Hiring Foreign Workers in Romania 2026: Authorised Employer vs Placement Agency

Romania's 2026 legislative overhaul of foreign worker employment — enacted through OUG nr. 32/2026 — does not leave employers with a single procedure. It creates two. And the choice between them is not primarily an administrative question. It is a strategic one, with significant financial, operational, and legal consequences depending on the size, structure, and capacity of the organisation making it.

Understanding what each route actually requires — and what it actually costs — is the starting point for any organisation considering bringing foreign nationals onto the Romanian labour market.

The Logic Behind the Dual System

OUG 32/2026 establishes a dual framework for employers hiring foreign workers who fall under Article 27² of the law. The general rule is that the employer must conclude a service agreement with a licensed placement agency, which assumes responsibility for recruitment, documentation, and submission of the single permit application. The exception is the authorised employer — an entity that meets strict statutory conditions and is permitted to recruit and submit applications directly, without engaging an intermediary.

The services that define a placement agency under the law are cumulative: recruitment, information, counselling, mediation, documentation preparation and management, and submission of single permit applications through the WorkInRomania platform. A company that attempts to perform these functions without either obtaining its own authorisation or contracting a licensed agency is operating outside the legal framework.

The two routes are not interchangeable. They serve different organisational profiles, carry different risk structures, and require fundamentally different internal capabilities.

Route One: The Authorised Employer

What it means to recruit directly

The authorised employer route gives a company full control over its international recruitment process. It recruits directly for its own vacancies, manages its own documentation, and submits single permit applications through the WorkInRomania platform without routing anything through an external agency.

That control comes at a price — not just financial, but organisational.

The authorisation conditions are non-trivial

To qualify for authorisation, a company must meet all of the following:

**A minimum of 24 months of uninterrupted economic activity.**

**A minimum of 50 employees in the preceding year.**

**An operating sector compatible with the deficit occupation list.**

**No outstanding fiscal obligations.**

**No relevant prior sanctions.**

These are not formalities. A company that has been operating for less than two years, or that does not yet have a stable payroll base, is categorically excluded from this route — regardless of how much it wants to recruit internationally.

The financial commitment

The authorised employer must lodge a financial guarantee of 1,000 EUR per foreign worker, deposited at the State Treasury or through a bank guarantee letter, before the authorisation is issued. This guarantee covers return costs for workers who fall into illegal residence, welfare costs for workers in vulnerable situations, and any contraventional fines that go unpaid.

If the guarantee is executed — by ANOFM, for any of these reasons — it must be replenished within 30 days. Failure to do so suspends the authorisation. In cases where the authorisation is cancelled entirely, the full guarantee is executed. If the amounts owed exceed the guarantee, ANAF recovers the difference through forced execution.

For a company employing 50 foreign workers under its own authorisation, the capital commitment to the guarantee alone is 50,000 EUR — permanently tied up for as long as those workers are employed.

What the authorisation route demands internally

Running this route properly requires internal competence across immigration law, legal compliance, HR process management, occupational health and safety, payroll, data protection, multilingual communication, and regulatory reporting. Companies that do not have this capability — or cannot build it — will accumulate errors, and errors in this framework carry per-worker financial penalties.

The strategic upside

When these conditions are met, the authorised employer route creates genuine competitive advantage. The company controls its own recruitment calendar and SLAs, without depending on an agency's capacity or backlog. It builds standardised internal processes — digital workflows, document templates, verification checklists — that reduce per-hire cost at scale. And it communicates directly with workers about salary, accommodation, transport, and integration, reducing the risk that workers arrive with distorted expectations created by unauthorised intermediaries.

For companies in sectors with sustained and predictable demand for foreign labour, and with the internal infrastructure to run the process properly, authorisation is a strategic asset rather than simply a compliance obligation.

Route Two: The Licensed Placement Agency

The standard route — and why most employers are here

For the majority of Romanian employers, the placement agency route is the one that applies. It is the default framework under OUG 32/2026, and it does not require the employer to meet any of the authorisation conditions. The employer contracts a licensed agency, and the agency assumes responsibility for the process.

