In brief
- Four orders between 15 and 19 years old ceased to be in force on 14 September 2026. They set out how an RSVTI operator is authorised, how specialist technical staff are certified and how trainers in the ISCIR field are certified. Their place has been taken by three new technical prescriptions, PT CR 3-2025, PT CR 4-2025 and PT CR 5-2025, in force since 12 August 2026.
- An authorisation obtained under the old rules is not lost. An RSVTI operator, whether an individual or a company, keeps the right to work until the document in their hand expires. A specialist technical staff certificate lasts 2 years from issue or from the last renewal, and a trainer certified under the 2007 order has until 12 August 2028 to move to the new certificate. What changes is what you do at renewal, not what you hold now.
- Who is affected and what to watch: RSVTI operators, companies authorised as RSVTI operators, specialist technical staff, trainers, approved vocational training providers and, indirectly, anyone who owns boilers, pressure vessels, cranes, forklifts or lifts, since the law requires them to appoint an RSVTI operator. The deadline that catches people out most often: the renewal file must be filed at least 30 and at most 60 days before expiry, and anyone who files later sits a new examination.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 776 of 14 September 2026
In force from: 14 September 2026, the date of publication
ISCIR has repealed the last four orders that still governed, from 2007 and 2011, the trades built around boilers, cranes and lifts. Order no. 194/2026 of the chief state inspector has three articles and contains no new rule. It merely clears the ground after the real change, which came a month earlier: on 12 August 2026 three new technical prescriptions entered into force, part of the package through which ISCIR is rewriting its rulebook from end to end, the same wave that produced the new rules for pressurised gas tanks and cylinders.
The three prescriptions were approved by orders of the Minister of Economy, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, all signed on 24 July 2026. PT CR 3-2025, on the authorisation of RSVTI operators, came through Order no. 1.168/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 667 of 12 August 2026. PT CR 4-2025, on the authorisation of legal persons working on installations in the ISCIR field, came through Order no. 1.170/2026, in the same Official Gazette of Romania no. 667. PT CR 5-2025, on the certification of trainers, came through Order no. 1.171/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 668 of the same day. All three entered into force on the date of publication.
The orders repealed are ISCIR Order no. 130/2011, which served as the methodology for authorising RSVTI operators, ISCIR Order no. 165/2011, on the certification of specialist technical staff, ISCIR Order no. 266/2007, the regulation on the vocational training of trainers in the RSVTI field, and ISCIR Order no. 8/2009, on the certification of trainers. The oldest of them had been running since 24 August 2007, that is for 19 years.
What it changes in practice
The order produces a single direct effect: from 14 September 2026, the four old texts can no longer be relied on. Any application filed with ISCIR for authorisation, certification or renewal is dealt with exclusively under the new technical prescriptions.
What happens to documents already issued is set out not in the order but in the transitional chapters of the three prescriptions. There are five distinct situations, and their time limits run from 12 August 2026, the date the prescriptions entered into force, not from the date of repeal.
- RSVTI operator, individual or company. An authorisation issued under Order no. 130/2011, if it was not suspended on 12 August 2026, confers the right to work until its expiry date. The holder may continue to carry out both technical supervision and technical checks for admission to operation and technical checks in service, for the categories of installation listed in the prescription.
- Specialist technical staff. Certificates issued under Order no. 165/2011, if not suspended, remain valid for 2 years from the date of issue or from the date of the last renewal.
- Trainer certified under Order no. 8/2009. May work until the certificate expires, classified under the new system as a type C specific trainer.
- Trainer certified under Order no. 266/2007. May work as a type B trainer for 24 months from 12 August 2026, that is until 12 August 2028, and must apply for the new certificate within that period.
- Approved vocational training providers. May run courses until their approval expires, provided they update their course materials to the new syllabuses. And anyone who has already completed a course under the old rules may sit the examination or apply for a renewal for as long as the attendance document is still valid.
There is one further effect that concerns companies and institutions rather than individuals. Owners and users of installations must draw up their own technical supervision procedures, for each type of installation they own, within 6 months of the prescription entering into force. That deadline falls on 12 February 2027 and has nothing to do with the repealing order, but it catches the same people.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The comparison that matters to an RSVTI operator is between the methodology in Order no. 130/2011 and PT CR 3-2025. The authorisation still lasts 4 years. Almost everything else has moved.
The experience requirement now extends to university graduates. The 2011 methodology required 2 years of experience only from holders of technical secondary qualifications, and an engineer could join the course with no experience at all. The new prescription requires at least 1 year of experience in ISCIR-regulated activities or in operating installations in the field from graduates of technical higher education as well, whether they hold 180 or 120 study credits. For a level 5 vocational qualification or for a technological high school diploma with a baccalaureate and a level 4 qualification, the requirement stays at 2 years. On top of that, the accepted fields of study are now listed, from mechanics and electrical engineering to oil and gas, with a safety valve for other related technical fields accepted by ISCIR.
