Romania's foreign worker quota for 2026 and what it actually limits
Government Decision 1169/2025 set Romania's 2026 quota at 90,000 newly admitted foreign workers, 10,000 below the 2025 ceiling and the first cut in four years.
Romania's 2026 quota is 90,000 newly admitted foreign workers, set by Government Decision 1169/2025 and published in Official Gazette 1221 of 31 December 2025. That is 10,000 below the 100,000 ceiling approved for 2025 and the first reduction after four steady years.
The quota is set annually, or whenever circumstances require, by government decision on a proposal from the Ministry of Labour, Family, Youth and Social Solidarity. The ministry justified the cut by the need to leave room on the domestic market during public sector restructuring, not by any change in employer demand.
What counts against the ceiling and what does not
The legal wording turns on one qualifier: newly admitted. The ceiling covers workers entering the Romanian labour market for the first time. Authorisation renewals for a worker staying with the same employer, employer changes by a foreign national already legally working in the country, and the categories exempt from authorisation do not draw down the quota.
That explains an apparent contradiction in the official statistics. In several years the number of employment authorisations issued by the General Inspectorate for Immigration exceeded the quota approved for that year.
| Year | Approved quota | Employment authorisations issued |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 100,000 | 108,880 |
| 2023 | 100,000 | 101,251 |
| 2024 | 100,000 | 105,977 |
| 2025 | 100,000 | 83,914 by 30 September, with 7,418 pending |
| 2026 | 90,000 | in progress |
An employer reading only the headline draws the wrong conclusion. The 90,000 figure is not the number of authorisations the General Inspectorate for Immigration will issue in 2026, it is the number of new entries the state accepts. The total volume of administrative decisions is larger, and the rate at which the ceiling is consumed matters more than the ceiling itself.
Where the demand sits and what that means for planning
The data the Ministry of Labour used to size the 2026 quota shows vacancies concentrated in a few sectors. Construction of residential and non-residential buildings reported 31,841 vacancies, postal and courier activities 23,437, and restaurants 18,518. The same three sectors dominate the authorisation applications filed with the General Inspectorate for Immigration.
The operational consequence is about pace rather than volume. With 83,914 authorisations issued by 30 September 2025 against a ceiling of 100,000, the average draw was roughly 9,300 authorisations a month. On a ceiling 10,000 lower and unchanged demand, the same rate brings the quota close to exhaustion before the calendar year ends. An employer filing in November for a January start risks hitting not an administrative deadline but a spent ceiling.
The difference between a quota and an occupations list is the second source of confusion. The quota is a quantitative ceiling. The shortage occupations list, approved separately by order of the labour minister, is a qualitative filter naming the posts that may be recruited from outside the European Union. Both apply at once, and a file can fail on either. The mechanics of the list are set out in Romania's shortage occupations list.
Romania is not the only member state pairing an annual ceiling with a sectoral filter. Greece runs bilateral and seasonal quotas on the same principle, described in the Greek bilateral quota, and Italy applies its flows decree through strictly dated filing windows.
How to read the ceiling inside a mobilisation plan
A realistic plan treats the quota as a depleting resource rather than a binary condition. Three items belong in the calendar before a recruitment order is signed.
The first is the filing date, not the start date. With a 30 day decision period for the authorisation, extendable by 15 days, plus 60 days of authorisation validity and roughly 30 days for the long stay visa, a file lodged in October reaches a first working day in January or February. The stages and their costs are detailed in the employment authorisation procedure.
The second is the category check. If the worker is already legally in Romania and is changing employer, the file does not draw on the ceiling and should not be planned as a new entry.
The third is the reserve. A file refused or expired in December cannot be rebuilt inside the same calendar year once the ceiling is reached, and the restart runs against the following year's quota, which is published only in the last days of December.
The 2027 quota will again be set by government decision, most likely at the end of 2026, and its level will follow the same evidence base from the National Agency for Employment. The working framework for employers is set out on the employers page.
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