In brief
- Spa tourism is declared by law a priority strategic sector of the national economy, yet the law allocates no money, creates no tax relief and sets no deadline for the administration.
- The only provision about support, Article 4(1), refers to an action plan which it says was approved by Government Decision no. 571/2019. That decision approves only the strategy, and the plan was to be approved separately, by a Government Decision, within 2 years, that is by 27 August 2021.
- The only new obligation falls on the Government, which has to keep the spa tourism strategy continuously up to date. Indirectly affected are the operators in spa, climatic and spa-and-climatic resorts, as well as the local authorities in those localities. The law enters into force on 14 November 2026.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 865 of 15 October 2026, page 4
In force from: 14 November 2026, 30 days after publication, under Article 5
Parliament has adopted a five-article law declaring spa tourism a priority strategic sector of the national economy. Law no. 198/2026 was published in Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 865 of 15 October 2026, was promulgated a day earlier by Decree no. 810/2026 and enters into force on 14 November 2026, 30 days after publication, as Article 5 provides.
For anyone who owns or runs a hotel with a treatment facility in a spa resort, the practical question is what changes on 14 November 2026. The answer, taken from the text of the law, is that nothing appears that could be relied on. The law sets up no State aid or de minimis scheme, allocates no money from the budget, creates no tax relief, lays down no new criterion for classifying spa resorts and gives no institution a deadline by which to do anything.
What it does contain is three things: a legal definition of spa tourism, a list of five strategic objectives and an obligation on the Government to keep the strategy up to date. The support measures themselves are not written into the law. Article 4(1) says that they „are set out in the action plan for implementing the strategy for the development of spa tourism, approved by Government Decision no. 571/2019”. That is also where the hardest problem in the act lies, because the decision invoked approved no action plan at all.
What it changes in practice
Of the five articles, two produce verifiable legal effects and three remain programmatic.
Article 5 sets entry into force at 30 days after publication. The law appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania on 15 October 2026, so the date from which it applies is 14 November 2026. It is the only time limit in the whole act.
Article 2(a) brings into Romanian law a definition of spa tourism at the level of a statute: the branch of the national economy which provides tourist and spa therapy services by drawing on natural therapeutic factors in the field of health protection and social assistance for the population, together with economic use through various forms of domestic and international tourism. It is the only new normative content in the law, and its usefulness will show later, when some other act needs a definition to refer to.
Article 2(b) creates no new category. Spa, climatic and spa-and-climatic resorts keep the meaning given in Article 1(1)(a) to (c) of Government Ordinance no. 109/2000, approved with amendments and additions by Law no. 343/2002, as subsequently amended. There, a spa resort is the locality or area with resources of mineral substances scientifically proven and traditionally recognised as therapeutically effective, a climatic resort is one situated in areas with beneficial climatic factors, and a spa-and-climatic resort meets both tests. The procedure by which a locality obtains that status, through a Government Decision, is left untouched.
Article 4(2) creates the only new obligation for anyone: the Government is required to adapt the strategy for the development of spa tourism on a continuing basis, so that it can answer the demands and trends of domestic and international tourist demand and keep up with what the world market offers. The obligation has no deadline, no review interval, no reporting and no penalty, so compliance with it cannot be verified from the outside.
Articles 1 and 3 are declaratory. Article 1 announces that the objective is to be reached „by establishing a framework for sustainable development and implementing support measures”, without any article establishing that framework or implementing any measure. Article 3 lists five strategic objectives: a favourable legislative and financial framework, support for research and innovation, support for investment in spa infrastructure and the modernisation of resorts, diversification of the offer and improvement of service quality, and promotion of the resorts at home and abroad. Not one of them comes with an instrument, a budget or a body responsible.
The law repeals nothing and amends nothing. The law applicable in spa resorts on 14 November 2026 is identical to that of 15 October 2026.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Before this law, the framework for spa tourism rested on two acts. Government Ordinance no. 109/2000, approved by Law no. 343/2002, defines the resorts and regulates spa and rehabilitation medical care. Government Decision no. 571/2019, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 703 of 27 August 2019, approved the Strategy for the development of spa tourism, with the annex in Official Gazette of Romania no. 703 bis.
What changes is the level at which the objectives sit. Until now, the directions for developing spa tourism were contained in a strategy approved by a Government Decision, so they could be changed or abandoned by another decision. From 14 November 2026, five strategic objectives are statutory text, and changing them calls for another statute. In the same way, the Government’s obligation to keep the strategy current becomes a legal obligation, not a commitment made in its own act.
