Who does not pay the rovinietă from 1 October, and why the exemption is not assumed but confirmed in writing

An ambulance, a school bus or a vehicle belonging to a volunteer fire service does not pay the rovinietă. But the exemption comes from an entry in a database, not from the nature of the vehicle, and until that entry is confirmed in writing any check will find the charge unpaid. Joint order no. 902/147, signed by the interim minister of transport and infrastructure on 24 September 2026 and by the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Internal Affairs, on 29 September 2026, was published on 30 September 2026 and puts into practice Article 9(8) and Article 13(8) of Law no. 226/2023. It is the act that goes together with the implementing rules published on the same day and applies from the same date, 1 October 2026.

The structure is simple. Annex no. 1 has three chapters and 17 articles and says what has to be sent, to whom and within what time, for a vehicle to be recognised as exempt. Annex no. 2 has 4 articles and describes an altogether different procedure: how the Department for Emergency Situations obtains rovinietă certificates and route tickets for vehicles carrying out transport on civil protection or humanitarian missions on Romanian territory, or passing through Romania for that purpose. The first annex applies from 30 September 2026, that is immediately, so that applications can be filed; the second applies from 1 October 2026, under Article 4(1) and (2) of the order.

Law no. 226/2023 divides exempt vehicles into two groups, according to who keeps the records. For the units of the Ministry of National Defence, of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, of the Romanian Intelligence Service, of the Foreign Intelligence Service, of the Protection and Guard Service, of the Special Telecommunications Service, and for the National Administration of Penitentiaries, the exemption is granted by a marking in the national register of driving licences and registered vehicles, under Article 9(3) and Article 13(3) of the law. For the other categories, that is the community public services for emergency situations, CNAIR, the State Inspectorate for Road Transport Control, the Red Cross, the vehicles exempted by international treaties, local public transport, school transport and public ambulances, the exemption is granted by an entry in the database of the electronic rovinietă system, under Article 9(2).

The order follows exactly that division. Article 1 of Annex no. 1 requires those in the second group to communicate to CNAIR, on their own responsibility, the list of registration numbers, accompanied by copies of the registration certificates. Article 5 requires those in the first group to send the list to the Directorate General for Driving Licences and Vehicle Registration, for marking. Chapter II, Articles 9 to 13, repeats the mechanism for TollRo, with a shorter list, because TollRo applies only to goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes.

Two categories receive additional requirements. Operators of school transport must send, under Article 2, the certified copy of the own-account transport certificate for the road transport of passengers and, where applicable, proof of the use of the vehicles on whatever title. Operators of local public transport must send, under Article 3, the route licence for each vehicle. For both, Article 4 ties the exemption to the documents: the vehicles are exempt for the period of validity of those documents, and CNAIR records the exemption with the expiry date of the documents in question. In other words, the exemption lapses by itself and has to be rebuilt at every licence renewal.

Article 14 sets out how the paperwork travels: by electronic means, signed with a qualified electronic signature, or by filing at the registry, and CNAIR and the directorate general publish on their own websites the addresses to which documents are sent. Article 15 adds a requirement for exemptions founded on international agreements: the application must state the agreement or treaty relied on.

The truly useful part for institutions that already held exemptions is Article 17. Vehicles entered or marked as exempt under Government Ordinance no. 15/2002, on the date of its repeal, are deemed to be entered in the new database and marked for the purposes of Article 9(3) of the law, without a fresh application. There is a single exception, and it matters: the vehicles referred to in Article 29(3) of Law no. 226/2023, that is historic vehicles, whose exemption the law has brought to an end and which CNAIR removes automatically from the database. Article 17(2) adds a further saving in paperwork: a marking made for the rovinietă also produces effects for TollRo, so the seven institutions in the first group do not file two applications.

Annex no. 2 is the most concrete part of the order and reads like a dispatch procedure. The application of the Department for Emergency Situations is sent by email and announced beforehand by telephone, as soon as word of the mission comes in. The subject line has a fixed form, „Solicitare roviniete zz.ll.aaaa” or „Solicitare tichet de rută zz.ll.aaaa, ora hh:mm”. The file is in .xls or .xlsx format, and the message may not exceed 10 MB; if it does not fit, it is sent in several messages numbered in sequence. For vehicle combinations, the number of the motor vehicle and that of the towed vehicle are entered together, in the configuration in which they travel.

The response deadlines are written in hours. For applications received between 8:00 and 20:00 on working days and between 10:00 and 14:00 on non-working days and public holidays, the unit designated by CNAIR issues on the same day the minimum number of rovinietă certificates that covers the whole period of the mission, or the route tickets requested. Outside those windows, the deadline is 11:00 on the following day. Route tickets for missions escape the general rule on advance purchase: Article 3(2) expressly provides that they may be issued at any time before the date and hour at which the journey begins, by way of derogation from the deadlines in the implementing rules, where the limit is 24 hours.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is a shift in the burden of proof. Under the regime now closing, Article 18 of the implementing rules approved by Order of the Minister of Transport no. 1.463/2018 required holders to communicate the list of registration numbers and the copies of the certificates, but it did not make the exemption conditional on a written confirmation coming from the administration. The new order does so three times over, in Article 8, in Article 13 and in Article 16(2) of Annex no. 1. In practice, a newly set-up fleet becomes exempt on the day it receives the answer, not on the day it files the papers.

