In brief

  • From 1 October 2026 the rovinietă is worked out differently, and goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes stop paying it altogether. Order of the interim minister of transport and infrastructure no. 922/2026 approves the 41 articles of implementing rules for Law no. 226/2023 and repeals, on 1 October 2026, Order of the minister of transport no. 1.463/2018, that is the rules that have accompanied the rovinietă, the charge for using the national road network, since 17 November 2018. The rovinietă stays for passenger transport vehicles and for goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes inclusive. Above 3.5 tonnes what is owed is TollRo, calculated per kilometre travelled.
  • What changes for an ordinary driver. New periods of validity appear, one day, 10 days, 30 days, 60 days and 12 months, in place of one day, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days and 12 months. Passenger cars and goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes may buy, for the first time, a one-day rovinietă: until now Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 imposed on them, through Article 1(71), a minimum of 7 days. In exchange, the price depends from now on also on the vehicle’s class of pollutant emissions, not only on its category and on the duration. Electric vehicles are entered with the wording „ELECTRIC” and can no longer be pushed into the Euro 0 class for want of data.
  • The figures and the deadlines that matter. The act appeared one day before the date on which the regime it puts into practice starts to apply, and 548 days after the deadline the law had set itself: Article 25(1) of Law no. 226/2023 required the implementing rules by 31 March 2025. The route ticket for heavy vehicles is bought at most 24 hours before departure and lasts 72 hours, whether or not the route has been covered. A wrong registration number can be corrected on the spot within 60 minutes, and through CNAIR within 7 working days at most. The money for an old rovinietă left without purpose on 1 October is claimed through an application that CNAIR has 90 days to put into service, and is refunded within 90 working days of registration.
Act: Order of the interim minister of transport and infrastructure no. 922/2026 approving the Implementing Rules for Law no. 226/2023 on the application of certain road charges on the national road network in Romania
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 832 of 30 September 2026, pages 2-16
In force from: 30 September 2026, the date of publication; the repeal of Order no. 1.463/2018 takes effect on 1 October 2026

A rovinietă bought on Thursday morning is no longer worked out by the same rules as one bought on Wednesday. The law that changes the regime was adopted in July 2023, was postponed twice and starts to apply on 1 October 2026, and its rules of application were published the day before. Order no. 922/2026, signed in Bucharest on 30 September 2026 and published the same day, approves the implementing rules for Law no. 226/2023 on the application of certain road charges on the national road network in Romania. The 41 articles of the annex, plus an annex of its own listing the correction situations, take up 15 pages of the Official Gazette of Romania and replace 19 articles written in 2018 for an ordinance dating from 2002.

The substantive change is not one of procedure but of the logic of payment. Until now every registered vehicle paid the rovinietă, that is a charge tied to time: you buy a period and you drive as much as you like within it. From 1 October 2026, Article 4(1) of Law no. 226/2023 leaves the rovinietă only for vehicles designed to carry passengers and for goods vehicles with a maximum authorised mass of up to 3.5 tonnes inclusive. Goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes move, through Article 12(1) of the same law, to TollRo, a passage charge worked out by multiplying a unit charge by the distance travelled on the SETRE Romania domain. Whoever carries freight with a heavy vehicle therefore pays in proportion to how much it runs, not to the fact of owning it.

The rules describe two separate IT systems. The electronic rovinietă system, abbreviated SER, records payment of the usage charge. The electronic road charging system in Romania, abbreviated STRR, records payment of TollRo. The rovinietă is bought, under Article 3(2) of the rules, through the distributors’ software, through web portals, including the national electronic online payment system, through phone applications, through payment terminals and by SMS. TollRo can be paid in three ways, under Article 9(3): through a contract with an electronic road charging service provider, which supplies an on-board unit, through a route ticket, or through the mobile application of the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration, which uses satellite positioning of the phone.

The mobile application is the most unusual part of the construction. Under Article 12(1)-(3) of the rules it runs on the driver’s phone, follows the position by satellite and works out the chargeable kilometres, while Article 12(3) expressly opens it to foreign users as well, even though Article 12(8) of the law had reserved it for vehicles registered in Romania and left the extension to the rules. The obligations placed on the driver are real, though: Article 14(1) requires him to start the charging session at the beginning of the journey, to declare the vehicle data correctly, to keep enough money in the account, to make sure the application works for the whole journey and to watch the alerts it generates at all times. If an alert appears, Article 14(2) obliges him to interrupt the journey immediately, observing the rules on road safety.

