In brief

  • The old notices have to be replaced by 4 October 2026. The order enters into force 30 days after publication and gives economic operators no additional period to comply, so the obligation applies from the first day.
  • The list of contacts is rewritten from scratch: 47 commissariats, one for each of the 41 counties and one for each of the 6 sectors of Bucharest. The regional commissariats disappear from the annex, and the website address that has to be displayed becomes www.anpc.ro instead of www.anpc.gov.ro.
  • The order provides for no fine. Anyone wanting to find out what he risks if he does not change the notice will not find the answer in the published text, because the list of administrative offences in Government Ordinance no. 21/1992 does not refer to this order.
Act: Order of the President of the National Authority for Consumer Protection no. 505/2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 749 of 4 September 2026
In force from: 4 October 2026

The notice stuck up next to the till, the one with the Consumers’ Helpline number and the details of the county commissariat, changes across the whole country from 4 October 2026. Order of the President of the National Authority for Consumer Protection no. 505/2026 rewrites the display rules in Order no. 72/2010, the act that requires every trader or service provider to keep the contact details for complaints in plain sight. It is the same institution which, according to a recent decision of the Constitutional Court, can order a trader to give the consumer his money back within 15 days, as a measure alongside the fine.

The obligation itself is neither new nor narrowed. Economic operators must still display, in the consumer’s field of vision, next to the till or next to the opening hours, the telephone number called TELEFONUL CONSUMATORILOR, the Consumers’ Helpline, the address and the numbers of the commissariat in whose territorial area they are located, plus the address of the authority’s website. What changes is who receives the complaints and what the notice looks like.

The reason is a reorganisation carried out two years ago. Through Government Decision no. 732/2024, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 620 of 1 July 2024, the eight regional commissariats were abolished, and in their place there remained 47 county and sectoral commissariats, structures without legal personality subordinated directly to the authority. Order no. 505/2026 finally brings the notice in shops into line with the structure that exists in reality.

The act has 48 annexes. Annex no. 1 is the list of the 47 commissariats, with address, telephone and e-mail. Annexes no. 2 to 48 are the 47 templates of the notice, one for each commissariat, and they are reproduced in facsimile in the Official Gazette of Romania, that is, as images. They cannot be read as text and can be seen only in the official PDF attached to this article, on pages 4 to 15.

The order was signed by the president of the authority, Békési Csaba Lajos, on 15 July 2026, and appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania 51 days later. Together with the 30 days until entry into force, 81 days pass between the signature and the moment when the old notices become non-compliant.

What it changes in practice

From 4 October 2026, the compliant notice is the one in the annex corresponding to the county or the sector in which the place of business is located. A chain with shops in several counties can no longer use a single template printed centrally: it needs one model for each county in which it has a place of business, because the details of the commissariat differ from one to another. A trader with shops in Cluj, Timiș and in sector 3 of Bucharest needs three different notices.

The official template imposes a minimum size of 16 cm by 16 cm and contains the logo of the authority, the telephone number written large, the block with the details of the commissariat, a QR code leading to the institution’s website and two mentions at the bottom of the plaque: that representatives of consumer associations have no right to inspect economic operators, under Article 42 of Government Ordinance no. 21/1992, and that calling the number may be charged depending on the type of subscription. The template also states that the plaque is free of charge and can be downloaded from the authority’s website, which means that nobody has to pay an intermediary for a compulsory notice.

For online commerce, the obligation stays the same in form, but its content is simplified. Any operator running sales websites, order-taking websites or advertising websites, including travel agencies and sellers of plane tickets, has to put a visible link to the authority’s website on the home page. The target address becomes www.anpc.ro, and the compulsory wording of the link, PROTECȚIA CONSUMATORILOR – A.N.P.C., is no longer required by the order.

The effect on the consumer is less visible, but real: from 4 October 2026, the address and telephone number on the notice lead to a structure that actually exists. Until now, the plaques in shops pointed to regional commissariats abolished on 1 July 2024 and to e-mail addresses on the opc.ro domain, used before the institution moved to anpc.ro.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

A comparison with the form in force until now shows four substantive changes. The first concerns the recipient of the complaint: Article 1(1) spoke of the county commissariats, while paragraph (2) referred to the regional commissariats and to the county ones. The new text says, in both paragraphs, county or sectoral commissariats. The regional level disappears from the act.

The second change is the number of templates. Until 2014, the order had a single notice, valid everywhere. Order no. 594/2014, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 937 of 22 December 2014, replaced it with 42 templates. Now there are 47. The difference of five is not accidental: the old 42 meant 41 counties plus a single commissariat for the municipality of Bucharest, while the new 47 mean the same 41 counties plus one commissariat for each of the 6 sectors.

The third change is the internet address. The old text required the address www.anpc.gov.ro to be displayed, both on the plaque and as the target of the link on sales websites. The new text says www.anpc.ro.

