Romania's 90,000-Worker Quota for 2026: What Employers Need to Know About D/AM2 Availability

The Romanian Government set the 2026 national quota for newly admitted non-EU workers at 90,000, roughly ten percent below the 100,000 slots approved for 2025. That number is not a formality. Under GEO 32/2026, it functions as a hard ceiling on D/AM2 long-stay work visas, the category that covers permanent, seasonal, and cross-border non-EU workers hired into occupations on Romania's official shortage list.

For employers used to treating work permit approval as a matter of paperwork and processing time, 2026 introduces a new variable: availability. A complete, compliant D/AM2 file can still be rejected, or delayed indefinitely, if the national quota has already been used up when the application reaches ANOFM. That risk did not exist in the same form under the prior framework, and it changes how HR and mobility teams need to sequence recruitment for the rest of the year.

This article explains how the quota is structured, who it actually constrains, and what employers should be doing now to avoid finding out the hard way that the 90,000 slots are gone.

D/AM2 Is Quota-Bound. D/AM1 Is Not.

GEO 32/2026 created two distinct long-stay work visa categories, and the difference between them determines whether the quota touches a given hire at all.

• D/AM1 applies to highly skilled workers and other categories designated by law. It is not tied to the shortage occupations list and is not counted against the 90,000-worker quota. A registered employer can file a D/AM1 case without checking quota availability first.
• D/AM2 applies to permanent, seasonal, and cross-border workers hired into occupations that appear on the officially approved List of Shortage Occupations. Every D/AM2 approval draws down against the national quota, regardless of the worker's nationality, sector, or the employer's size.

The shortage list itself is a separate filter from the quota, not a substitute for it. An occupation being on the list only confirms that D/AM2 is the correct route; it says nothing about whether quota room still exists. Employers frequently conflate the two and assume that because a role qualifies under the shortage list, the visa is effectively guaranteed. It is not. Both conditions, eligible occupation and available quota, must be satisfied at the same time.

How ANOFM Administers the Quota

The 90,000-worker ceiling for 2026 was approved by government decision at the close of 2025, following the pattern of prior years where the quota is set annually based on labor market data compiled by the National Employment Agency, ANOFM. ANOFM statistics also feed the shortage occupations list, which by law is due for review and update roughly every six months.

Romania has not, as a matter of public practice, published a running real-time counter of quota consumption the way some countries publish visa-category caps. Employers typically learn the quota is tightening indirectly, through processing delays, added document requests, or signals from ANOFM territorial agencies once volumes climb late in the year. Because the shortage list initially covered only a handful of trades, construction, hospitality, and transport among them, demand for D/AM2 slots is likely to concentrate in those categories, so quota pressure can build unevenly across sectors rather than uniformly across the full 90,000.

Employers should not assume that a slow application in one occupation category means the whole quota has room. Sector-level exhaustion is a realistic scenario even while the aggregate number looks far from full.

What Happens When the Quota Is Close to Exhausted

The practical consequence of an exhausted or near-exhausted quota is straightforward but disruptive: new D/AM2 applications cannot be approved until either the following year's quota opens or the Government issues a supplementary allocation. GEO 32/2026 does not establish a formal waitlist that automatically carries an employer's pending file into the next quota cycle. In practice, this means:

• Applications submitted after the quota is reached are held pending or returned, rather than queued for automatic approval once new slots open.
• Employers bear the timing risk. A file that would otherwise be fully compliant can stall for reasons entirely outside the applicant's control.
• There is no guarantee of a mid-year quota increase. Romania has adjusted its annual quota in past cycles, but any supplementary allocation requires a new government decision and is not something an employer can rely on when planning a hire date.

This is a meaningful shift from the pre-2026 framework, where the main bottleneck was ANOFM's processing capacity rather than a fixed ceiling. Employers now need to treat quota availability as an active planning input, not a background detail.

Employer Authorisation Still Matters, Quota or Not

Quota constraints sit on top of, not instead of, the existing eligibility rules for how a company recruits non-EU workers. Employers who want to recruit directly, rather than through a licensed placement agency, must qualify as an authorised employer on WorkinRomania.gov.ro, which requires:

• At least 24 months of continuous, effective economic activity.
• An average of at least 50 employees over the preceding year.
• A financial guarantee of EUR 1,000 per foreign worker recruited.
• A clean fiscal record, with no outstanding obligations to the consolidated state budget.
• A compliance history in which no more than a defined share of previously employed foreign workers lacked valid residence rights.

Companies that do not meet these thresholds still have a route to hire non-EU staff, either as a registered employer working through an authorised placement agency, or by using an Employer of Record structure that already holds the necessary authorisations. Either way, meeting the authorisation bar earlier in the year, rather than discovering a gap when a hire is time-sensitive, avoids compounding an authorisation delay with a quota shortage.

Planning Hiring Timelines Around a Finite Quota

The combination of a fixed national quota, a shortage list confined to a small number of occupations at launch, and no formal carry-over mechanism means 2026 hiring plans involving non-EU workers under D/AM2 need to move earlier in the calendar year than before.

• File as soon as the role and worker are confirmed. Waiting until closer to a start date increases exposure to quota exhaustion in that occupation's demand segment.
• Separate D/AM1-eligible hires from D/AM2-eligible hires early in workforce planning. If a role can plausibly qualify as highly skilled, confirming D/AM1 eligibility removes it from quota risk entirely.
• Build a buffer into offer timelines for D/AM2 roles. Treat the visa outcome as contingent, not assured, until ANOFM confirms the file has been accepted within the active quota.
• Monitor shortage list updates. Since the list is subject to periodic revision, an occupation not currently listed could become eligible, or a listed occupation could be removed, changing which route applies.
• Avoid assuming last year's approval pattern still holds. A 10 percent reduction in the national quota from 2025 to 2026 means capacity that was previously available may simply not exist this cycle.

How Nestlers Group Supports ANOFM Quota Planning

Navigating a fixed national quota requires more than filing a correct application, it requires timing the filing correctly and choosing the right visa category from the outset. Nestlers Group's Work Permit and Visa Support team tracks the shortage occupations list and ANOFM's processing signals to help employers determine whether a role qualifies under D/AM1 or D/AM2, and to sequence filings so that time-sensitive hires are not left exposed to quota exhaustion late in the year.

For companies that do not yet meet ANOFM's authorised-employer thresholds, or that need a compliant hiring structure while those thresholds are being built up, the Employer of Record team offers an alternative route to bring non-EU talent onto Romanian payroll without waiting on internal authorisation. The Payroll and HR Compliance team then ensures that once a worker is approved, the ongoing employment relationship, from contract registration to statutory reporting, meets Romanian requirements from day one.

Employers weighing multiple markets, or assessing whether a role should be filed in Romania at all given quota pressure, can also draw on the Immigration Advisory team for a broader read on timing and alternatives, while the Relocation and Destination Services team prepares the practical side of a worker's move once the visa is secured, so that quota-driven delays upstream do not turn into avoidable delays downstream.

Sources: Ministry of Labour, Family, Youth and Social Solidarity (mmuncii.gov.ro), AGERPRES, WorkinRomania.gov.ro, PwC Romania Tax and Legal Alert on GEO 32/2026, Workadis Romania Employer Resources