Preliminary assessment of the fourth payment request of Romania

Order and Article 2(1) of the Programme on the Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Transport Ministerial Order).

For both programmes, the used vehicles to be scrapped have to be at least EURO 3 category.

Article 2 point i) iii) of the Rabla Plus Programme Ministerial Order (Evidence No. 2) defines used vehicle as those with a seniority of at least 6 years from the year of manufacture.

Article 2, letter k), point 2 of the Programme on the Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Transport (2025–2030) Ministerial Order (Evidence No. 5) defines used vehicle as those with a seniority of at least 8 years from the year of manufacture.

In addition to the Rabla Plus Programme and the Programme on the Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Transport (2025–2030), Romania also used the Rabla Programme and the Rabla Local Programme to provide financial incentives to scrap polluting vehicles.

The Rabla Local Ministerial Order approved the Rabla Local Programme providing financial incentives in the form of eco-voucher for scrapping old vehicles (Evidence No. 4). The Ministerial Order was subsequently amended by Order No. 864/2023.

According to Article 2 of the Rabla Local Ministerial Order non-reimbursable financial incentive will be granted for used vehicles that are at least 15 years old with respect to the manufacturing year in exchange for their scrapping. The seniority condition for the used vehicles to be scrapped provided by Article 2 corresponds to vehicles EURO 3 and below, as explicitly mentioned by Article 10 letter c) of the same Order.

Article 8(1) defines the value of an eco-voucher equal to RON 2 400 for each scrapped vehicle. Furthermore, Article 9(1) letter g) requires eligible applicants to agree not to buy the next 3 years a new vehicle with EURO 5 or above.

The programme was implemented in 2022 and 2023.

The Rabla Ministerial Order approved the Rabla Programme (Evidence No. 3). Article 3(1) establishes the purpose of the programme, namely, to provide non-reimbursable financing in the form of an eco-voucher, for the purchase of new, less polluting vehicles in exchange for the scrapping of used vehicles.

Differently from the Rabla Plus Programme (whose objective was the purchase of new vehicles – electric and hybrids), this programme allowed the purchase of new vehicles, classics or hybrid vehicles (with a maximum price of EURO 60 000).

According to Article 2, letter f) a vehicle to be scraped is a used one at least 6 years old with respect to the manufacturing year, which corresponds to EURO 5 and below. Initially, according to Article 6 (1), the value of the eco-voucher was RON 6 500 for scrapping an old vehicle and RON 3 500 for scrapping an old motorcycle, modified in 2022 to RON 6 000 for one scrapped vehicle and RON 9 000 for two scrapped vehicles and increased starting with 2023 to RON 7 000 for one scrapped vehicle and RON 10 000 for two scrapped vehicles.

The programme was implemented starting 2020 until 2024 (included).

With respect to the fiscal incentives to increase the number of zero-emission vehicles, the Romanian authorities addressed the milestone requirements concerning the fiscal incentives, by adopting new provisions in the Fiscal Code and several regulations at local level.

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