In brief

  • 800 lei a year, on a card only, and only for net salaries of up to 6,000 lei. The rules approved by Order of the Minister of Education and Research no. 5.651/2026 set out how holiday vouchers are granted in the State schools, secondary schools, inspectorates and universities subordinated to or coordinated by the ministry, for 2026. The ceiling is checked against the net salary for the basic post in the month in which the vouchers are granted, not against the average for the year.
  • Anyone who wants the vouchers lodges a declaration within 30 days of publication, that is, by 24 October 2026. The deadline falls on a Saturday, so in practice the last working day is Monday, 26 October 2026. The declaration is lodged with the employing unit, on the model set out in the annex to the rules.
  • The inspectorates and the universities have to report the sums needed to the ministry by 15 October 2026. That is nine days, therefore, before the deadline within which employees can ask for their vouchers expires. The amount is paid once the budget appropriations are opened, and the voucher is valid for one year from the moment the card is loaded.
Act: Order of the Minister of Education and Research no. 5.651/2026 approving the Rules on granting holiday vouchers in the State education units/institutions subordinated to/coordinated by the Ministry of Education and Research, for 2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 811 of 24 September 2026, pages 14-16
In force from: 24 September 2026, the date of publication

From 24 September 2026, staff in State education have the rules under which they receive this year’s holiday vouchers: 800 lei, once, on an electronic medium only and only if the net salary for the basic post does not exceed 6,000 lei. Order of the Minister of Education and Research no. 5.651/2026 is the last piece in a chain that began in 2025, when Parliament set the amount by law, and it comes after a year in which the pay entitlements of education staff came up for discussion several times.

The rules have 12 articles, divided into four chapters, and an annex with the model declaration on own responsibility through which the employee asks for the vouchers. The amount is 800 lei per employee per year and is granted in proportion to the period worked, within the limits of the budget. For part-time contracts, the value falls in proportion to the length of working time, measured against the 800 lei set for normal hours. Anyone working more than one full-time equivalent or holding several posts still receives 800 lei, no more.

The vouchers go to persons who are actually working in the unit at the time of the grant, employed on posts approved in the staffing chart. The rules extend the entitlement to staff in the situations covered by Article 145(4) of the Labour Code, that is, periods of temporary incapacity for work, maternity leave, maternal risk leave and leave to care for a sick child, which count as periods of work performed.

The order was signed on 17 September 2026 by Mihai Dimian, Minister of Education and Research, and published seven days later.

What it changes in practice

  • A 30-day deadline for the declaration. An employee who wants the vouchers lodges a written application with the employing unit, on the model in the annex, within 30 days of the publication of the rules. The 30 days run out on 24 October 2026, a Saturday, so in practice on 26 October. Without a declaration lodged, the entitlement is not activated.
  • Only one month’s salary is checked. The rules say that the vouchers go to staff whose net salaries are up to and including 6,000 lei, measured against the net salary due for the basic post in the month of the grant. What the employee earned during the rest of the year does not count.
  • Only one employer pays. Where someone holds more than one post or is paid by the hour, the vouchers are granted by the employer where the employee holds the basic post, and the employee is under a duty to declare in writing which employer that is. Where there are several successive employers during the year, the one in place at the time of the grant pays, taking earlier work into account as well.
  • A transfer requires a certificate. Staff who have been transferred or seconded receive the vouchers only if they produce a certificate showing that they did not receive them from the previous employer. If the certificate cannot be obtained, a declaration on own responsibility is lodged instead.
  • The money moves by 15 October. The county school inspectorates, the universities and the other institutions send the ministry the sums needed by that date, and the ministry asks the Ministry of Finance to open the appropriations. The purchase of the vouchers begins only once the appropriations appear in the unit’s budget.
  • Repayment has a 60-day deadline. If an employee has used vouchers to which they were not entitled and a ground for repayment then arises, they have 60 days from the moment it arises to pay back the value. The electronic medium is handed over to the employer when the employment relationship ends or when its validity expires.
  • Taxation goes through EduSAL. In pre-university education, the authorising officers enter the face value in the local application, in the payroll for the month in which the vouchers were granted, and calculate the health insurance contribution and the tax due. On a face value of 800 lei, the 10% health contribution is 80 lei, and the 10% tax applied to the remaining 720 lei is 72 lei, so the month’s net salary falls by roughly 152 lei and the real gain is about 648 lei.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The amount and the ceiling are not the ministry’s decision. They come from Article 1(2) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 8/2009, in the form given to it by Article XLIV of Law no. 141/2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 699 of 25 July 2025 and applicable from 1 January 2026: public institutions grant holiday vouchers of 800 lei each year, in the period from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026, to staff whose net monthly basic salaries are up to 6,000 lei. The rules add one word in the employee’s favour, „inclusiv”, inclusive, so a net salary of exactly 6,000 lei falls within the ceiling.

The way the ceiling is checked comes from somewhere else: paragraph (26) of the same article, introduced by Article III of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 10/2024, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 160 of 27 February 2024, provides that for staff in the education system the measurement is made against the net salary due for the basic post in the month of the grant. The rules take that formula over exactly.