The examination has become a multiple-choice test with a pass mark. Previously, the written paper was passed with a minimum mark of 7. It is now a questionnaire with at least 30 questions, and the pass threshold is 70% correct answers. The syllabus and the examination conditions are set by order of the chief state inspector, so they are no longer in the prescription.
The retake window has shrunk from 12 months to 30 days. The old methodology gave a candidate who failed or did not attend one year from the end of the course to come back. The new prescription gives them a single retake request, made in writing within 30 days of the examination, provided the course document and the fitness certificate are still valid. The course attendance document itself is valid for 1 year.
Renewal now has a fixed window, with a penalty. Under the old rules, the only calendar condition was that the module B training programme had to be completed no more than a year before expiry. The file must now be filed with ISCIR at least 30 days, but no more than 60 days, before the expiry date. Anyone who misses the window does not get a late renewal: they file the documents for initial authorisation and sit a new examination. A renewal granted within the window runs for 4 years from the expiry of the old authorisation, not from the date the new one is issued.
For companies, the authorisation has become open-ended but harder to obtain. The 2011 methodology gave a legal person a 3-year authorisation and required, as staffing, two RSVTI operators with whom the company had a contractual relationship, plus a procedure drawn up under the quality management standard. PT CR 3-2025 issues the authorisation for an indefinite period, conditional on the requirements being met continuously, but raises the entry threshold: the two RSVTI operators must hold individual employment contracts, proven by registration in the general employee register, and the file must also include an organisation chart, visual examination equipment, dimensional measuring instruments, pressure testing equipment, calibration certificates and dedicated procedures for each type of installation. The exception to the employment contract covers the holder of a sole trader business and a director who is not an employee. The annual check remains and may now include a practical assessment at the premises of an installation owner.
A form of business organisation that did not previously appear in the text has been added. The sole trader registered with the trade register is treated separately, alongside the employed individual and the legal person. Also new is that technical higher education institutions may run postgraduate courses that count as the training programme, provided ISCIR approves the syllabus and the course materials.
Training providers must be independent. The prescription requires them to submit a declaration of impartiality towards the parties involved in technical supervision and technical checks. In 2011 there was no such condition, and the same company could both train and provide the service.
On the trainer side, the two orders from 2007 and 2009 have been replaced by a single prescription, which sets certification on three types, A, B and C, according to the programme the trainer is entitled to teach. And the certification of specialist technical staff, which had its own methodology from 2011, has been folded into PT CR 4-2025 together with the authorisation of legal persons.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It ends a month-long overlap in which the same activity had two sets of rules in force. From 14 September 2026, an operator asking what conditions they must meet gets only one possible answer.
- An open-ended authorisation for legal persons spares companies a full application file every 3 years. The annual check remains, but there is no longer a moment at which the right to work lapses automatically.
- Requiring the RSVTI operators of an authorised company to be employees with registered contracts cuts out the practice of authorisations obtained with operators borrowed on paper, who never went near the installations they supervised.
- The full text of the three prescriptions is published free of charge on the ISCIR website, even though in the Official Gazette of Romania the annexes appeared in the bis editions, which have to be bought at the counter.
- Documents already obtained are not cancelled. No operator, trainer or certificate holder is left overnight without the right to work.
What remains a problem
- The order contains no transitional provisions of its own. Anyone wanting to know what happens to their document has to look for the answer in three different prescriptions, published in a different Official Gazette of Romania a month earlier.
- The 30 to 60 day renewal window is tighter than 15 years of practice have accustomed people to, and the penalty for missing it is harsh: a full application file and a new examination, not a late fee.
- A single retake within 30 days leaves no practical way out for a candidate who is ill or out of the country that month. Under the old rules they had a year.
- The 1 year of experience now required from graduates of technical higher education closes off direct access for a newly hired engineer, in a trade where the staff shortage is already visible.
- The annexes to the prescriptions were published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 667 bis and no. 668 bis, editions that cannot be consulted free of charge online. Without the version ISCIR put on its own website, the people concerned would have had to buy the text of the rules under which they are authorised.
Practical advice
- Take your authorisation out of the drawer and write down the expiry date. Subtract 60 days and then 30 days: the renewal file is submitted between those two dates. Put them in your calendar, because ISCIR sends no reminders and missing them means a new examination.
- Take the renewal course before the filing window opens, not during it. The attendance document is valid for 1 year, so it can be obtained well in advance, and without it the file is rejected.
- If your company is authorised as an RSVTI operator under the old methodology, check the form of your relationship with the two operators. If you work with them on a services contract, at reauthorisation you will need an individual employment contract and proof of its registration.
- Companies applying now should prepare the equipment before filing: visual examination instruments, dimensional measuring instruments, pressure testing equipment and the corresponding calibration certificates. Without them the file stalls at the inspector’s check.
- Trainers certified under Order no. 266/2007 have until 12 August 2028 to apply for the new type B certificate. Anyone certified under Order no. 8/2009 should look straight at the expiry date of their own certificate, which is their reference point.
