Romania's shortage occupations list and who may hire non-EU workers
Labour minister Order 1073/2026 approved 289 shortage occupations in Official Gazette 649 of 6 August 2026, and a Bucharest court suspended it in September.
The shortage occupations list is the filter that decides which posts a Romanian employer may recruit for from outside the European Union. Labour minister Order 1073/2026 approved 289 occupations, published in Official Gazette 649 of 6 August 2026. Enforcement of that order was suspended by the Bucharest Court of Appeal on 11 September 2026.
The list is the central instrument of Emergency Ordinance 32/2026 on foreign nationals' access to the labour market, whose procedures apply from 8 August 2026. Before that date an employer could file for any occupation in the Romanian Classification of Occupations, provided the labour market test was cleared. After it, the filter becomes an admissibility condition checked before the merits.
What the list contains and how it was built
The methodology for drawing up and updating the list was approved by Order 987/2026, in force from 23 July 2026. The entry criterion is statistical rather than declaratory: an occupation reaches the list if at least 10 foreign workers were employed and at least 10 employment authorisations were issued against that code during the reference period.
| Element | Content |
|---|---|
| Approving act | Labour minister Order 1073/2026 |
| Publication | Official Gazette 649 of 6 August 2026 |
| Number of occupations | 289, identified by code from the Romanian Classification of Occupations |
| Major groups covered | groups 3 to 9, meaning skilled trades, machine operators and unskilled workers |
| Major groups excluded | groups 1 and 2, meaning managerial posts and professional occupations |
| Methodology | Order 987/2026, in force from 23 July 2026 |
| Update cycle | every six months, or whenever required |
The draft put to public consultation on 29 July 2026 held 236 occupations. The version published in the Official Gazette reached 289, with 53 additional codes, most of them in construction, transport, food service and courier work. The absence of major groups 1 and 2 has a direct effect: an engineering or project management post is not recruited through this route but through the highly qualified worker regime or the EU Blue Card.
The employer eligibility condition has to be read alongside the list. The company must have actually carried on business for at least one year in fields compatible with the shortage occupation it is recruiting for. A firm incorporated in spring to take on a construction contract in autumn does not meet that condition, however genuine the headcount need. This is a baseline requirement, sitting alongside the stricter authorisation conditions in Emergency Ordinance 32/2026, where the threshold rises to 24 months of trading and an average of at least 50 employees in the previous year.
The September 2026 suspension and what follows
On 11 September 2026 the Bucharest Court of Appeal suspended enforcement of Order 1073/2026 in case 5633/2/2026, on an action brought by the employers' association of labour importers. From 15 September 2026 the WorkinRomania.gov.ro platform stopped accepting completed employer registrations and authorisations and applications for the long stay employment visa. The Ministry of Labour announced that it would appeal.
While the list is out of force, recruitment reverts to the general regime: any occupation in the Romanian Classification of Occupations, on the basis of the ordinary labour market test. The practical effect is not liberalisation but a period in which two regimes are invoked at once, and files lodged before the suspension do not follow the same path as files lodged after it.
For an employer planning a start date the consequence is about file construction, not strategy. A file resting only on membership of the 6 August 2026 list loses its basis if the suspension holds, while a file that also documents the labour market test survives either outcome. The extra cost of the second approach is the recruitment advertisement and the selection minutes, which is working days rather than fees.
How the filter compares across the Union
The idea of a list conditioning hiring is not Romanian. Czechia ties its employee card to a public register of vacancies, in which the post must appear before filing, a mechanism described in the Czech employee card. The difference is that the Czech register is a live record of actual vacancies, while the Romanian list is a statistical photograph of the previous year, revised twice annually.
The list applies alongside the quantitative ceiling, not instead of it. The 90,000 places in the 2026 quota and the 289 occupations are two independent filters, and a file has to pass both. Their relationship is set out in the 2026 quota. The obligations that start after approval, from the 1,000 euro financial guarantee to the Romanian language course, are covered in employer obligations.
The next six-monthly revision of the list is provided for by the methodology in Order 987/2026 and will reflect the authorisations issued in the preceding reference period, which means occupations that missed the threshold of 10 workers and 10 authorisations can enter or leave between editions. The working framework for employers is set out on the employers page.
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