The route ticket is the option for whoever wants neither an on-board unit nor an application. Under Article 10(2) of the rules it is paid in advance, at most 24 hours before the date and hour at which the journey begins, it gives the right to a single passage on the route made up of the point of origin, the intermediate points and the point of destination, and it is valid for 72 hours from the departure time set by the applicant. Article 10(3) adds the detail that counts in practice: once the 72 hours expire the ticket loses its validity, whether the route has been covered in full, in part or not at all.

For hauliers who want an on-board unit, the rules open a market that did not exist in Romania. Chapter III, section 4, Articles 15-21, governs the authorisation of electronic road charging service providers, that is the firms that issue the units and invoice TollRo to users. CNAIR publishes a declaration on the SETRE Romania domain, with the list and the map of the charged sections, the authorisation procedure, the technical and financial requirements, the schedule of commissions and the model contract. Article 16(3) also sets limits in the providers’ favour: they cannot be required to keep more than one physical point of distribution and collection on Romanian territory, the financial guarantee must be sized in proportion to the estimated volume, and testing and the pilot project cannot exceed, taken together, 6 months from the submission of the complete documentation.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is on the wallet and cannot be quantified from this act, because the level of the charges is set by another order, the one provided for in Article 5(4) of the law for the rovinietă and in Article 12(4) for the TollRo unit charge. What can be read directly from the law, though, are the ceilings. Article 5(2) of Law no. 226/2023 provides that the one-day rovinietă may not exceed 9% of the 12-month one, the 10-day one 12%, the 30-day one 19% and the 60-day one 30%. Under the regime now closing, ceilings of this kind existed only for goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, through Article 1(75) of Government Ordinance no. 15/2002, and they were far tighter: 2% for one day, 5% for 7 days, 10% for 30 days. For passenger cars there was no ceiling at all, but there was no one-day rovinietă either.

The second effect is the new pricing variable. Article 6(1) of the rules structures the usage charge by the category of the vehicle, by the class of pollutant emissions or classification as an electric vehicle, and by the duration of use, which also covers the time spent stationary on the network. There are three categories of passenger transport vehicle: up to 9 seats including the driver, that is passenger cars, between 10 and 23 seats, and over 23 seats. The fourth category is the goods vehicle of up to 3.5 tonnes. Article 6(2) solves a problem the law had left open: electric vehicles are identified from box P.3 of the vehicle registration certificate, are entered in SER with the wording „ELECTRIC”, and are not subject to the automatic classification as Euro 0 that Article 6(3) of the law lays down for vehicles without emissions data.

The third effect touches the fine. Article 18(2) of Law no. 226/2023 ties it to the price: between twice the 12-month rovinietă and four times the 12-month rovinietă, updated each year with the consumer price index. Annex no. 2 to Government Ordinance no. 15/2002, as worded by Law no. 241/2022, provided fixed amounts, from 275 to 550 lei for passenger cars and from 5,950 to 11,900 lei for goods vehicles over 12 tonnes with at least 4 axles. From 1 October the penalty rises automatically with the charge and with inflation, without any further amendment of the law being needed.

At TollRo the figures are of a different order. Article 19(5) of the law sets the TollRo owed at the value worked out over the distance travelled or, where the distance cannot be established, at 2,000 lei, a sum applied only once in any 12-hour interval. The fine, under Article 19(17), is between 10 and 20 times the TollRo owed where the distance can be established, and 5,000 lei where it cannot. A heavy vehicle caught without payment on a section where the distance cannot be reconstructed therefore reaches 7,000 lei, TollRo plus fine, for a single finding.

The fourth effect is procedural and favourable to the driver. Article 36(1) and Article 37(1) of the rules introduce two documents that are not offence reports: the information letter, sent by post with acknowledgement of receipt to the keeper of a vehicle registered in a Member State of the European Union, and the payment notice, handed over on the spot at a check carried out by stopping the vehicle. Article 38 states expressly that neither of them constitutes an offence report establishing and penalising the contravention and that neither produces its effects. Article 19(14) and (15) of the law close the loop: payment within 72 hours of receiving the letter puts an end to the non-payment and to any subsequent penalties.

