How to get Romanian citizenship by descent or naturalization

How to get Romanian citizenship: four legal routes

Romania is one of the few EU countries that hands its passport back to the great-grandchildren of former citizens without asking them to move. According to the National Citizenship Authority (Autoritatea Națională pentru Cetățenie, ANC), almost 800,000 people became Romanian citizens after 2010 alone, most of them from Moldova.

That generous regime ended in 2025. Law No. 14/2025, signed in March 2025 by acting president Ilie Bolojan and in force since 15 March 2025, introduced a Romanian language test at B1 level, biometrics and tough checks on archive records for anyone restoring citizenship. And on 15 September 2026 thirteen MPs from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which left the government in April 2026, tabled a bill in the Senate that could remove descendants from the fast track altogether.

Romanian citizenship is not for sale: the country has no citizenship by investment program. There are four legal routes, all set out in Citizenship Law No. 21/1991 (Legea cetățeniei române).

Citizenship by birth works separately: a child of a Romanian citizen is Romanian by descent wherever the child is born, and only needs a Romanian birth certificate. The older procedure for descendants is described on our page on Romanian citizenship by repatriation, and all our Romania services are collected in the Romania section.

What changed in 2025-2026 and why

Romania rewrote its rules more in three years than in the previous fifteen. The trigger was the so-called citizenship factories: middlemen in Russia and Ukraine forged birth records of Bessarabian ancestors and sold Romanian passports to Ukrainians and Russians.

The second motive was visa-free travel to the US. In 2024 Justice Minister Alina Gorghiu openly called the reform a necessary step for joining the US Visa Waiver Program. The key dates are below.

The practical takeaway is simple. Article 11 still works, but it now costs more time and effort: without the language, clean archive records and patience for the queue, filing makes little sense. The PSD bill adds urgency for anyone planning to apply as a grandchild or great-grandchild.

Romanian citizenship by descent: who qualifies under Article 11

Article 11 of Law 21/1991 is the main door into Romanian citizenship for people from Moldova and Ukraine. It lets citizenship be restored to those who lost it for reasons beyond their control or had it taken away against their will, and to their descendants up to the third degree.

In practice this mostly concerns people from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Budjak who ended up in the USSR after 1940, meaning today's Moldova and parts of southern and western Ukraine. Descendants up to the third degree are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the former citizen. A great-great-grandchild no longer qualifies.

What Article 11 offers

• Applicants can keep their current citizenship if the other country allows it.
• No move is needed: the law allows applicants to keep their permanent address abroad.
• No 8 years of residence, income or housing in Romania, unlike naturalization.
• Minor children can be included in the application, and a child aged 14 or over gives consent certified by a notary.

What the law has required since 2025

• Documents proving the ancestor's Romanian citizenship and the chain of kinship down to the applicant.
• Romanian at B1 level or grounds for exemption.
• A security check and a criminal record certificate: ANC checks whether the applicant poses a threat to the state.
• Biometrics at filing: a facial image and fingerprints of two fingers.
• An oath of allegiance to Romania after a positive decision.

The scale of abuse explains why checks were tightened. According to official ANC data, 2,458 Russian citizens obtained citizenship under Article 11 in 2020-2022, while another 409 files were rejected or sent to prosecutors on suspicion of forged documents. According to ANC, about 100,000 people from the former Soviet Union, excluding Moldova, became Romanian citizens in 2010-2025.

Without genuine roots, Article 11 will not help. Such schemes are now in court: on 25.09.2026 Romania's Prosecutor General's Office sent to trial the case of two Russian citizens who obtained Romanian passports with forged citizenship certificates.

Is Romanian required: the B1 exam and who is exempt

Until 2025, restoring citizenship required little more than memorising the text of the oath. About 30,000 people received a Romanian passport this way, without any language test, in a single year - more than twice as many as through all other routes combined (about 13,000).

Now an Article 11 applicant must prove Romanian at no lower than B1. That is the intermediate level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR): holding a conversation on everyday topics, understanding clear speech at normal speed and writing simple texts.

How to prove B1

Who is exempt from the language requirement

• Those who were Romanian citizens themselves and lost citizenship in 1940.
• Applicants aged 65 or over.

Romania's Justice Ministry justified the age exemption by saying it is too hard for older people to reach B1, and compared it with rules in the UK and Hungary. The check is not only on paper: applicants speak to ANC or consular staff when filing and at the oath, and a missing language is obvious there.

For applicants without Romanian this is the main barrier. The language is close to Italian and Spanish, but the exam still requires serious preparation. The certificate fee is set by the university or institute that holds the exam.

Romanian citizenship by naturalization and by marriage

Without Romanian roots, the road to a passport takes at least eight years of living in the country. That is three years longer than in Germany, where five years are enough. The 2024-2025 amendments added one more condition: applicants must already hold long-term residence rights in Romania when they file.