What does not change is more. Article 2 of Government Decision no. 571/2019 named two institutions responsible for implementation: the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health, each within its field of competence. The new law names no ministry, only „the Government”. The 2019 decision had set itself, in Article 3, a 2 year deadline for approving the action plan. The 2026 act sets none. In moving up the hierarchy of acts, the rules have lost both the body responsible and the calendar.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The definition of spa tourism reaches the level of a statute, in Article 2(a), and becomes a reference text for any future act that needs it.
- The five strategic objectives in Article 3 can no longer be changed by a Government Decision, only by a statute, so they are harder to abandon when the government changes.
- The Government’s obligation to adapt the strategy on a continuing basis, in Article 4(2), did not exist in Government Decision no. 571/2019 and can be cited as such.
- The reference to Government Ordinance no. 109/2000 for defining the resorts avoids the appearance of a second, parallel category of spa resorts with criteria of its own.
- For local authorities in the resorts, support for investment in spa infrastructure and promotion of the resorts are now statutory objectives, useful as an argument in correspondence with the ministries.
What remains a problem
- No sum, no source of funding, no tax relief and no aid scheme is provided for in the law, although Article 3(a) sets out to achieve a favourable financial framework.
- No deadline for any institution, apart from the 30 days the law grants itself for its own entry into force.
- No institution named. „The Government” in Article 4(2) does not show who prepares and who signs, and the two ministries from Government Decision no. 571/2019 are not carried over.
- The one provision that ought to bring the concrete measures, Article 4(1), refers to an action plan that the decision invoked did not approve.
- The obligation to adapt the strategy on a continuing basis has no deadline, no reporting and no penalty, so failure to meet it produces no consequence at all.
- No criterion for classifying spa resorts is either introduced or revised, although the modernisation of the resorts is a strategic objective in Article 3(c).
- The status of priority strategic sector is not tied, in the text of the law, to any consequence: no priority in funding, no derogation, no special regime.
Practical advice
- Do not build a funding application on Article 4(1). A reference to „the support measures in Law no. 198/2026” gives you no basis at all, because the law contains no measure of its own and the document it refers to was not approved by the decision indicated.
- If you are waiting for concrete support to modernise a treatment facility, follow the Government Decisions and ministerial orders published in the Official Gazette of Romania. The measures, if they come, will come through those, not from this law.
- Check whether your locality holds the status of spa, climatic or spa-and-climatic resort granted by a Government Decision. The procedure is unchanged, but any future measure will start from that status, defined in Article 1(1)(a) to (c) of Government Ordinance no. 109/2000.
- Keep 14 November 2026 in mind as the date of entry into force, not as the date from which any right or obligation arises for operators. For a private operator, the law creates no new obligation.
- If you work in the local administration of a resort, use Article 3(c) and (e) in correspondence with the ministries. An objective written into a statute carries a different weight than the same objective written into a strategy approved by a decision, even if the budget is missing in both cases.
- Watch for a Government Decision approving the action plan for implementing the strategy after 14 November 2026. Until then, the concrete content of the support promised by Article 4(1) cannot be established.
Frequently asked questions
From what date does the law apply?
Do I get money or tax cuts if I run a hotel with a treatment facility?
Does the way a locality becomes a spa resort change?
What does „priority strategic sector” actually mean?
What is the action plan referred to in Article 4(1)?
Does this law repeal or amend any act?
What kind of law is it and who signed it?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article 4(1). The text says that the support measures needed to meet the strategic objectives „sunt cuprinse în planul de acțiune pentru implementarea strategiei pentru dezvoltarea turismului balnear, aprobat prin Hotărârea Guvernului nr. 571/2019 privind aprobarea Strategiei pentru dezvoltarea turismului balnear”, that is, are set out in the action plan for implementing the strategy for the development of spa tourism, approved by the Government Decision approving the Strategy for the development of spa tourism. Government Decision no. 571/2019, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 703 of 27 August 2019, approves no action plan: Article 1 approves the Strategy for the development of spa tourism, set out in the annex, while Article 3 provides that „în termen de 2 ani de la intrarea în vigoare a prezentei hotărâri se aprobă, prin hotărâre a Guvernului, planul de acțiune avut în vedere pentru implementarea obiectivelor propuse prin Strategia pentru dezvoltarea turismului balnear”, that the action plan envisaged for implementing the objectives proposed by the Strategy is to be approved by a Government Decision within that time limit from the entry into force of the decision. The grammatical agreement in the new law, „aprobat” in the masculine, attaches it to „planul”, the plan, not to „strategia”, the strategy, so the law credits the 2019 decision with approving a document that the decision itself postponed. The consequence is that the law’s only provision about support measures has no determinable content: a reader in good faith may conclude either that the measures are the actions in the annex to the strategy, a different document, or that no measure exists yet, until the decision provided for in Article 3 of Government Decision no. 571/2019 is adopted. The correct course would be either a reference to the strategy itself, or a reference to the action plan provided for in Article 3 of that decision, stating that it is still to be approved.
