In brief
- A state guarantee on 80% of the loan. A small firm can borrow up to 500,000 euros for investment and up to 500,000 euros for working capital, so at most 1,000,000 euros in total, with a guarantee of no more than 400,000 euros on each loan and 800,000 euros in total.
- Who is covered. Microenterprises, small and medium-sized firms and small mid-cap enterprises, at least one year old and with one full financial year of activity behind them, with their seat and their activity in Romania, which are investing in retooling or digitalisation.
- On top of the guarantee comes non-repayable money. The interest is subsidised for 24 months on investment loans and for 12 months on working capital loans, and up to 20% of the principal instalments can be written off if the firm raises its turnover by at least 2%. All of it, however, falls within the same de minimis ceiling of 300,000 euros over three years.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 844 and no. 844 bis of 7 October 2026
In force from: 7 October 2026
The Ministry of Investments and European Projects has opened a financing line through which a small firm can take a bank loan with a state guarantee on 80% of its value and, on top of that, have part of the loan turned into non-repayable support. Order no. 1.518/2026, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 844 of 7 October 2026, approves a de minimis aid scheme with a budget of 547.66 million lei, of which 375.48 million is for guarantees and 172.18 million for grants. The scheme applies from 7 October 2026 to 31 December 2029 and is the second de minimis scheme opened to small firms within a few days, after the one for craftspeople and artisans.
„De minimis aid” means low-value public support that the state can grant without asking the European Commission for approval. The price of that exemption is a ceiling: a firm, together with all the firms controlled by the same owners, cannot receive more than 300,000 euros of this kind over any three years, whatever the form of the support and whoever granted it. In practice it is the ceiling that decides how much can be taken out of the new scheme.
The money comes from the Smart Growth, Digitalisation and Financial Instruments Programme 2021-2027, under action 1.5.2. It is not applied for at the ministry and there is no call with a submission deadline. The scheme runs through the National Credit Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (FNGCIMM), which selects banks and non-bank financial institutions, and the firm goes to one of those banks, applies for a loan and, if it is granted, receives the guarantee and the grant along with it. The text only says that the aid is granted „within the limits of the available budget”, so the order of arrival counts.
An investment loan can run for up to 72 months, with a grace period of up to 12 months, and a working capital loan for up to 36 months. The interest rate cannot exceed three-month ROBOR plus a margin of 3% for investment and 3.5% for working capital. The bank keeps at least 20% of each loan on its own risk, and the losses covered by the state cannot exceed 25% of the whole portfolio of guaranteed loans.
The non-repayable component comes in two forms, which can be combined. The first is the interest rate subsidy: the state pays the interest for the first 24 months on investment loans and for the first 12 months on working capital loans. The second is the capital rebate, that is, the writing off of part of the principal instalments: up to 20% on investment loans and up to 10% on working capital loans linked to an earlier investment. The condition is a rise in turnover of at least 2% in the year following completion of the investment, evidenced by the financial statements.
The rebate can also be taken in advance, after at least 12 months from the signing of the loan, if the firm shows a rise of at least 2% compared with the moment it applied for the loan. If it is later found that the conditions are no longer met, the bank cancels the subsidy and turns it into loan principal, with a redrawn repayment schedule but without any extension of the term.
Working capital cannot be taken on its own. It is eligible only if it is linked to an investment financed under the same programme and no more than a year old at the date of the loan application. Refinancing is not accepted, and the loan cannot cover expenditure for which the firm has already received other public money, European or national.
The scheme expects at most 604 beneficiaries and caps at 22% the share of investments from the Bucharest-Ilfov region in the total portfolio.
What it changes in practice
For a firm that has a retooling plan but no collateral to put on the table, the immediate effect is that the bank asks it for less security of its own. The state covers 80% of that loan and the firm is left to guarantee the difference. The second effect is on cost: interest capped at three-month ROBOR plus 3% for investment, fully subsidised for the first 24 months, is cheaper than an ordinary investment loan.
The third effect only becomes visible after a few years. The capital rebate is not an interest reduction, it is debt written off: on an investment loan of 400,000 euros, 20% means 80,000 euros that are never repaid. The condition is modest, a 2% rise in turnover, but it is checked throughout the life of the loan, not just once.
Who is left out: primary agricultural production, fishing and aquaculture at the primary stage, the processing and marketing of agricultural products where the aid is calculated on quantity or on price, activities linked to exports to other countries and those conditioned on the preferential use of Romanian products. A firm active both in eligible and in excluded fields can receive support for the eligible part, but only if it keeps separate accounts.