The fifth effect concerns money already paid. Article 39(1) of the rules keeps in force the rovinietă charges issued under Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 for the vehicles that stay within the rovinietă regime, that is passenger transport and goods up to 3.5 tonnes, until the end of the period paid for. For all the others, that is for goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, and for the bridge tolls, Article 39(2) draws the line on 1 October 2026. The refund is worked out by the formula written into Article 39(6), S equals T multiplied by Zn over Zt, where T is the charge paid including VAT, Zn is the number of days between 1 October 2026 and the expiry of validity, both included, and Zt is the total number of days in the period.

The effects run from different moments, and the distinction is worth keeping in mind. The order enters into force on the date of publication, under Article 4, that is on 30 September 2026. The repeal of Order no. 1.463/2018 takes effect on 1 October 2026, under Article 3. The charging regime that the rules put into practice also begins on 1 October 2026, the date to which Article 29(1) of Law no. 226/2023 was postponed by Article III(1) of Law no. 103/2026.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The rules now closing are the Implementing Rules approved by Order of the minister of transport no. 1.463/2018, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 881 of 18 October 2018 and in force 30 days after publication, under Article 2 of that order. They lasted 2,875 days. They applied Government Ordinance no. 15/2002, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 82 of 1 February 2002, which is repealed on 1 October 2026, after 9,008 days, that is after 24 years and 8 months. The 2018 order was amended in the meantime, so the form published then is not the form in force on the last day; the comparisons below are therefore made against the 2018 text and against the current wording of the ordinance, both checked at source.

The first difference is the list of periods. Article 5(1) of the 2018 rules and Article 1(7) of the ordinance still in force provided for one day, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days and 12 months. Article 7(1) of the new rules provides for one day, 10 days, 30 days, 60 days and 12 months. The 7-day period lengthens to 10, and the 90-day one shortens to 60. For anyone who bought a rovinietă every quarter, that option disappears and has to be replaced by two purchases of 30 days or by one of 60 plus one of 30.

The second difference is the entry threshold for passenger cars. In Annex no. 1 to Government Ordinance no. 15/2002, as amended by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 44/2017, the one-day column is marked with a dash for passenger cars and for goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes, and Article 1(71) of the ordinance says why: for these the minimum duration for which the charge may be paid is 7 days. The new rules no longer carry that restriction, and Article 8(17)(a) goes further and allows the one-day and the 10-day rovinietă to be issued by SMS for passenger cars and for goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes. For passenger transport vehicles with 10 to 23 seats, SMS covers only the one-day period.

The third difference is the pricing criterion. Article 4(1) of the 2018 rules structured the charge by the number of axles for vehicles over 12 tonnes, by the maximum authorised mass for lighter ones, and by the number of seats for passenger transport vehicles. The class of pollutant emissions appeared neither in the 2018 rules nor in Annex no. 1 to the ordinance. Article 6(1)(b) of the new rules brings it into the calculation, and for TollRo Article 9(1)(c) refers to the annex to Order of the minister of transport and infrastructure no. 1.925/2025 for classification by class. The ceiling on the difference is in the law: Article 12(6) of Law no. 226/2023 says that the unit charge for a vehicle may not exceed by more than 100% the charge for the equivalent vehicle meeting the strictest Euro emission standards.

The fourth difference, the one least discussed, is the disappearance of the bridge toll. Article 7 of the 2018 rules structured the passage charge by the number of axles, by the mass or the number of seats and by the number of crossings, and Annex no. 3 to Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 lists the three places where it was collected: the bridge over the Danube between Giurgiu and Ruse, only in the Giurgiu-Ruse direction, the bridge between Giurgeni and Vadu Oii on national road DN 2A, and the bridges between Fetești and Cernavodă on motorway A2. Article 39(2) of the new rules declares that the tolls already issued cease to be valid from 1 October 2026, and the rules contain no procedure at all for a passage charge on bridges. Article 3(2) of Law no. 226/2023 does, admittedly, allow a passage charge to be applied for bridges, tunnels and mountain passes alone, but Article 2(r) of the same law defines the passage charge as a sum owed according to the distance travelled, and the law does not say by what act the level of a bridge charge would be set. In the absence of such rules, crossing the bridges at Fetești and at Giurgeni is left, from 1 October 2026, without a charge of its own.

