Equipment costing 2,500 to 5,000 lei becomes eligible again for SMEs in the six just transition counties

If you run a small company in Gorj, Hunedoara, Dolj, Galați, Prahova or Mureș and you are preparing a project on just transition funds, the list of things you can claim has just widened. Order no. 1.370/2026 of the minister of investments and European projects, published on 9 September 2026, brings back into the eligible expenditure category items costing more than 2,500 lei that, in accounting terms, are no longer fixed assets but inventory items (obiecte de inventar). The ministry had made the same correction eight days earlier: on 1 September 2026, by Order no. 1.345/2026, it amended the de minimis scheme for microenterprises in the same sense, and topped that scheme up by 37.8 million euro.

The correction is explained by a tax change with no apparent connection to European funds. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 8/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 147 of 25 February 2026, rewrote Article 28(2)(b) of the Tax Code: an item is a depreciable fixed asset if, on entering the company’s assets, it has a tax value equal to or greater than 5,000 lei, a limit updated annually with the inflation index, by government decision. Until then the threshold was 2,500 lei.

The side effect was immediate. A device costing 3,800 lei was, in 2025, a fixed asset. In 2026 it became an inventory item, with nothing about it having changed. And Article 28(o) of the scheme approved by Order no. 3.996/2023 declared ineligible, without any exception, „expenditure on the purchase of goods which, under the law, fall into the category of inventory items”. The very same purchases that fitted into a project in 2025 fell outside it in 2026.

The scheme in question is not a small one. Order no. 3.996/2023, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 951 and 951 bis of 20 October 2023, makes 775,569,856 euro available to SMEs in the six counties, of which 770,000,000 euro as regional state aid and 5,569,856 euro as de minimis aid, that is, 99.28% and 0.72%. The money comes 85% from the Just Transition Fund and 15% from the state budget. The estimated number of beneficiaries is 400, which gives an average of 1,938,924.64 euro per company.

The area of application is fixed by Article 4 of the scheme: Hunedoara, Gorj, Dolj, Galați, Prahova and Mureș. Within Hunedoara there is a separate call, dedicated to the Jiu Valley integrated territorial investment, for which the place of implementation must be in Uricani, Lupeni, Vulcan, Aninoasa, Petroșani or Petrila, including the villages attached to them. The second Hunedoara call excludes exactly those localities. A company based in any other county does not qualify, however fitting its project may be.

The indicative allocations per call, in Article 29(3), are: Gorj 184,898,599 euro, Dolj 136,673,075, Hunedoara 131,969,559, Prahova 104,525,370, Galați 84,633,938, Mureș 83,903,737 and the Jiu Valley 48,965,578, a sum that comes to exactly 775,569,856 euro, the total budget of the scheme, with nothing left over.

What it changes in practice

The order applies from 9 September 2026. Article II merely states that the act is published in the Official Gazette of Romania, without setting a later date, and Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 provides that ministerial normative acts enter into force on the date of publication unless otherwise provided. There is no transitional provision for projects already under assessment or under implementation.

For the entrepreneur, the substantive change is a single one and it reads across three articles of the scheme, amended simultaneously. Article 21(1)(a)(ii) now lists among the investments financeable through regional state aid not only equipment „of the nature of fixed assets” but also goods in the inventory items category with a value between 2,500 lei and the threshold in Article 28(2)(b) of the Tax Code. Article 25(4) lists them among expenditure on equipment and fittings, with two further conditions: the normal operating life must exceed one year and the item must fit into one of the subgroups of the Catalogue approved by Government Decision no. 2.139/2004. Article 28(o) keeps its prohibition but gains an exception referring to Article 25(4).

In concrete terms, the claimable band today runs from 2,500 to 5,000 lei. The upper limit is not written as a figure but by reference to the Tax Code, so it moves on its own: if the Government indexes the threshold for inflation, the band widens too, without any need for a new order. The lower limit, by contrast, is written as a figure and stays at 2,500 lei. An item worth 2,000 lei is still not claimable.

The currency is worth noting. The project ceilings of the scheme are expressed in euro, between 200,000 and 8,000,000, and are converted into lei at the InforEuro rate in force on the date the call opens, under Article 12(1). The band of 2,500 to 5,000 lei is expressed in lei and does not depend on any exchange rate. In a project budget built in euro, this category of expenditure will therefore be calculated differently from the rest.