- Specialist technical staff holding a certificate under 165/2011 count 2 years from issue or from the last renewal, not from 12 August 2026. For many certificates the deadline is already close.
- Owners of installations have to write their own technical supervision procedures for each type of installation by 12 February 2027. It is the owner’s obligation, not the RSVTI operator’s, even if in practice the operator will draft it.
- Download the text of the prescriptions from the ISCIR website, in the technical prescriptions section. It is the same version as the one in the Official Gazette of Romania and saves a trip to the public relations centre.
Frequently asked questions
Do I lose my RSVTI operator authorisation because the 2011 order has been repealed?
What happens if I file the renewal application 20 days before expiry?
I am a newly hired engineer. Can I still join the RSVTI course directly?
My company has an RSVTI operator authorisation valid for 3 years. Is it automatically extended to an indefinite period?
Where do I find the full text of the prescriptions, if the annexes appeared in bis editions?
Why was a repealing order needed at all, if the new prescriptions were already in force?
Editorial analysis
The order does something necessary and does it properly. The four texts taken out of force were the last traces of a system built on methodologies approved by inspector’s orders, at a time when technical prescriptions were something other than what they are today. All four cross-references in Article 1 check out exactly: the order number, the Official Gazette of Romania number and the date match in every case, and each of the repealed subjects has a replacement in force. The authorisation of RSVTI operators has moved into PT CR 3-2025, the certification of specialist technical staff into PT CR 4-2025, and the two trainer orders have been merged into PT CR 5-2025. No category is left without rules, which, in a block repeal, does not happen by itself.
The problem is not what the order repeals, but when. The prescriptions entered into force on 12 August 2026, the old orders ceased to apply on 14 September 2026, and between those two dates there were 33 days in which two sets of rules sat in force over the same activity at once. This is not a theoretical point. On 19 August 2026, a week after the prescription took effect, ISCIR published a statement acknowledging that operators whose authorisation expired between 12 August and 12 September 2026 had no way of meeting the new filing deadline of 30 to 60 days before expiry, because the rule appeared after their window had closed. The solution announced was that all applications registered by 12 September would nonetheless be considered. It is the practically correct answer, but it was given through a notice on a website rather than a legal act, and the order of 14 September, the natural occasion to confirm it, says nothing about the matter. An operator refused a renewal would have nothing to rely on in court beyond an announcement on a web page.
The second weakness concerns completeness. The preamble lists three technical prescriptions, but Order no. 1.170/2026, cited there, in fact approved two: PT CR 4-2025 and PT CR 8-2025, the one on the authorisation of operating staff. And ISCIR Order no. 526/2007, on acquiring the status of trainer in the RSVTI field, remains in force after 14 September 2026, even though PT CR 5-2025 treats its certificates exactly as it treats those issued under Order no. 266/2007, which was repealed: 24 months to move to the new certificate. Of two orders from the same year, with the same subject matter and the same transitional regime, one was repealed and the other was not. It is not a contradiction that changes any legal outcome, since the new prescription settles the position of those certified, but it leaves in the statute book an act with nothing left to regulate.
The contrast between the time the administration demands and the time it allows itself is also worth noting. Owners of installations are given 6 months to write their own procedures for each type of equipment. The RSVTI operator is given a 30-day window for the renewal file and 30 days for a single retake request. ISCIR, meanwhile, took 33 days to end an overlap it had itself created, signing the repealing order on 8 September 2026, nearly a month after the new rules had become applicable.
What should be changed
- The repeal should have been dated 12 August 2026, the day the prescriptions entered into force. That would have removed the 33 days in which an applicant could invoke, in good faith, two sets of authorisation conditions. For orders of the heads of central bodies, the date of entry into force can be set in the text itself, so the instrument was available.
- The solution in the ISCIR statement of 19 August 2026 should be written into a legal act. A single line in the order confirming that renewal applications registered by 12 September 2026 are dealt with under PT CR 3-2025 would turn an administrative promise into a right the operators caught in the middle can actually invoke.
- ISCIR Order no. 526/2007 should be repealed in the same list. Otherwise a text on acquiring the status of RSVTI trainer stays in force alongside PT CR 5-2025, which regulates the same subject in full and treats its certificates as a legacy to be converted within 24 months.
- The preamble should also mention PT CR 8-2025. Order no. 1.170/2026 approved two prescriptions, not one, and the incomplete list makes the reasoning for the repeal narrower than the body of rules it actually rests on.
- The renewal window should open earlier, 90 days before expiry. The 60-day upper limit protects nobody, while the 30-day lower limit, coupled with the penalty of a fresh examination, turns an administrative delay of a few days into the loss of several months of the right to work.
- The retake should be tied to the validity of the course document rather than to 30 days from the examination. The attendance document lasts a year anyway, so a retake deadline aligned with it would keep the rigour without punishing a justified absence.
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. 776 of 14 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 99 KB the act starts on page 4
Open the official PDFDownload the PDF
The viewer is not shown on small screens. Use the buttons above to open or download the file.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.