Along with the toll, an exemption that local people benefited from also disappears. Article 3(11)(b) of Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 exempted from the passage charge the passenger cars of individuals who have their home on one side of the bridge, tunnel or pass and their workplace or a farming plot owned by them on the other, and Article 18(3)-(6) of the 2018 rules described the file required and gave the exemption a validity of 6 months at most. The exemption no longer appears in Law no. 226/2023, but neither does the obligation it exempted from.

The fifth difference is the part that is entirely new. The 2018 rules knew nothing of the on-board unit, of electronic road charging service providers, of the list of invalidated units, of the route ticket or of the mobile application with satellite positioning. Chapter III of the new rules, Articles 9-25, introduces all of them, over 6 pages of the Official Gazette of Romania. Articles 22-25 govern the pairing of the unit with a single vehicle, the ban on moving it to another vehicle without notification, invalidation in case of theft or loss, and the user’s liability for the TollRo arising from unauthorised use up to the moment of notification.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The one-day rovinietă reaches passenger cars too. Anyone who passes through Romania once, or goes out on a national road for a single day, is no longer obliged to buy 7 days, as Article 1(71) of Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 required. And by SMS one day and 10 days can be bought, under Article 8(17)(a).
  • Electric vehicles no longer risk the Euro 0 charge. Article 6(2) identifies them from the energy source in the vehicle registration certificate and enters them with the wording „ELECTRIC”, taking them out of the rule in Article 6(3) of the law, which sends any vehicle without emissions data into the Euro 0 class.
  • A wrong emission class is corrected at no cost. Article 26(10) allows the class to be corrected on the basis of the vehicle identity card, including where Euro 0 resulted from the Romanian Automotive Register having no data, and Article 29(3) provides that in that case the transfer costs and the commission are not deducted from the difference refunded.
  • A system failure is not paid for by the user. Article 9(4) says that where STRR or the automatic control devices malfunction, vehicles with an active unit, an active session in the application or a valid ticket are not recorded as being in non-payment, and the TollRo is established later, at no extra cost.
  • Paying on the spot takes the contravention out of play. Article 37(2) allows the TollRo owed to be paid on the spot, by bank card, into the account shown in the payment notice, and Article 19(15) of the law provides that payment puts an end to the non-payment and to any subsequent penalties.
  • CNAIR is obliged to publish the figures every month. Article 39(10) requires it to put on its website, each month, the number of refund requests registered and settled, the number of information letters and payment notices, the availability of STRR and of the mobile application together with the intervals of unavailability, the number of authorised providers and the sums collected, broken down by category of vehicle and class of emissions.
  • Service providers are shielded from disproportionate requirements. Article 16(3) forbids demanding more than one physical point on Romanian territory, requires a guarantee proportionate to the estimated volume, caps testing and the pilot at 6 months taken together, and requires reasons to be given for decisions refusing, suspending or withdrawing authorisation.

What remains a problem

  • One day from publication to application. Distributors, hauliers and service providers received the rules on 30 September for a regime that starts on 1 October. Article 39(11) implicitly acknowledges the problem: the distributors’ old agreements stay valid until new ones are concluded, but no later than 90 days.
  • No service provider can be authorised in time. Authorisation requires the declaration on the SETRE Romania domain, published by CNAIR on the basis of these rules, then testing and a pilot project of up to 6 months taken together, under Article 16(3)(c). On 1 October 2026, a foreign heavy vehicle has in practice only the route ticket or the mobile application.
  • The route ticket is lost after 72 hours, with no refund. Article 10(3) declares it expired whether the route has been covered in full or in part, and Article 31(1) lists only three cases of refund, none of which covers a delay for reasons outside the user’s control.
  • The mobile application shifts the risk onto the driver. Article 14(1)(d) and (e) require him to make sure the application works for the whole journey and to watch the alerts at all times, and Article 14(2) obliges him to interrupt the journey immediately at the first alert. A flat battery or a loss of signal thus becomes his problem.
  • The money for rovinietă charges left without purpose comes back late. Article 39(5) gives CNAIR up to 90 days to put the submission application into service, and Article 39(6) a further 90 working days to pay. Added together, the two deadlines run past 7 months from 1 October 2026.
  • Refunds are cut by costs and commissions. Article 27(5), Article 28(2), Article 29(1), Article 31(2) and Article 39(6) all provide for the deduction of transfer costs and of the commission, plus the condition that the sum due must exceed those costs. For small sums, no refund is made at all.
  • The level of the charges cannot be learnt from this act. What a one-day rovinietă or a kilometre of TollRo actually costs is set by the orders provided for in Article 5(4) and Article 12(4) of the law, so whoever reads the rules can work out nothing.

