Romania's labour inspections on foreign workers and the fines that follow

Romania's Labour Inspection audits employers of foreign workers jointly with the General Inspectorate for Immigration, in coordinated campaigns. From 1 January 2026, undeclared work is fined 40,000 lei for each person identified, under the amendment to article 260 of the Labour Code made by Law 239/2025, with a cumulative ceiling of 1,000,000 lei.

Doubling the fine from 20,000 lei and raising the ceiling from 200,000 lei changes the arithmetic for companies running large headcounts. An inspection finding 30 people without a contract used to produce a fine capped at 200,000 lei. The same situation after 1 January 2026 reaches the 1,000,000 lei ceiling.

What a campaign actually looks like

The campaign run by the Labour Inspection between 28 July and 1 August 2025, together with the General Inspectorate for Immigration, gives the proportions. Inspectors carried out 1,087 checks, 658 of them on employment relations and 429 on health and safety. They issued 210 sanctions totalling 2,170,800 lei and ordered 1,190 remedial measures.

The substantive findings describe the real exposure. Inspectors identified 64 people working without an individual employment contract, of whom 40 were foreign nationals, and 22 foreign nationals taken on without an employment authorisation. Activity was suspended at two workplaces and three pieces of equipment were shut down.

The proportion matters more than the absolute figure. Of 64 people found in undeclared work, close to two thirds were foreign nationals, in an economy where their share of total employees is far smaller. Inspection is not evenly distributed, and an employer with a significant foreign headcount carries a higher probability of a visit.

What each authority penalises

The penalty regime sits across three legislative acts, and a single inspection can apply sanctions from all three.

The complementary sanctions are the ones that exceed any fine budget. An employer can lose entitlement to public aid, European funds included, for up to five years, can be required to repay aid received in the previous twelve months, and can face temporary or permanent closure of the workplaces concerned. That architecture comes from Directive 2009/52/EC on sanctions against employers of illegally staying third country nationals, transposed into Romanian law.

The three situations that generate most inspection reports

The first is the gap between the authorisation and reality. The authorisation covers one employer, one post and one workplace. A worker moved from the site the authorisation was obtained for to another location, even inside the same company, appears at inspection as working outside the terms of the authorisation. That move requires an amended file, not an internal note.

The second is the interval between arrival and registration. A worker who starts activity before the contract is transmitted to the national register of employees falls under undeclared work, with a 40,000 lei fine, even where the authorisation and visa are in order and the contract is signed on paper.

The third is the record of induction. A health and safety induction sheet signed by a worker who does not speak Romanian, drafted only in Romanian, does not prove that induction took place. Emergency Ordinance 32/2026 requires induction in a language the worker understands, and the inspector checks the language of the document rather than the signature on it.

The full set of obligations that generate these penalties is in employer obligations, the housing conditions checked on site are covered in accommodation obligations, and the European logic of right to work checks is set out in right to work verification.

The figures from the 2025 campaign predate the increase that took effect on 1 January 2026, which means the same findings repeated in 2026 produce a materially larger total. The working framework for employers is set out on the employers page.