Preliminary assessment of the fourth payment request of Romania

Article 12(2) of Law No. 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts.

Government Decision No. 1074/2024 (hereinafter referred to as “GD No. 1074/2024”) approving the Implementing rules and establishing the Inter-ministerial committee for the labelling of budget expenditure and tax expenditure (Evidence No. 3) was published in the Official Journal on 28 August 2024 and entered into force on the same date, in accordance with Article 12(3) of Law No. 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts.

The Methodological Rules annexed to GD No. 1074/2024 (Evidence No. 4) are explicitly aligned with the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the DNSH Technical Guidance. In particular, Article 4(3) of the Methodological Rules establishes a scoring system applying values of -1, 0, 1, 2, and 3 to measures across the six environmental objectives listed in its Annex A, which correspond directly to those defined in Article 9 of EU Taxonomy Regulation (EU) 2020/852: (i) climate change mitigation; (ii) climate change adaptation; (iii) sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources; (iv) transition to a circular economy; (v) pollution prevention and control; and (vi) protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems. Furthermore, Article 4(6) of the Methodological Rules explicitly references to respecting the DNSH Technical Guidance (2021/C 58/01) as an applicable reference framework.

To support implementation and facilitate the application of the green budgeting methodology, the Ministry of Finance published in October 2024 the Guidance on labelling budgetary expenditure in Romania (Evidence No. 5).

In early 2026, the Ministry of Finance published the Report on the results of Expenditure Labelling Budget and Tax Expenditures, for the budgetary years 2025 and 2026, respectively (Evidence No. 6), which includes: Annex B, assessing Romania’s budget expenditures in terms of their impact on environmental objectives (Evidence No. 7); Annex D, assessing the environmental sustainability of fiscal policy through the labelling of tax expenditures (Evidence No. 8), and a comprehensive list of measures with related costs in the 2026 budget (Evidence No. 9). This data applies green budgeting to the national budget and sets a baseline for monitoring the evolution of green spending and enables annual comparisons from the 2027 budget cycle onwards.

As a further step, Romania adopted Law No. 45/2026 (hereinafter referred to as “Law No. 45/2026”) amending Law No. 69/2010 on fiscal and budgetary responsibility (Evidence No. 10) which was published in the Official Journal on 30 March 2026 and entered into force three days after its publication in the Official Journal, on 2 April 2026, in accordance with Article 12(1) of Law No. 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts.

Article(10) of Law No. 45/2026 inserts into Law No. 69/2010 the following provisions: Article 29(2)(d) requiring Romania to assess and quantify specifically climate-related fiscal risks; Article 29(2)(g) requiring Romania to take into account the macro-fiscal risks stemming from climate change and their environmental and distributional impacts; and Article 29(2)(h) requiring Romania to track a sustainable growth trajectory which will facilitate the year-on-year assessment whether green objectives are increasingly considered in the budget.

4. Commission Preliminary Assessment: Satisfactorily fulfilled.

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