Editorial analysis
The problem the law starts from is a real one. Spa tourism is one of the few segments in which Romania has a natural advantage that is hard to copy, and the state acknowledged that as early as 2019, when it approved a dedicated strategy. What has been missing since then was not the acknowledgement but the instrument: the strategy itself provided that its directions would become operational through an action plan approved by a Government Decision. Law no. 198/2026 comes as an answer to that blockage, but the answer it gives is a fresh statement of intent.
The chronology, once calculated, shows how far the problem goes. The strategy was approved by Government Decision no. 571/2019, published on 27 August 2019 and in force on publication, and Article 3 of the decision gave the Government 2 years to approve the action plan, that is until 27 August 2021. The law was published 1,875 days after that deadline passed, more than five years, and 2,606 days after the strategy it rests on. Throughout that interval the plan was not approved, something visible in the very construction of the law: had the plan existed, Article 4(1) could have identified it by the number of the decision that approved it, just as it identifies the number of the decision that approved the strategy. Parliament has legislated over an unmet deadline by treating its result as already in existence.
The second thing that shows only by comparison is the asymmetry of the time limits. The law grants itself 30 days before it takes effect, yet imposes no date on anyone. More than that, the 2019 Government Decision, an act of lower rank, was stricter with the administration than the 2026 law: it had a 2 year deadline and named two responsible ministries, the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health. The act adopted by Parliament has no deadline and speaks only of „the Government”. Moving a public policy up from a decision to a statute ought to make it harder to ignore; here it had the opposite effect, because the two elements that make an obligation verifiable, the body responsible and the date, were lost on the way.
There is also a contradiction of roles worth stating. Article 3(a) sets as a strategic objective „the creation of a legislative and financial framework favourable to the development of the spa tourism sector”. The instrument by which a legislative and financial framework is created is precisely a statute, and here the statute sets itself as an objective what it could have done itself. The result is an act that postpones its own usefulness: of the five articles, one fixes a date, one introduces a definition, one refers to a document that does not exist, and the rest list intentions. For an operator in a resort, nothing changes between 15 October and 14 November 2026, nor afterwards.
What should be changed
- Correcting the cross-reference in Article 4(1). The wording should point either to the Strategy for the development of spa tourism, approved by Government Decision no. 571/2019, or to the action plan provided for in Article 3 of the same decision, stating that it is still to be approved. Without that, the law’s only provision about support cannot be applied, because there is no way of establishing which document it refers to.
- A deadline for approving the action plan. The law could set a deadline of its own, say 6 months from entry into force, for adopting the Government Decision that approves the plan. The practical effect: the obligation falls due on a certain date, and non-adoption becomes a measurable delay rather than a permanent state, as happened with the 2021 deadline.
- Naming the responsible ministries, instead of the formula „the Government”. Taking into the law the solution in Article 2 of Government Decision no. 571/2019, with the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health in their respective fields of competence, would give operators and local authorities an address to go to and someone to complain to when nothing happens.
- Annual public reporting on the obligation in Article 4(2). An obligation to adapt the strategy on a continuing basis, with no interval and no reporting, cannot be verified. A published annual report, setting out what has been changed in the strategy and what has not, would turn the obligation into one that Parliament and the public can check.
- A consequence attached to the status of priority strategic sector. The label should be tied to a concrete effect, for instance a criterion giving priority to projects in spa resorts under national programmes for funding tourism infrastructure. Otherwise the label stays a title, and Article 3(c), on support for investment, has nothing through which to be achieved.
- Taking the classification conditions into the law, or an express reference to their revision. The modernisation of the resorts is an objective in Article 3(c), but the criteria by which a locality gains or loses the status of spa resort have stayed in Government Ordinance no. 109/2000, an act dating from 2000. A reference to updating those criteria would tie the objective to a real mechanism for selecting beneficiaries.
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. 865 of 15 October 2026, page 4 16 pages PDF, 108 KB the act starts on page 4
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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.