Also left outside are firms in difficulty, those in insolvency or meeting the conditions for insolvency proceedings brought by creditors, and those that have to repay state aid and have not done so. For small mid-cap enterprises, „in difficulty” has a numerical test: a debt-to-equity ratio above 7.5 and an EBITDA interest coverage below 1.0, both over the last two years.
On top of all this sits the innovation criterion taken from the Oslo Manual. The loan has to lead to products, processes, services, production methods or business models that are new or substantially improved. It is a substantive condition, not a formality: the bank checks it against the business plan before granting the aid.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until this order the instrument existed on paper but could not work. The financing agreement between the ministry and the National Credit Guarantee Fund had been signed on 20 June 2025, and registered on 23 June 2025, while the mandate to conclude it had come out of the government meeting of 13 June 2024. What was missing was the act setting out the de minimis aid rules, that is, exactly the annex published in issue no. 844 bis.
State guarantees for small firms have existed for years in various programmes. What is genuinely new is combining them with the grant „in a single operation”. The mechanism rests on Article 58(5) of Regulation (EU) 2021/1060 and means that the firm no longer files two applications with two institutions, one for the guarantee and one for the non-repayable financing, but signs a loan contract and a financing contract with the same bank.
The de minimis ceiling the scheme works with is the new one, 300,000 euros over three years, from Regulation (EU) 2023/2831. The previous one, under Regulation (EU) no. 1407/2013, was 200,000 euros and was calculated over three financial years. Now the three-year period is assessed on a rolling basis, that is, it looks back from each award, not from the start of the financial year.
The way the guarantee counts towards the ceiling has changed as well. It enters there through its „gross grant equivalent”, a value calculated under a formula in the regulation, starting from the guaranteed amount and the duration of the guarantee. Across the scheme as a whole, the 375.48 million lei of guarantees translate into 60.15 million lei of aid, that is, 16.02%.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- There is no call with a submission deadline and no file to lodge at the ministry. The firm goes to the bank, and the guarantee and the grant arrive with the loan.
- The 80% guarantee solves the real problem of small firms, the lack of collateral, not the lack of a plan.
- The interest rate is capped in the act itself, three-month ROBOR plus 3% for investment, so the bank cannot claw back through pricing the advantage the guarantee brings.
- The capital rebate can be taken in advance, after 12 months, so the effect on liquidity does not wait for the investment to be completed.
- There is a single performance condition and it is measurable: turnover 2% higher.
- A working capital loan is eligible, which is missing from most investment programmes.
What remains a problem
- The ceiling of 300,000 euros makes the combination the act announces impossible. On a combined loan of 1,000,000 euros the grant cannot exceed 204,000 euros, that is, 20.4%, not 45% and still less 49%.
- The decision belongs to the bank, not to the ministry, and the act gives it no deadline for answering an application.
- The 604 estimated places are spread over a window of three years and three months, with no tie-break criteria written into the act.
- A rebate taken in advance can turn back into debt if the firm loses the 2% growth, and the schedule is redrawn without any extension of the term, so the instalments go up.
- Working capital requires an earlier investment under the same programme, less than a year old, a condition that a firm entering the programme now cannot meet.
- 31 December 2029 is both the last day of the scheme and the last day on which the aid can be paid, even though the interest rate subsidy runs for 24 months.
Practical advice
- Start by counting the de minimis aid you have received over the last three years, at group level, not at firm level. Digitalisation grants, exemptions and energy support all go into the same ceiling of 300,000 euros, and exceeding it blocks the new application.
- Before signing, ask the bank for the calculation of the gross grant equivalent of the guarantee and for the estimated value of the grant. The sum of the two is the aid that uses up your ceiling, not the value of the loan.
- If you already have de minimis aid against the ceiling, apply for a smaller loan. The act allows the amount applied for to be adjusted, but if you do not do it, the new aid no longer benefits from the scheme.
- Put the element of innovation explicitly in the business plan: which new product, process or service appears. The Oslo Manual criterion is checked when the aid is granted, not at the end.
- Ask from which month the interest rate subsidy starts and how it overlaps with the grace period. On an investment loan with a 12-month grace period, half of the subsidised window falls in the stretch when you are paying interest only.
- Keep the records of the aid received for at least ten years and be ready to answer any request for data within seven working days. Both obligations are written into the act and do not depend on the bank’s goodwill.
- If you want working capital, check first whether you have an investment financed under the same programme that is less than a year old. Without it, the working capital loan is not eligible.
Frequently asked questions
How much can I actually take, in money?
Who can apply for the financing?
Where is the application filed?
What part of the loan is never repaid?