The fourth concerns electronic commerce. The old Article 2 required the link on the home page to bear the name PROTECȚIA CONSUMATORILOR – A.N.P.C. The new wording asks only for a visible link to the official address, without prescribing what it is called. Anyone who already has the button with the old name is not in the wrong, but anyone who calls it something else is no longer in breach of the order.

What has not changed deserves to be said just as plainly. The telephone number stays 021 9551. The place where the notice is put stays the same, next to the till or next to the opening hours. Articles 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Order no. 72/2010 also remain untouched, among them the rule that having one’s own customer relations number does not exempt the operator from the display required by the order.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The details on the notice correspond, at last, to the real structure of the authority. The consumer who calls or writes reaches an institution that exists.
  • Bucharest gets six separate templates, one for each sector, instead of a single one for the whole city. The complaint goes straight to the competent commissariat.
  • The template is prescribed in detail and is free, downloadable from the authority’s website. There is no reason for a trader to buy the notice from an intermediary.
  • The reference to the annexes is corrected. Article 1(3) spoke, in the consolidated form on the legislative portal, of the template in Annex no. 2, in the singular, although since December 2014 the order had 42 templates. The new text says the templates in Annexes no. 2.1 to 2.47.
  • The 30-day period is more generous than the usual rule of 3 days from publication and leaves time for printing.

What remains a problem

  • The order does not say what happens to those who fail to comply. It provides no penalties of its own, and Article 50 of Government Ordinance no. 21/1992 lists exhaustively the articles whose breach is an administrative offence and does not include Article 8, the basis invoked in the preamble.
  • There is no transitional regime at all. From 4 October 2026, the old notice is non-compliant, no matter whether it was printed a month earlier.
  • The 47 templates are published as images in the Official Gazette of Romania. Anyone wanting their text cannot copy it from the act, but has to open the PDF or the authority’s website.
  • The act requires the telephone and fax numbers of the commissariat to be displayed, but Annex no. 1 no longer contains any fax number.
  • The website address appears on the template only as a QR code, not written out in letters, although Article 1(1) expressly requires it. A consumer without a smartphone cannot read it.

Practical advice

  1. Check what your shop notice says right now. If it shows a regional commissariat, an e-mail address on the opc.ro domain or the address www.anpc.gov.ro, the plaque is out of date and has to be changed by 4 October 2026.
  2. Download the template from the authority’s website, do not reproduce it by eye. The order imposes a specific template for each commissariat, and the minimum size is 16 cm by 16 cm.
  3. Choose the template according to the location of the place of business, not according to the registered office of the company. The order refers to the territorial area in which the economic operator is located, so what counts is where the shop is.
  4. If you have places of business in several counties, list them before ordering the printing and count how many different templates you need. In Bucharest you need one template per sector.
  5. Do not pay for the plaque to a supplier who calls you saying it is compulsory. The official template states in black and white that the plaque is free of charge.
  6. If you have an online shop, check the link on the home page. It has to lead to www.anpc.ro, and if it still points to www.anpc.gov.ro, update it by 4 October 2026.
  7. Keep a dated photograph of the notice once it is put up. At an inspection, proof that the information was in plain sight is easier with an image than from memory.

Frequently asked questions

From what date are the new notices compulsory?
From 4 October 2026. Article II of the order says that the act enters into force within 30 days of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, and publication took place on 4 September 2026.
Do I have an additional period to change the old notices?
No. The order contains no transitional provision and grants no grace period after entry into force. The 30 days between publication and 4 October 2026 are all the time you have.
Who has to display this information?
Any economic operator who sells products or provides services to consumers, in the space where the sale or the service takes place. The order expressly mentions tourist services, the sale of package holidays and the sale of plane tickets as well.
Where exactly is the notice put up?
In the consumer’s field of vision, in a visible place, next to the till or next to the opening hours. The wording is unchanged from the previous text.
Has the consumers’ telephone number changed?
No. The number stays 0219551, written on the template as 021 9551. The template also states that the call may be charged depending on the caller’s type of subscription.
Where do I get the template from and what does it cost?
From the official website of the authority. Each template published in the Official Gazette of Romania states that the model can be downloaded in electronic format and that the plaque is free of charge.
What happens if I do not change the notice?
The order provides for no penalty. Government Ordinance no. 21/1992, the act on the basis of which it was issued, lays down in Article 50 a closed list of articles whose breach is an administrative offence, and Article 8, the one invoked in the preamble to the order, does not appear on that list. Anyone looking in the published text for the amount of a fine will not find it.
I have an online shop. What do I have to do?
Keep on the home page a visible link to www.anpc.ro. The obligation to name it PROTECȚIA CONSUMATORILOR – A.N.P.C. no longer appears in the new Article 2, but the link itself remains compulsory, including for websites advertising products and for travel agencies.
Why are there 47 different templates?
Because each template contains the details of the territorially competent commissariat. There are 41 county commissariats and 6 sectoral commissariats for the six sectors of Bucharest, hence 47 versions.
Does the fax number of the commissariat still have to be displayed?
Article 1(1) requires the telephone and fax numbers to be displayed, but Annex no. 1 no longer contains any fax number, and the official templates show only the telephone and the e-mail address. In practice, the compliant notice is the one in the annex.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Article 1(1) and (2) read against Annex no. 1, the fax that is required and not supplied. Paragraph (1) requires the economic operator to display „the address and the telephone/fax numbers” of the commissariat, and paragraph (2) states that these fax numbers „are set out in Annex no. 1”. Annex no. 1, as published, contains no fax number, only the address, a single telephone number and an e-mail address, for all 47 commissariats. The economic operator has nowhere to take the information that the order requires him to display, and paragraph (2) attributes to the annex a content that it does not have.
  • Article 1(1) read against paragraph (3) and the templates in Annexes no. 2 to 48, the website address that cannot be read. Paragraph (1) requires the address of the authority’s website, www.anpc.ro, to be displayed, and paragraph (3) requires the display to be made „in accordance with the templates set out in Annexes no. 2.1-2.47”. On the templates, the address does not appear in writing, but only in the form of a QR code, which leads to https://anpc.ro/. A trader who prints exactly the official template does not display the address in a legible form, so two provisions of one and the same act lead to different conclusions about what a compliant notice means.