Practical advice

  1. Check what kind of vehicle you drive, not what you have been paying until now. The dividing line is a maximum authorised mass of 3.5 tonnes for goods vehicles. Below it, and for any passenger transport vehicle, the rovinietă stays. Above it, TollRo is payable per kilometre, and the old rovinietă loses its validity on 1 October 2026, under Article 39(2) of the rules.
  2. If you hold a 12-month rovinietă for a heavy vehicle, ask for a refund. The formula in Article 39(6) is S equals T multiplied by Zn over Zt. For a 12-month rovinietă bought on 1 March 2026, Zn is 151, that is the days from 1 October 2026 to 28 February 2027 inclusive, and Zt is 365, so 41.4% of the charge paid is refunded. The request is lodged through the application that CNAIR puts into service, but a written request lodged earlier is registered automatically on the date the application goes live.
  3. At the counter, read the registration number on the paper before you leave. Article 26(1) gives you 60 minutes from the moment of issue to ask for a correction at the same point of sale, and Article 26(3) the same period if you made the mistake yourself at a terminal. After 60 minutes the route is through CNAIR, with up to 7 working days of waiting and with the rovinietă treated as invalid until written confirmation, under Article 26(9).
  4. Check the emission class recorded for your vehicle, especially if it is an older car. If SER shows Euro 0 because the Romanian Automotive Register had no data, Article 26(10) allows the correction to be made on the basis of the vehicle identity card, and the difference in charge is refunded without the transfer costs being deducted, under Article 29(3).
  5. For heavy vehicles, choose how you will pay before you set off, not at the border. The route ticket is bought at most 24 hours before the departure time you declare and lasts 72 hours, under Article 10(2). If the journey may run beyond 72 hours, the mobile application is the option that does not expire, but it requires the phone to work for the whole trip.
  6. Declare the configuration of the combination correctly. Article 9(6) sets the category by the maximum authorised mass of the combination, worked out as the sum of the masses entered in the documents of the motor vehicle and of the towed vehicles, and the user is liable for the accuracy of the data declared, whatever the means of payment.
  7. Do not ignore an information letter that arrives by post. Payment within 72 hours of receipt closes the case, under Article 19(14) and (15) of the law. If the deadline passes, what follows is the offence report with the fine from Article 19(17), that is between 10 and 20 times the TollRo owed, or 5,000 lei where the distance cannot be established.
  8. Keep the document that attests payment, not just the proof of payment. Article 8(1) lists two separate documents: the fiscal document attesting payment of the sum, and the document carrying the information recorded in the SER database. The second is the one that proves the rovinietă exists, and at the counter it is issued in two copies, of which the customer’s copy stays with you.
  9. If you sell the vehicle or register it in another country, move the rovinietă. Article 32(3) keeps it valid only if you ask CNAIR in writing to change the registration number, enclosing the new certificate and, where applicable, the sale contract. The settlement period is 7 working days at most, and until confirmation the rovinietă is not valid on the new number.