The second group of amendments is a matter of vocabulary, but it has practical consequences. Article 3 gains two new definitions: „inventory items”, meaning low-value goods below the legal threshold for depreciable fixed assets, and „tangible assets”, defined by reference to Article 2 point 29 of Regulation (EU) no. 651/2014. The second definition fills an old gap: the phrase „tangible assets” appeared six times in the scheme, including in the heading of the investment category in Article 21(1)(a) and in Article 25(1), without being defined anywhere.

The third group concerns the name of the programme. The title of the order, Article 1 and the title of the scheme no longer say „Just Transition Programme 2021-2027” but „Sustainable Development and Just Transition Programme 2021-2027”, and the preamble invokes Commission Implementing Decision C(2022) 8.703 final of 24 November 2022, by which the programme financed from the European Regional Development Fund, the Cohesion Fund and the Just Transition Fund was approved. For an applicant, it means that documents, applications and correspondence will from now on carry a different programme name, even though the calls keep their old codes, of the PTJ/P1/1.1/1.A/GJ type.

What does not change deserves saying just as firmly. The aid intensities remain those in Article 12(2): 75% for microenterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises alike in the Gorj, Dolj, Galați and Prahova calls, and 70% for micro and small, 60% for medium-sized, in Hunedoara, in the Jiu Valley and in Mureș. The de minimis aid intensity stays at 90% across all calls. The de minimis ceiling stays at 300,000 euro over three years for a single undertaking, with a maximum of 200,000 euro in any one project. The budget, the estimated number of beneficiaries and the timetable stay identical.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The previous version of the order is not the 2023 one. The act has been amended three times so far: Order no. 6.005/2023, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.121 of 13 December 2023, renumbered the annex; Order no. 6.162/2023, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.149 of 19 December 2023, intervened in Articles 6, 9 and 10 of the scheme; and Order no. 686/2024, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 193 of 8 March 2024, carried out the most extensive revision, bringing the scheme into line with Regulation (EU) 2023/2.831 on de minimis aid. Set against the consolidated version as it stood before 9 September 2026, the text published now brings the following changes, provision by provision.

The definition of tangible fixed assets. Until now, Article 3(g) said they were „fixed assets meeting two cumulative conditions: an entry value of more than 2,500 lei and a normal useful life of more than one year”. The new definition drops the threshold and the duration entirely and speaks of „any depreciable tangible asset, buildings and land of any kind, held for use in the production or supply of goods or services, for rental to third parties or for administrative purposes”. It is the ordinary accounting definition of tangible fixed assets, moved into the scheme as it stands.

Eligible equipment. The old Article 21(1)(a)(ii) stopped at „technological equipment, machinery, working installations, furniture, IT equipment and office equipment, of the nature of fixed assets, with the exception of means of transport”. The list is widened to include goods in the inventory items category within the band from 2,500 lei to the Tax Code threshold.

Expenditure on equipment. The old Article 25(4) stopped at machinery and equipment not requiring installation. Now the same inventory items also enter it, on condition of an operating life of more than one year and of fitting into the 2004 Catalogue.

The prohibition in the list of ineligible expenditure. Article 28(o) said, until now, only this: expenditure on goods falling into the inventory items category is ineligible. Now the same point gains the words „with the exception of those falling within Article 25(4)”.

The name of the programme. The phrase „Just Transition Programme” is replaced, under point 9, throughout the order: it appears in the title of the scheme and in six other places in the text, among them Article 4(1), the one listing the counties, so the name changes there too. The abbreviation „PTJ”, used on its own 29 times, plus „AMPTJ”, „AM PTJ” and „OIPTJ”, is not affected by the replacement. The scheme does, however, define the abbreviation itself, in Article 3(y), so the text remains coherent after the amendment.

What has not changed, although it could have. Neither the budget, nor the allocations per county, nor the breakdown by year, nor the estimated number of beneficiaries, nor the intensities, nor the project ceilings, nor the deadlines. Order no. 1.345/2026, its twin on the microenterprise scheme, had brought an extra 37.8 million euro and 150 more estimated beneficiaries eight days earlier. Here, not a single leu is added.

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