What the rules themselves bring is the machinery: the duty to lodge a declaration within 30 days, the rule of a single paying employer, the certificate on transfer, the timetable for reporting the sums, the records kept through EduSAL, budget code 10.02.06 „Vouchere de vacanță”, holiday vouchers, under the heading „Cheltuieli de personal”, staff costs, item „Cheltuieli salariale în natură”, salary costs in kind, and the rule that the estimated value of the procurement contract takes into account only the cost of issuing and delivering the electronic media, without the face value of the vouchers. Sums not used by the time the validity expires go back from the issuing company to the employer and are transferred to the State budget, under title 85 „Plăți efectuate în anii precedenți și recuperate în anul curent”, payments made in previous years and recovered in the current year.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The rules are written down and published, so a teacher can check for themselves whether they fall within the ceiling and what they have to lodge.
  • The ceiling expressly includes a net salary of 6,000 lei, a wording more favourable than the one in the ordinance.
  • The entitlement is kept during periods of sick leave, maternity leave, maternal risk leave and leave to care for a sick child.
  • Staff holding several full-time equivalents do not lose the entitlement, and the single-employer rule prevents double payment.
  • The face value of the vouchers is not included in the estimate for the procurement, which keeps the procedure below the higher thresholds and shortens the deadlines.
  • The voucher is valid for one year from the loading of the card, not until the end of the calendar year.

What remains a problem

  • The rules appear on 24 September 2026, that is, after 267 of the 365 days of the year for which the vouchers are granted had already passed.
  • The deadline for reporting the sums, 15 October 2026, falls before the deadline for lodging the declarations, 24 October 2026.
  • The ceiling is checked in the month of the grant, so a pay rise falling in precisely that month can take an employee out of the entitlement for the whole year.
  • There is no deadline within which the employer has to load the electronic medium, only a duty to notify the beneficiary of the loading date.
  • The face value of 800 lei is taxed and carries a health contribution, so the real gain falls to about 648 lei.
  • The rules do not say how the reduction in proportion to the period worked combines with the reduction for part-time work.

Practical advice

  1. Lodge the declaration from the annex as soon as you can, not on the last day. The 30-day deadline runs out on 24 October 2026, but the unit has to report the sums to the ministry by 15 October, so an application lodged after that date risks missing the first opening of appropriations.
  2. If you hold more than one post or are paid by the hour, also lodge the written declaration stating the employer where you hold your basic post. The rules require it expressly, and without it neither employer has a basis on which to pay.
  3. If you were transferred or seconded during 2026, ask your previous employer for the certificate showing that you did not receive the vouchers there. Where the certificate cannot be obtained, lodge the declaration on own responsibility.
  4. Check the net salary for the basic post in the month in which the unit grants the vouchers, not the one for September. The ceiling of 6,000 lei is measured against the month of the grant.
  5. Ask the unit for the date on which the card will be loaded. The one-year validity runs from the loading, and the employer is under a duty to notify you of that date and of the amount transferred.
  6. Use the vouchers only for tourism services at affiliated establishments. Selling them for money or for other goods is expressly forbidden, and when the employment contract ends the electronic medium is handed over to the employer.

Frequently asked questions

Who receives holiday vouchers in 2026?
Staff of the State education units and institutions subordinated to or coordinated by the Ministry of Education and Research, employed on posts approved in the staffing chart, who are actually working at the time of the grant and whose net salary for the basic post in the month of the grant is up to and including 6,000 lei. To them are added staff in the situations covered by Article 145(4) of the Labour Code.
By when is the declaration lodged?
Within 30 days of the publication of the rules in the Official Gazette of Romania, that is, by 24 October 2026. As that is a Saturday, the last working day is Monday, 26 October 2026.
How much do I actually get in hand?
The card is loaded with 800 lei, but the face value enters the base for the health insurance contribution and for income tax, both at 10%. On 800 lei, the contribution is 80 lei and the tax 72 lei, so the month’s net salary falls by roughly 152 lei. The gain comes to about 648 lei.
What happens if I work half-time?
The vouchers are granted in proportion to the length of working time, measured against the maximum value of 800 lei set for normal working hours. The rules separately provide for proportionality with the period worked, without saying whether the two reductions apply one on top of the other, so the exact amount is set by the employer.
How long can I use the vouchers?
One year from the date on which the electronic medium is loaded. The rules state that this period is not the same as the validity of the medium itself. On expiry, the unused sums are returned by the issuing company to the employer.
What happens if my employment contract ends?
You hand the electronic medium over to the employer, who returns it to the issuing company. If you have used vouchers to which you were not entitled, you pay back the value within 60 days of the ground for repayment arising, under the declaration signed when you received the vouchers.
Can I buy something other than holidays?
No. The vouchers are used only to buy tourism services from affiliated establishments, within the limits of Article 23 of the implementing rules approved by Government Decision no. 215/2009. Trading them for sums of money or for other goods or services is forbidden.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Article 8(2) and Article 6(b). The sums are reported nine days before the deadline within which employees can ask for them closes. Article 6(b) provides that the declaration through which the employee asks for the vouchers is lodged within 30 days of the publication of the rules, that is, by 24 October 2026. Article 8(2) provides that the county school inspectorates, the universities and the other institutions send the ministry the sums needed by 15 October 2026, while Article 8(4) provides that the ministry includes the sums „pe baza datelor transmise de ordonatorii de credite”, on the basis of the data sent by the authorising officers. Article 11(2) ties the start of the procurement to the moment when the budget appropriations appear in the unit’s budget. An employee who lodges the declaration between 16 and 24 October 2026 has an entitlement recognised by Article 3 and by Article 6, but their amount is not in the report the unit has already made. The act provides for no further report and does not expressly shorten the deadline for lodging, so two different conclusions are possible: either the real working deadline is 15 October and the 30 days have no effect, or a declaration lodged later has to be funded out of appropriations the act does not provide for.
  • Article 3(2) and Article 5(1). The amount due to a part-time employee taken on during the year cannot be calculated from the text. Article 3(2) provides that the value of the vouchers is proportionate to the period worked. Article 5(1) provides that, for staff employed part-time, the vouchers are granted in proportion to the length of working time, measured against the maximum value of 800 lei set for normal working hours. The text does not say whether the two reductions are cumulative. For a half-time employee taken on from 1 July 2026, the result is 400 lei if one reduction is applied and 200 lei if both are, and each reading rests on a provision of the rules.