Frequently asked questions

Is the rovinietă I hold now still valid after 1 October 2026?
It depends on the vehicle. For passenger transport vehicles and for goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes, Article 39(1) of the rules keeps it valid until the end of the period paid for. For goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, Article 39(2) ends it on 1 October 2026, with a right to a proportionate refund.
Why do I no longer pay the rovinietă with a vehicle over 3.5 tonnes?
Because Article 12(1) of Law no. 226/2023 moves it to TollRo, a charge worked out over the kilometres travelled on the SETRE Romania domain, instead of a charge per period. It is not an exemption but a different way of calculating, and Article 3(1) of the law forbids charging the usage charge and the passage charge at the same time for the same section.
How much does the new rovinietă cost?
Order no. 922/2026 contains no charges. The level of the rovinietă is approved by the order provided for in Article 5(4) of the law, and the TollRo unit charge by the one provided for in Article 12(4). The law sets only ceilings expressed against the 12-month charge: 9% for one day, 12% for 10 days, 19% for 30 days and 30% for 60 days.
Can I buy a one-day rovinietă for a passenger car?
Yes, from 1 October 2026. Article 7(1) of the rules includes the one-day period with no restriction by category, and Article 8(17)(a) allows the one-day and the 10-day rovinietă to be issued by SMS for passenger cars and for goods vehicles of up to 3.5 tonnes registered in Romania.
I forgot to buy the rovinietă and I have already driven. What do I do?
For vehicles registered in Romania, Article 7(2) allows the rovinietă for the current day to be paid up to 24:00 on the following day at the latest. Article 7(5) states that, where payment is made on the following day, the start date entered in SER is the previous day, with validity from 0:00. The option cannot be exercised by SMS, under Article 7(6).
Is there still a charge for crossing the bridge at Fetești or at Giurgeni?
The tolls already issued lose their validity on 1 October 2026, under Article 39(2) of the rules, and the rules contain no procedure for a passage charge on bridges. Law no. 226/2023 allows such a charge in Article 3(2), but does not provide by what act its level is set. Until new rules appear, the crossings have no charge of their own.
How does a haulier pay TollRo?
In three ways, under Article 9(3): through a contract with an electronic road charging service provider, which supplies an on-board unit; through a route ticket bought at most 24 hours before departure and valid for 72 hours for a single passage; or through CNAIR’s mobile application, which measures the distance by satellite positioning.
What happens if the on-board unit breaks down during the journey?
Article 24(1) forbids continuing the journey on the SETRE Romania domain with a faulty unit. Article 24(5) says the journey may continue only after another unit has been activated, a route ticket has been bought, or CNAIR’s mobile application is used.
Are historic vehicles still exempt?
No. Article 29(3) of Law no. 226/2023 provides that, on the date the law enters into force, the exemption of historic vehicles established by Government Ordinance no. 15/2002 ceases, and CNAIR removes them automatically from the database of exempted vehicles. The list of exemptions in Article 9(1) of the new law no longer includes them.
Who carries out checks, and how?
Article 33 of the rules lists two technical means: terminals for querying the SER and STRR databases, and video camera systems, fixed or mobile, which read the registration number and query the databases automatically. Checks with a terminal are carried out by inspectors of the State Inspectorate for Road Transport Control, by traffic police officers, by CNAIR staff at border crossing points and by border police officers, under Article 18(4) and Article 19(2) of the law.

Editorial analysis

As a text, the rules are better than one would have expected from an act published on the last day. The internal references close: Article 26(4)(a) cites points (vi) and (viii) of Article 8(1)(b) and identifies them exactly, the class of emissions and the category of the vehicle; Article 11(2) asks the applicant for precisely the data that only he can supply, not for those generated by the system; Article 41 disapplies exactly the five provisions that presuppose a payment, where no payment exists. The arithmetic of the validity periods checks out line by line, and Article 6(2) solves a problem the law had left open, the automatic classification of electric vehicles as Euro 0. The problem with this act is not how it is written. It is when it appeared.

The calendar says everything. Law no. 226/2023 was published on 18 July 2023 and, in Article 25, set its own deadlines for the secondary legislation: 1 January 2025 for the joint order on exemptions and 31 March 2025 for the implementing rules. The rules appeared on 30 September 2026, that is 548 days after their own deadline. The joint order appeared the same day, 637 days late. In the meantime the date of application was postponed twice, by Government Ordinance no. 14/2025 and by Article III(1) of Law no. 103/2026, by 273 days in all against 1 January 2026. Law no. 103/2026, which moved the deadline to 1 October, was published on 24 June 2026. From then to the publication of the rules, 98 days passed, and the rules appeared on the 98th day.

One consequence of this calendar cannot be seen by reading the order, but emerges from combining it with the law. Article 29(2) of Law no. 226/2023, postponed by the same Law no. 103/2026, allows the rovinietă to be paid for and issued at most 30 days before 1 October 2026, that is from 1 September 2026. That window stood open for 29 days without any implementing rules: during those 29 days nobody knew what data would be recorded in SER, what document would be issued, how a mistake would be corrected or what would happen to an old rovinietă. The law granted a right on 1 September, and the way to exercise it appeared on 30 September.