Editorial analysis

The figure that says the most about this order is not in it, but in the distance between it and the act it follows. The regional commissariats were abolished by Government Decision no. 732/2024 on 1 July 2024, and Annex no. 2 to that decision already set out exactly the 47 county and sectoral structures that now appear on the notice. It took 825 days from the reorganisation of the institution to the moment when the information reaches the plaque in the shop. Throughout that interval, a consumer who wanted to complain about something read off the wall the address of a regional commissariat that no longer existed.

The second figure comes from the archive of the act. Order no. 72/2010 was amended five times between December 2012 and April 2015, through Orders no. 473/2012, 163/2014, 223/2014, 594/2014 and 123/2015, and the last of those amendments entered into force on 8 May 2015. The act was then left untouched for 4,167 days, that is, over eleven years, although in that time the institution changed its e-mail domain, the telephone numbers of all its commissariats and, in 2024, its entire territorial structure. This order is not a change of public policy, but the clearing of a backlog.

The pace of the act itself says something too. It was signed on 15 July 2026, appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania 51 days later and leaves economic operators 30 days to print and put up new notices in tens of thousands of places of business. For the road from signature to publication, the administration took almost twice the period it grants those who have to comply.

There are small things as well that show the haste. The template says TELEFONUL CONSUMATORULUI, the consumer’s telephone, in the singular, while Article 1(1) calls the line TELEFONUL CONSUMATORILOR, the consumers’ telephone, in the plural. The number is the same, so nobody gets lost, but the two names sit inside a single act. The annex numbers the commissariats alphabetically, with Brașov before Brăila and Caraș-Severin before Călărași, that is, not in the order of the Romanian alphabet. And the Ilfov county commissariat appears at the same address on Șoseaua Vitan-Bârzești as those of sectors 3 and 4, the commissariat of sector 1 has its office in sector 2, and that of sector 5 in sector 6. None of this is unlawful, but a consumer reading the notice to find out where to take his complaint deserves a more coherent map.

What should be changed

  • Removing the fax from Article 1(1) and (2). The text requires the display of a number that the act no longer supplies. Deleting the word closes an inconsistency that can otherwise be invoked at any inspection.
  • The address www.anpc.ro written out in letters on the template, next to the QR code. A QR code cannot be read without a phone, and Article 1(1) requires the address to be displayed, not a coded reference. Adding a single line of text brings the template into line with the article it implements.
  • An express provision on penalties, or at least a reference. The order does not say what happens if it is not complied with, and Article 50 of Government Ordinance no. 21/1992 does not cover it. One line indicating the basis of the administrative offence would clear things up for the trader and for the inspector drawing up the report alike.
  • A longer compliance period for networks with many places of business. Thirty days are enough for one shop, but not for a network with hundreds of units in dozens of counties, which needs different templates for each. A period of 90 days would make the rule workable without weakening the obligation.
  • Publication of the templates in text format, not only in facsimile. The 47 templates are images in the Official Gazette of Romania, so they cannot be read by a machine or copied. A text version of the compulsory content, published alongside the image, would make checking possible without opening the PDF.
  • Standardising the name of the telephone line. The same line appears as TELEFONUL CONSUMATORILOR in the article and as TELEFONUL CONSUMATORULUI on the template. A single name, used throughout the act, puts an end to the discussion.

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. 749 of 4 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 3.3 MB

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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.