In brief
- State companies whose money is frozen because of debts owed by the State can borrow from Exim Banca Românească, interest-free and for no more than 5 years. The money is public and the bank lends it „in the name and on the account of the State”, which means the risk stays with the State.
- Nothing is granted automatically. Every financing goes through a government decision, after the bank’s analysis and the opinions of the Interministerial Committee for Finance, Guarantees and Insurance and of the Ministry of Finance.
- The norm sets no deadline for any of the four links in the approval chain and no public list of beneficiaries. In the whole text, from Article 1 to Article 18, a single figure appears, the 5-year limit.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 741 of 2 September 2026
In force from: 2 September 2026, the date of publication
A state company left without money because its revenues have been garnished over a debt owed by the State can now receive an interest-free loan, out of public funds. The Interministerial Committee for Finance, Guarantees and Insurance, known by its Romanian acronym CIFGA, has approved Norm N3.18, the rulebook that puts into practice the mechanism created three weeks earlier by Law no. 170/2026 on certain fiscal and budgetary measures. The decision carries the number 170, it was adopted at the meeting of 28 August 2026 and it was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 741 of 2 September 2026, the date from which it applies.
The situation it solves is a concrete one. When the Romanian State loses an international case and does not pay, the creditor does not go after the state budget, but after the money it can actually reach. Sometimes that money is the revenue of a state company that was not a party to the case and is in no way to blame. The company is left without cash overnight, even though its business is running normally.
That is exactly what happened to the Romanian Air Traffic Services Administration. On 30 June 2026, EUROCONTROL, the European organisation that collects en-route charges for flights, was placed in the position of garnishee and froze the amounts due to the administration, in an enforced execution brought by Pfizer against the Romanian State over the vaccines ordered during the pandemic and never collected. The amount frozen was 3.42 billion lei, principal claim and interest, plus 18.56 million euro in recovery costs.
The first answer was budgetary and came as an emergency. Through Government Decision no. 683 of 28 August 2026, the State took 135.622 million lei out of the budget reserve fund so that air traffic could keep running. Set against the 3.42 billion lei frozen, the allocation covers under 4% of the sum, so it was a solution for a few weeks, not a mechanism.
Norm N3.18 is the mechanism. It hands money to nobody by itself, it sets out who may apply, what documents have to be filed, who analyses, who gives an opinion and who approves. It is the first edition of the norm, marked „edition I/0”, which means that before 2 September 2026 this type of operation did not exist in the bank’s rulebook.
What it changes in practice
The first thing to make clear is who is who. Exim Banca Românească is an ordinary bank when it works with its own money. Here, though, it works „in the name and on the account of the State”, a formula from Law no. 96/2000 that changes everything: the bank does not put its own money at stake, it administers public funds, as a kind of agent of the State. Article 4 of the norm says what the loans are paid out of, namely the fund provided for in Article 10(b) of Law no. 96/2000, „the fund for the administration of financing and guarantee commitments outstanding on 30 September 2025”.
The practical consequence is simple and worth saying plainly. If the money does not come back, the loss does not land in the bank’s profit and loss account, but in the public fund. The taxpayer is the one who bears it, not the bank’s shareholders. The bank answers for the analysis, for the contract and for chasing the repayment, but not for the credit risk.
CIFGA is the committee that keeps the rulebook. It has five members, according to the information published by the bank: a chair, who is a representative of the Ministry of Finance, a deputy chair, who is the executive president of the bank, and three members, from the General Secretariat of the Government, from the Prime Minister’s Chancellery and one more from the Ministry of Finance. The decision of 2 September 2026 is signed by the chair of the committee, Florin Alexandru Zaharia.
The beneficiary cannot be just any state company. Article 5(b) refers to Article 2 point 2(a) and (b) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 109/2011, that is to autonomous administrations and to national companies and national corporations, or companies in which the State is sole or majority shareholder or holds control. The norm adds one more condition: the company has to be under the authority of the central public administration. Two categories are left out, and you only see it by opening the ordinance: companies controlled by a state company, that is subsidiaries, which sit at letter (c) of the same text and were not taken over into the norm, and companies belonging to a city or a county.