The second observation concerns the market the rules open and cannot populate in time. Articles 15 and 16 build a route for authorising electronic road charging service providers, a route that starts with CNAIR publishing the declaration on the SETRE Romania domain, a document drawn up on the basis of these rules, and continues with testing and a pilot project of up to 6 months taken together from the submission of the complete documentation, under Article 16(3)(c). The arithmetic is simple: on 1 October 2026 there can be no authorised provider at all. For goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes what remains, in the first month, is the route ticket, with its 72 hours, and CNAIR’s mobile application, which Article 12(3) of the rules opens to foreign users as well, extending what the law had reserved for Romanian vehicles. An international haulier who crosses Romania several times a month will therefore buy ticket after ticket, one per crossing, or will install the CNAIR application on every driver’s phone.

The third observation concerns the relationship between the deadlines the act imposes on the citizen and those the administration allows itself. The user has 60 minutes to catch a typing mistake at the counter, 72 hours to pay after an information letter, and an obligation to watch the mobile application’s alerts at all times. CNAIR has 5 working days to register an exemption, 7 working days for a correction of a registration number, 45 working days for the ordinary refunds under Article 30(1), 90 days to build the application for refunding old rovinietă charges and a further 90 working days to pay through it. The last two deadlines add up: a haulier who bought a 12-month rovinietă in the spring and loses it on 1 October may wait for the money until May 2027, while paying TollRo on every kilometre from 1 October.

The fourth observation concerns a charge that disappears without being replaced. The bridge toll, collected at the three crossings in Annex no. 3 to Government Ordinance no. 15/2002, ceases to be valid on 1 October 2026 under Article 39(2) of the rules. Law no. 226/2023 allows, in Article 3(2), a passage charge for bridges, tunnels and mountain passes, but defines it in Article 2(r) as a sum owed according to the distance travelled and does not say by what act its level is set. This is not a mistake of this order, which could not have laid down a charge with no basis and no level. It is a consequence of the law the order applies, and the practical effect is that two crossings over the Danube are left, from tomorrow, with no charge at all.

What should be changed

  • Secondary legislation should appear together with the postponement, not at the end of it. Each of the two postponements was decided weeks before the deadline, yet the rules still appeared on the last day. Had the rules been published on 24 June 2026, together with Law no. 103/2026, distributors, hauliers and candidates for provider status would have had 98 days to prepare instead of one.
  • The window for buying in advance should open only after the rules have been published. Article 29(2) of the law allowed the rovinietă to be bought from 1 September 2026, and the rules appeared on 30 September. An express condition along the lines of „not earlier than 30 days from the publication of the implementing rules” would have removed those 29 days of emptiness.
  • The route ticket should be given a ground for refund covering delay outside the user’s control. Article 31(1) covers only three situations, and Article 10(3) declares the ticket expired after 72 hours even if the route has not been covered. A queue at the border or a vehicle breakdown turns a charge paid into money lost, even though Article 9(4) already resolves the mirror case, a system failure, in the user’s favour.
  • Refund deadlines should be brought into the same order of magnitude as payment deadlines. The user pays in advance, while Article 39(5) and (6) give the administration 90 days for the application plus 90 working days for payment. A single deadline of 45 working days, the one in Article 30(1), applied to transitional refunds as well, would shorten the wait by several months without changing any other rule.
  • The obligation to watch the mobile application’s alerts at all times should be replaced by an obligation on the system. Article 14(1)(e) and (2) require the driver to pay continuous attention to a phone while driving and to stop immediately at the first alert, which sits uneasily with the rules on road safety. A solution that keeps the effect without the risk would be for the charging session to carry on accumulating the debt without a connection, with the user held only to pay later, as already happens in the case of the malfunction covered by Article 9(4).
  • The passage charge for bridges should be clarified in the law. Article 3(2) of Law no. 226/2023 allows it, but the definition in Article 2(r) ties it to distance and no provision says by what act its level is approved. Either it should be expressly abandoned, or the law should be given an explicit basis, so that a permission is not left without a mechanism.

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. 832 of 30 September 2026, pages 2-16 16 pages PDF, 113 KB the act starts on page 2

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