The second effect is a waiting period that can be calculated. Applications may be filed from 30 September 2026, under Article 4(2) of the order, and CNAIR and the directorate general have at most 5 working days from receipt of the documents, under Article 7 and Article 16(1). Counting from 30 September 2026, a Wednesday, the fifth working day falls on 7 October. Between 1 and 7 October, a vehicle that is entitled to the exemption but has not received confirmation runs without being exempt and risks the fine in Article 18(2) of the law, set at between twice and four times the 12-month rovinietă. The practical answer is to buy a rovinietă for the waiting period.

The third effect is the one that spares most institutions any step at all. Article 17(1) carries existing exemptions over automatically, with no formality on the part of the holders. Whoever was entered or marked as exempt on 30 September 2026 stays exempt on 1 October. The effect combines with Article 39(3) of the implementing rules published on the same day, which carries over into the new system the information from the old IT system for issuing, managing, monitoring and checking the rovinietă.

The fourth effect is a loss, and it hits a small and easily forgotten category. Article 17(1) expressly excludes from the automatic carry-over the vehicles referred to in Article 29(3) of Law no. 226/2023, that is historic vehicles. For them, the exemption is not lost because of this order but because of the law, which decided to end it; the order is simply the act that says plainly that they will not be entered in the new database. From 1 October 2026, the owner of a historic vehicle has to buy a rovinietă.

The fifth effect is an exemption that now lapses. For local public transport and for school transport, Article 4 of Annex no. 1 records the exemption with the expiry date of the route licence or of the own-account transport certificate. An operator who renews a licence needs a fresh entry at CNAIR, and between the expiry of the old document and the confirmation of the new one the 5 working days in Article 7 may go by.

The sixth effect concerns the money, not the paperwork. The rovinietă certificates and route tickets issued at the request of the Department for Emergency Situations are not paid for by the applicant, under Article 41 of the implementing rules, but somebody does pay for them: Article 9(5) and Article 13(5) of the law provide for twice-yearly settlement to CNAIR from the State budget, through the budget of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. Article 4 of Annex no. 2 builds the reporting chain that makes settlement possible: CNAIR draws up the statement for the previous half-year and sends it to the Department by the 5th of the first month of each half-year, the Department confirms it within 3 working days of receipt, and CNAIR sends the confirmed statement to the Ministry by the 15th. The three deadlines fit together: from the 5th plus 3 working days there is still room before the 15th.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The order repeals, on 1 October 2026, Order of the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, and of the Minister of Internal Affairs no. 421/53/2022, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 409 of 28 April 2022, that is after 1,617 days. The comparison with it shows how far the subject matter of the regulation has widened.

The 2022 order had a single thing to regulate, the procedure for issuing rovinietă certificates free of charge for civil protection and humanitarian missions, and it did so in a single annex. What is more, Article 1 of its procedure confined the application to cases where the deadlines set by Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 could not be met, so it was a fallback for emergencies. Annex no. 2 to the new order no longer carries that condition: it covers any application from the Department for Emergency Situations, urgent or not.

The form has grown longer. The 2022 model had 7 columns to fill in, numbered from 1 to 7: the registration number of the motor vehicle, the registration number of the semi-trailer or trailer, the country of registration, the start date, the end date, the number of days and the remarks. Part A of the new form has 9 columns: the trailer column disappears and in come the vehicle identification number, that is the chassis number, the vehicle category, from A to D, and the emissions class or, for electric vehicles, the entry „ELECTRIC”. Part B, for route tickets, is entirely new and has 17 columns: the country, the registration number and the chassis number of the vehicle, the emissions standard, the category of the combination, the same three items for the trailer, the actual weight, the length, the height and the width of the combination, the start and end date and hour, the point of origin, the intermediate points, the point of destination and the remarks. Article 2(5) of Annex no. 2 does, on the other hand, keep the 2022 rule under which, in the case of a vehicle combination, the number of the motor vehicle and that of the towed vehicle are entered together, in the configuration in which they travel. That rule can be applied only in Part B, which has three columns for the trailer; in Part A, the instruction for column 1 expressly asks for the registration number of the vehicle on its own.

The 2022 order said nothing about money. There was no half-yearly statement, no confirmation from the Department and no deadline for sending it on to the ministry. Article 4 of Annex no. 2 introduces all three, with fixed calendar dates, even though the law required only that the statement be sent by the 15th of the first month of each half-year. Also new is Article 3(4), which governs the amendment or cancellation of an application by the same route and specifies that rovinietă certificates and tickets cancelled before their validity begins do not enter the settlement statement.

On exemptions, the comparison is with Article 18 of the 2018 rules. There, for exemption from the usage charge, the list of registration numbers and the copies of the registration certificates were enough. Now, for local public transport the route licence for each vehicle is required in addition, and for school transport the certified copy of the own-account transport certificate and the proof of use. On the other side, a heavy file has disappeared: the one in Article 18(3) of the 2018 rules, with the identity document, the certificate from the employer or from the town hall and the marriage certificate, required of individuals who wanted exemption from the bridge toll. It has disappeared because the toll has.

One change of substance comes from the law that the order applies, and it is worth saying here because the order is where it becomes visible. Article 3(1)(d) of Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 exempted vehicles „folosite exclusiv în transportul public local de persoane prin servicii regulate pe raza teritorial-administrativă a unei localități”, that is used exclusively in local public passenger transport by regular services within the administrative territory of one locality. Article 9(1)(c) of Law no. 226/2023 says only „folosite în transportul public local de persoane prin servicii regulate”, used in local public passenger transport by regular services. The word „exclusiv” and the limit to the area of a single locality have gone, while Article 3 of Annex no. 1 to the order asks instead for the route licence for each vehicle, which moves the check from a condition of use to a document.

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