The substantive condition is strict. It is not enough for the firm to have money troubles. Its cash resources have to be frozen, in whole or in part, through an enforced execution brought for an obligation of the State arising from a judgment delivered in an international dispute. A state company with losses, with debts of its own or with accounts garnished by its own suppliers does not fall under this norm.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until August 2026 there was no legal channel for anything of the sort. When a state company was left without money because of a debt owed by the State, the only way out was an allocation from the budget, like the 135.622 million lei for air traffic services, or a budget increase by government decision. Both mean definitive public spending, not a loan that comes back.
Law no. 170/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 648 of 5 August 2026 and in force from 8 August 2026, supplemented Law no. 96/2000 and added this operation to those the bank may carry out for the State, in Article 9(1)(a^1). Norm N3.18 is the next step, the one that turns the text of the law into a procedure.
The difference from a budget allocation is that the money has to be returned. Article 17 describes two ways out. If the enforced execution stops because the execution or the enforceable title has been annulled, the company repays out of its own money. If the execution stops because the State does pay what it owes, the amount executed is settled from the budget of the Ministry of Finance and is used for the repayment. In the second case, which is also the more likely one, public money in fact pays twice out of the same pocket, once the creditor and once the loan.
There is one more change of procedure that does not show in the act. Under the committee’s general rules, the operations the bank carries out for the State are approved by CIFGA up to 50 million euro, and above that threshold the committee only gives an opinion and the Government decides. Norm N3.18 keeps no threshold at all. Any temporary financing, whatever its size, goes through a government decision.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- There is finally a written procedure for a situation that until now was settled ad hoc, through allocations from the reserve fund.
- The loan is interest-free and the company pays only an administration fee, so the burden on a firm that is not to blame in the first place stays small.
- The money cannot be used for wages above the level in the approved budget, which closes the easiest route for turning crisis financing into pay rises.
- The company does not have to mortgage the machinery, the halls or other assets its business depends on, because collateral security is not compulsory.
- Being approved by government decision, every operation ends up in the Official Gazette of Romania, with the name of the beneficiary and with the conditions.
What remains a problem
- No link in the approval chain has a deadline: not the bank’s analysis, not the committee’s opinion, not the opinion of the Ministry of Finance, not the initiation of the government decision. A company without money waits without knowing for how long.
- The real cost cannot be worked out from the norm. The administration fee is set by each government decision separately, so it can differ from one company to another with no public rule of calculation.
- The norm does not say what happens if the garnishment lasts longer than 5 years, and international cases of this kind usually last longer.
- The only compulsory security is the mortgage over the accounts opened with the bank, in a mechanism whose starting point is precisely the fact that the firm has its accounts frozen.
- Subsidiaries of state companies and the companies of city halls and county councils stay outside the mechanism, even if they were frozen over the same debt of the State.
- There is no obligation to publish the bank’s analysis, the committee’s opinion, the financing contract or the internal procedures the bank issues under Article 18.
Practical advice
- If you work at a state company with frozen accounts, check first what the garnishment rests on. The mechanism applies only where the execution targets an obligation of the State arising from a judgment delivered in an international dispute, not a debt of the company itself.
- The application does not go in on its own. Article 12 requires the request to be submitted by the company together with the supervising authority, that is the ministry or the institution that coordinates it. Without that ministry, nothing starts.
- Prepare in good time the figure that counts, the estimated liquidity need, backed up for the period applied for and limited to the costs of keeping the business running. The bank’s analysis stops at this figure alone, under Article 13.
- Open the current account with the bank and prepare the movable mortgage over the accounts before approval, not after. They are compulsory, under Article 7(2) and Article 10, and they can hold up the signing of the contract.
- Do not build the budget on the assumption that wages can go up. Article 9 explicitly bans the money from leading to staff costs above the level approved in the revenue and expenditure budget.
- If you follow public money from the outside, as a journalist, a trade unionist or simply a taxpayer, the only reliable source is the government decision for each financing. That is where the beneficiary, the limits and the fee appear. The bank’s analysis and the committee’s opinion are not published.
Frequently asked questions
What does „in the name and on the account of the State” mean?
Who actually approves a financing?
Which companies can receive money?
Is interest payable?
How long can the loan run?
How large can the amounts be?
What security has to be given?
Who pays the money back?
Are the list of beneficiaries and the amounts published?