Editorial analysis

The rules do what had to be done: they turn an amount voted by Parliament into a procedure a school office can carry out. There are useful things in there, clearly written, from the single-employer rule to the budget code under which the expenditure is recorded and the statement that the face value of the vouchers does not enter the estimated value of the procurement contract, which keeps the procedure simple. The problem is not the content, it is the timing.

The first observation that does not show when you read the act from start to finish concerns how much is left of the year for which the money is granted. On 24 September 2026, the day of publication, 267 of the 365 days of the year had passed, that is 73.2%. From there on, the chain has four links: the employees’ declarations, the reporting of the sums to the ministry by 15 October, the opening of appropriations by the Ministry of Finance and only then the purchase of the electronic media. Realistically, the cards will be loaded in November or December 2026. Since the voucher is valid for one year from the loading, the entitlement for 2026 will be spent almost entirely in 2027, in a tourist season that has nothing to do with the budget year that produced it.

The second observation comes from setting the rules against the fate of their legal basis. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 8/2009, the act that creates the entitlement to holiday vouchers and that the model declaration in the annex invokes by name, is repealed with effect from 1 January 2027, under point 3 of Article II of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 131/2021, which amended Article 36(2) of Law no. 165/2018. A voucher loaded in December 2026 and valid until December 2027 will therefore be used almost entirely after the ordinance that governs it has ceased to exist, and these rules are the last the ministry has issued under its regime. Neither the order nor the rules say a word about that transition, even though the duties to repay, to hand back the medium and to recalculate the tax all fall due in 2027.

The third observation is one of scale. In the public sector, the annual ceiling is 800 lei per employee, while Article 1(4) of the same ordinance allows other employers to grant their staff holiday vouchers of up to the value of six national minimum gross basic salaries in a tax year. The gap between the two regimes cannot be read from the rules, but it explains why the measure is seen in schools as symbolic: after the health contribution and the tax, about 648 lei are left. That level is not the ministry’s decision, since it applies an amount set by law, but the rules take it to the recipient, and that is where it is read.

What should be changed

  • The deadline for reporting the sums should be placed after the window for declarations closes. Moved to 26 October 2026, or supplemented by a further report, it would bring every application lawfully lodged within the 30 days into the same opening of appropriations. As it is written now, units will report an estimate and wait for an adjustment the act does not provide for.
  • The rules should give the calculation formula for part-time work combined with the period worked. A single sentence, along the lines of „800 lei multiplied by the fraction of the post and by the fraction of the year worked”, would do away with differences from one unit to another and spare the inspectorates from arbitrating identical cases.
  • The moment at which the 6,000-lei ceiling is checked should be fixed against a stable reference point. Tying it to the month of the grant, a month the employer chooses, makes the entitlement depend on the institution’s calendar. A reference point such as the month of September or the average for the year would give the same result for employees in the same situation.
  • A deadline should be laid down for loading the electronic medium. The rules now oblige the employer to notify the beneficiary of the loading date, but they do not say by when the loading has to happen. A deadline, say 30 days from the opening of the appropriations, would turn a duty to inform into a duty to deliver.
  • The passage into 2027 should be regulated expressly. Vouchers loaded at the end of 2026 will be used, repaid and taxed in 2027, after the ordinance has been repealed. A final provision confirming that entitlements arising in 2026 are carried through under the present rules would avoid a pointless argument in the spring of 2027.
  • The annual rules should be published in the first quarter of the year to which they apply. The amount for 2026 had been known since 25 July 2025, when Law no. 141/2025 was published, so there was no reason to wait. Published in February, the rules would have allowed the cards to be loaded before the summer season, which is exactly what holiday vouchers were designed for.

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. 811 of 24 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 100 KB the act starts on page 14

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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.