 9.8 million doses. The donated batch covers about 8% of that requirement, the rest being left for purchase.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Article 3(2) does not contain the handover deadline required by Article 299 of the Administrative Code, which is invoked in the preamble of the decision itself. Article 299 sets out the mandatory minimum content of the act establishing the right of administration: the identification data of the asset and its inventory value, the purpose of the asset and the deadline for handing it over. The decision covers the first two elements, through the annex and through Article 3(1), but the third is missing: Article 3(2) says only that „predarea-primirea bunurilor prevăzute în anexă se face la data semnării procesului-verbal de predare-primire”, that is, the handover of the goods listed in the annex takes place on the date the handover report is signed, fixing the moment of transfer by reference to a future document with no cut-off date. A reader in good faith cannot establish by when that report has to be signed, and without a deadline the right of administration established by Article 3(1) has no due date for performance. The practical consequence is that a batch of vaccine with a limited shelf life, intended for a campaign announced for 1 October 2026, remains deliverable on a date that the act leaves entirely to the parties.

Editorial analysis

The act solves a real problem and solves it fast. Signed and published on the same day, 23 October 2026, it gives the State legal title over a batch that had been announced a month earlier and released in Brussels on 8 October. The arithmetic of the annex is also impeccable: USD 0.25 a dose, at an exchange rate of 4.7714 lei to the dollar, gives 1.19285 lei a dose, the two items are calculated without rounding, and their sum, 954,280 plus 357,855, closes exactly on the total of 1,312,135 lei in Article 1. The reverse conversion gives exactly USD 275,000, with no remainder. A financial annex that checks out down to the last ban is a rare sight.

The problem is not with the figures, it is with what goes unsaid. The first observation is one of proportion, and it does not show up if you read the act from beginning to end. The 800,000 doses against sheep pox and goat pox are intended for the whole country, and the national flock of sheep and goats stood at 12.227 million head on 1 December 2025, according to the National Institute of Statistics. That means coverage of 6.5%. The coverage required by European rules for emergency vaccination against this disease is, however, at least 95% of holdings and a minimum of 80% of the target animals, that is around 9.8 million doses. The donation therefore covers 8% of the regulatory requirement, and the gap of almost 9 million doses, at the unit price in the annex, is worth around 10.7 million lei, eight times the value of the donation. The batch received is not the vaccination campaign, it is the start of it, and an act that fails to say so leaves room for exactly the confusion that has already taken hold in the press, where the figure of 1.3 million circulates as a number of doses although it is the value in lei: the doses are 1.1 million.

The second observation comes from putting the annex next to the plan. The doses against peste des petits ruminants are earmarked, under the plan approved by the European Commission, only for Constanța and Tulcea. In Tulcea alone, ANSVSA was monitoring 355,212 sheep and goats at the end of August 2026, of which 301,270 sheep. The batch is not enough even for one of the two counties, before Constanța is taken into account. The split of the doses between the two counties thus becomes a decision with real consequences for who gets vaccinated and who does not, and the decision does not touch it, even though Article 3(1) takes it upon itself to fix the purpose of the goods.

The third observation is chronological. On 16 October 2026, ANSVSA Order no. 968/2026 gave the sanitary veterinary directorates the right to buy, during epidemics, vaccines not authorised in the European Union. On 23 October, the same authority receives 1.1 million free doses. Two instruments in seven days, for the same supply gap, and neither refers to the other. Taken separately, they look like two routine acts; taken together, they show how tight the vaccine market was at that moment.

What should be changed

  • Introducing the handover deadline. A paragraph saying that the handover takes place within X days of entry into force would turn an obligation with no due date into an enforceable one and would align the act with Article 299 of the Administrative Code. In practice, the county directorates would know from when they can ask for the doses, and any delay would become verifiable.
  • Naming the disease for each item in the annex. An extra column stating that JOVIVAC is for sheep pox and goat pox and PESTEVAC for peste des petits ruminants, plus the number of doses per animal, would make the annex self-contained. The practical effect: the reader could work out for himself how many animals the batch covers, and the figure in public circulation would no longer be confused with the value in lei.
  • Putting the shelf life and the storage conditions into the annex. With vaccines, the expiry date and the cold chain identify the goods just as much as the number of doses does, and Article 299 requires the identification data of the asset. With those in the act, it would be immediately visible whether a loose handover deadline puts the usability of the batch at risk.
  • Splitting the doses against peste des petits ruminants by county. If the purpose is already settled by the plan approved by the European Commission, writing it into the act would remove the later margin of appreciation and would show farmers in Constanța and Tulcea what they can expect, instead of leaving them to find out from press releases.
  • An express mention of the free-of-charge principle for the animal keeper. The act governs a gift of 1.3 million lei, and the ultimate recipient of that gift appears in the text only indirectly, through the county directorates. A sentence saying that the doses are administered with no cost of the dose for the keeper of the holding would spare the directorates from explaining it 41 times over and would cut short the arguments on the ground.

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. 889 of 23 October 2026, page 6 8 pages PDF, 80 KB the act starts on page 6

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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.