What happens if I do not raise turnover by 2%?
What counts towards the ceiling of 300,000 euros?
How long is the scheme open?
Editorial analysis
The scheme solves a real problem and solves it in the right place. Small Romanian firms are not refused credit because they have no plans, but because they have no collateral, and a guarantee of 80% moves exactly that barrier. The choice to run everything through the banks, with no call and no file at the ministry, cuts months off the route compared with a classic programme built on submission and evaluation. So far the act is well made.
The weak part is the arithmetic between the figures it announces. The act speaks of a combined loan of 1,000,000 euros, of a grant of up to 45% of the portfolio and up to 49% per beneficiary, and of a de minimis ceiling of 300,000 euros. The four do not fit together. At the maximum, that is, 500,000 euros of investment over 72 months and 500,000 euros of working capital over 36 months, the gross grant equivalent of the two guarantees of 400,000 euros, calculated under the formula in Article 13, gives 64,000 plus 32,000, that is, 96,000 euros. That leaves 204,000 euros for the grant, that is, 20.4% of the loan. The 49% figure is reached only on loans of up to roughly 485,000 euros; above that, the de minimis ceiling cuts it off. An entrepreneur reading the order does, at first sight, a calculation the scheme cannot honour.
A second calculation shows that the 45% ceiling on the scheme is not a real constraint either. Article 8(3) implies that the target loan portfolio is the value of the guarantees divided by the product of the 80% guarantee rate and the 25% cap rate, that is, 375.48 million lei divided by 0.20, around 1.88 billion lei. The budgeted grant, 172.18 million lei, is 9.2% of that portfolio, almost five times below the declared ceiling. The 45% figure limits nothing; the budget does, and it does so much lower down.
The third thing that shows up only on the calculator is the distribution across the years. The scheme is open for 86 days in 2026 and receives, out of the gross grant equivalent of the guarantees, exactly a quarter of the total, 15,037,904.11 lei, the same as each of the full years that follow. Per day, that is 4.24 times the allocation for 2027 or 2028. At the same time, the grant allocated for 2026 is zero. The practical result is that a firm signing a loan in October or November 2026 can receive the guarantee but not the non-repayable component, which is after all the reason the scheme becomes attractive.
Finally, the cost of administration. The National Credit Guarantee Fund may charge a management fee of up to 7% of the contributions set aside for guarantee contracts, that is, up to 26.28 million lei. Divided among the 604 estimated beneficiaries, that gives 43,516 lei of administration per beneficiary, while the average aid per beneficiary, calculated from the de minimis budget of 232,335,214.44 lei, is 384,661 lei. Administration can therefore eat up 11.3% of the value of the average aid.
What should be changed
- A worked example in the text of the scheme. A single table showing the real maximum aid at three loan values, 200,000, 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros, would make it plain that above roughly 485,000 euros the grant goes down. Without it, the bank explains to each client in turn why the advertised percentage does not apply.
- A grant allocation for 2026 as well. As long as the table puts zero against the grant in 2026, the non-repayable component cannot be awarded in the 86 days for which the scheme is open this year. Moving part of the 2027 allocation would make the window that is already open genuinely usable.
- A deadline for the bank’s answer. The act imposes seven working days on the beneficiary for providing data and ten years for keeping records, but gives no deadline within which the bank has to decide on an application. A deadline, even a generous one, would turn the phrase „within the limits of the available budget” from a lottery into a predictable queue.
- Written tie-break criteria. With 604 estimated places and no call, the order of arrival is the only rule. A published list of criteria, however minimal, would reduce the risk that the budget is exhausted on the applications closest to the bank rather than on the best projects.
- The closing of the payment window after 31 December 2029. The interest rate subsidy runs for 24 months, and the capital rebate requires at least 12 months from the signing of the loan. With payments blocked after 31 December 2029, an investment loan signed in 2029 cannot receive all of its support. Either the closing date for awards is separated from the payment deadline, or it is written out explicitly how the grant is reduced for late loans.
- Correction of the internal references. Article 12(2) refers to Article 3(10) for the relationships that define a single undertaking, but those are in point 12 of Article 3, while point 10 defines the aid provider. Likewise, Article 13(5)(b) refers to Article 8(4)(b)(ii), the 36-month loan, although the formula concerns guarantees of more than five years. Neither changes the outcome, but both make the banker’s job harder.
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. 844 of 7 October 2026, page 10, and no. 844 bis of 7 October 2026, pages 1-40 16 pages PDF, 108 KB the act starts on page 10
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The other editions cited: nr. 844 bis/2026
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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.