What the agency takes on is substantial: candidate pre-selection, competency testing, documentation preparation, worker information on entry and residence conditions, and submission of single permit applications on behalf of both the employer and the worker. It is a significant transfer of procedural load.

The guarantee structure is different — and more favourable to the employer

Under this route, the financial guarantee is the agency's obligation, not the employer's. The structure is: 75,000 EUR for the first 250 foreign nationals placed, and 50,000 EUR for each additional 250. The employer does not constitute the guarantee directly. That is a meaningful reduction in immediate capital pressure compared to the 1,000 EUR per worker the authorised employer must lodge.

The agency also carries an obligation that protects the employer from a specific category of risk: if the employment contract terminates, the agency must identify at least two alternative job offers for the worker within 90 days. This prevents the worker from falling into irregular residence status — a situation that would otherwise expose the employer to additional liability.

The risks the employer cannot fully transfer

Choosing the agency route does not eliminate employer liability. It redistributes it — but only partially.

The most operationally significant risk is agency quality. A high refusal rate on applications, weak documentation, or poor pre-selection in the source country does not become the agency's problem in isolation. It directly disrupts the employer's hiring timeline and workforce planning. The employer absorbs the operational consequence of the agency's procedural failures, even when those failures are not the employer's legal fault.

The second risk is agency suspension. If the agency is suspended — for 45 days, under the statutory minimum — it cannot submit new applications, and applications already in progress are suspended by operation of law. An employer mid-way through a hiring cycle when its agency partner is suspended has no legal mechanism to complete those applications independently. The only way to resume the process is through a different licensed agency — assuming relationships exist, documentation can be transferred, and the new agency has capacity.

The third risk is information fragmentation. When a worker is informed about their salary, housing, transport, and rights by the agency in their home country, by the employer in Romania, and potentially by unlicensed local intermediaries, contradictions emerge. Those contradictions generate complaints, grievances, and reputational damage that attaches to the employer even when the source is the agency's communication in the country of origin.

Choosing Between the Two Routes: A Practical Framework

The choice is not about which route is objectively better. It is about which route fits the organisation's current profile.

The authorised employer route makes sense when:

The company has been operating for at least 24 months with a stable workforce of 50 or more employees.

It has a robust HR, legal, and compliance function capable of managing immigration process risk.

It recruits internationally at sufficient volume and frequency to justify the capital and organisational investment.

It has a strong employer brand, with clear and ethical communication practices that reduce the risk of workers arriving with distorted information.

The placement agency route makes sense when:

The company does not yet meet the authorisation conditions — which is the case for most growing businesses.

The volume of international recruitment does not justify building internal capability.

The HR team does not have immigration compliance expertise in-house.

The target source countries are markets where the agency already has established candidate networks that the employer cannot replicate independently.

The Risk Matrix: Side by Side

The reputational risk entry is worth dwelling on. Both routes carry significant reputational exposure. The authorised employer is directly implicated in any compliance failure. The employer using an agency remains exposed to reputational damage from the agency's conduct — even when the employer bears no legal responsibility. In either case, the employer's brand is on the line.

What This Means for Your Organisation

OUG 32/2026 is a framework that rewards preparation. The companies that will navigate it well are those that made a deliberate choice of route before beginning international recruitment, built the internal processes appropriate to that route, and selected their agency partners — if they went that way — on the basis of compliance quality rather than speed or price.

The organisations that will struggle are those that treated the route choice as an administrative formality, assumed that one route or the other would handle itself, or selected an agency partner without assessing its authorisation status, documentation standards, and guarantee position.

Nestlers Group: Strategic Immigration Compliance for Romanian Employers

Nestlers Group specialises in immigration and global mobility compliance in Romania. We work with employers on both procedural routes — advising on authorisation eligibility and application, agency selection and contract structuring, WorkInRomania platform registration, documentation standards, and ongoing compliance monitoring.

If your organisation is weighing the two routes under OUG 32/2026, or has already begun the process and encountered questions that your current framework does not answer, our team can help you build the right structure from the outset.