How long has the mechanism existed?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article 17(1): the scenario in which the garnishment is not lifted within 5 years has no solution. The text says that repayment is made „at the latest at the end of the period for which the financing is granted”, then lists two situations, both conditional on the enforced execution coming to an end: annulment of the execution or of the title, in which case the company pays, and actual payment of the debt by the State, in which case the Ministry of Finance settles it. Article 6, however, allows the period to reach 5 years precisely because the release of the money may be slow. If at the end of those 5 years the execution is still running, a reader in good faith can arrive at two opposite conclusions: either the company owes the sum anyway, on the basis of the opening sentence, even though its money is still frozen and it has nothing to pay from, or nothing is owed, because neither of the two situations listed has occurred. The stake is not theoretical. In the case that set the mechanism off, the amount frozen is 3.42 billion lei, and international disputes of this kind frequently run beyond five years.
Editorial analysis
The norm was written fast and it shows. The accounts of the air traffic administration were frozen on 30 June 2026, the law that creates the mechanism entered into force on 8 August 2026, and the implementing rulebook appeared on 2 September 2026. That is 64 days from the freeze to the rulebook and 25 days from the law to the norm, an unusual pace for the Romanian administration. The speed was necessary, but it left marks: in the whole text, from Article 1 to Article 18, there is a single figure, the 5 years in Article 6. No amount, no percentage, no deadline expressed in days.
The absence of deadlines is the part that will count most in practice. An application travels through four links before approval, the bank’s analysis in Article 13, the committee’s opinion in Article 14(1), the opinion of the Ministry of Finance and the government decision in Article 11, plus the contract in Article 15. None of them has a deadline. Instead, Article 12(4) gives the bank the right to ask for as much additional information as it wants, again without a deadline, which can restart the clock as often as needed. On the other side of the table sits a company that has nothing to pay next month’s wages from. The ratio between the pressure on the recipient and the complete absence of pressure on the administration is the one serious imbalance in the text.
The second thing you do not see when reading the norm is who actually decides. CIFGA has five members, two of whom come from the Ministry of Finance, including the chair. The same ministry then gives a separate opinion, under Article 11, and it is also the one that settles the bill at the end, under Article 17(1)(b). The ministry therefore appears three times on the same route, as majority member of the committee that gives the opinion, as a distinct opinion-giver and as payer. On top of that, under the committee’s usual rules the bank’s operations for the State are approved at CIFGA level up to 50 million euro, whereas the norm drops the threshold and sends every financing, however small, to the Government. The choice has its logic, since this is public money in an exceptional situation, but it also means that a liquidity problem of a few million lei ends up on the agenda of a government meeting.
Otherwise, the text is clean for an implementing rulebook. The definitions are clear, the access condition is tight and leaves no room for generous readings, and the ban in Article 9 on staff costs shuts down the most predictable abuse from the start. The problem is not what it says, but what is missing.
What should be changed
- Firm deadlines for each link. Ten working days for the bank’s analysis and five for each opinion would turn an emergency mechanism into a predictable one. A company would know within three weeks whether it has money or whether it has to look for another solution.
- A rule for garnishment that runs beyond 5 years. Article 17 has to be supplemented with a third situation, the one in which the execution has not ended at the close of the period. Otherwise, at maturity you end up with a negotiation without rules between company, ministry and bank, over sums in the billions.
- A public formula for the administration fee. Today the level is set separately, in each government decision. A scale in the norm, even a range, would make the cost comparable between beneficiaries and would close the argument about different treatment.
- A periodic public report on the financings. Beneficiary, amount approved, amount drawn, fee, state of repayment, published every six months by the bank or by the ministry. Government decisions say what was approved, but nothing about what happened afterwards.
- Clarification of the position of subsidiaries and local companies. Article 5(b) takes over only letters (a) and (b) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 109/2011 and requires belonging to the central administration. If the exclusion of subsidiaries is deliberate, it is worth saying why, because a subsidiary of a state company can be frozen over exactly the same debt of the State.
- Publication of the procedures issued under Article 18. The bank writes its own procedures and submits them for the committee’s approval. Since public money is involved, those procedures should be accessible, not internal documents.
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. 741 of 2 September 2026 8 pages PDF, 80 KB the act starts on page 2
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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.