Naturalization conditions under Article 8

When the 8 years can be shortened

The term can be cut by up to 3 years, to 5 years. This applies to citizens of the EU, the European Economic Area and Switzerland, and to people born in Romania whose parents were living there legally at the time. An EU passport alone is not enough: applicants must show active participation in the economy, notable achievements in education, culture, human rights or volunteering. The same reduction is available to refugees who made special efforts to integrate.

Where the first years come from

Any legal residence permit starts the clock: for work, study, business or remote work. Freelancers and employees of foreign companies can use the Romania digital nomad visa, and other countries can be compared in our residence permits abroad catalogue. Under EU rules long-term status usually follows 5 years of legal residence, so naturalization means planning for 8 years or more plus processing time.

Marriage to a Romanian citizen

Marriage shortens the term to 5 years but does not remove the residence requirement: what counts is the years of living together in Romania since the wedding. In 2022 and 2024 parliament debated a rule granting citizenship to spouses married to a Romanian for 10 years and living abroad. It does not appear in published summaries of the final text, so this option must be checked against the current version of the law before applying.

What documents are needed for Romanian citizenship

Most Article 11 refusals and delays start with paperwork, not language. The 2025 law introduced a mandatory standard of evidence: birth and marriage records of the applicant, the ancestors and the children are filed as original extracts from civil status records issued no more than 2 years before filing, together with certified copies of the certificates, or as original multilingual extracts.

Basic Article 11 package

• Application form and the applicant's valid passport.
• Recent birth extracts for the applicant, the parents and the whole line up to the ancestor who was a Romanian citizen.
• Marriage and name-change extracts if a surname changed in any generation.
• Archive documents proving that the ancestor was a Romanian citizen and lost citizenship involuntarily.
• A B1 certificate, a transcript for 3 years of study in Romanian, or grounds for exemption.
• A criminal record certificate; see our guide on getting a police clearance certificate from abroad.
• Translations into Romanian and an apostille or other certification depending on the issuing country.

How ANC checks documents

The Citizenship Commission (Comisia pentru cetățenie) at ANC can demand originals of any document and order any check if it doubts authenticity. The law requires any doubt about the authenticity of papers or the accuracy of data to be resolved within the administrative procedure.

The key novelty: the commission may refuse if a request to the foreign authority that issued a document goes unanswered. A slow or silent archive in the issuing country now directly threatens the application.

Naturalization and marriage

For naturalization, the passport and birth and marriage records are joined by proof of long-term residence rights, proof of legal income and criminal record certificates. ANC sets the exact list, and it is worth checking against the current version on the authority's website or at the consulate before filing.

Where to look for the ancestor's documents

The key proof is a document issued by Romanian authorities in 1918-1940: a birth or marriage record, passport, military register or property papers. They are sought in the National Archives of Moldova, regional archives of Ukraine such as Chernivtsi, and Romanian archives. Records of that time were kept in Romanian, so an archival certificate often fits the file directly. If no direct document exists, indirect ones may work, but the commission judges their weight, so we check in advance whether what we find is enough.

How long Romanian citizenship takes: the ANC queue and steps

The ANC queue is measured not in months but in tens of thousands of files. In July 2025 Dominic Fritz, mayor of Timișoara and leader of the USR party and a German citizen, explained on Antena3 why he still had no Romanian passport himself: "There is a backlog of 50,000 citizenship files." He had filed his application more than a year earlier. And in June 2025 Moldova's ambassador in Bucharest, Victor Chirilă, said about 130,000 Moldovans were waiting for an ANC decision.

Law No. 14/2025 extended the time the Citizenship Commission has to report on a file from 5 months to 2 years, and it can be extended further while documents are checked. Since 2024 the authority has sharply slowed approvals of Article 11 files. In December 2025 prosecutors searched 37 locations, including the civil status office of Bucharest's Sector 6, in a case about citizenship obtained with forged documents. Checks on that scale do not speed things up.

For comparison: Alina Gorincioi, a lawyer from Moldova, restored citizenship together with her parents in 2012 after a ten-year wait. The old benchmark of 1.5-2 years still found in ads does not match 2025-2026 practice.

Step-by-step process

Naturalization follows the same path with an extra step: an interview at ANC testing language, culture and knowledge of the Constitution and the anthem.

How much Romanian citizenship costs

The Romanian passport itself is cheap: about $60 at the official rate of the National Bank of Romania. That flat fee has applied since 1 August 2025 to a standard electronic passport filed at a passport office inside the country. Most of the money goes not to the state but to documents, language and time.

The catch with cheap offers

A passport by descent without documented roots is a sure sign of a scheme. Citizenship factories sold passports to Ukrainians and Russians, inventing Bessarabian grandparents. For buyers the result was criminal cases and cancelled documents instead of an EU passport.

An honest budget is built item by item. Example: for a grandchild restoring citizenship, the file needs fresh extracts for at least three generations, an archive record on the ancestor, translations and apostilles for every document, a B1 certificate and visits to ANC or a consulate to file and take the oath. Each item is worth quoting in advance from the archive, the translator and the university rather than taking figures from ads.

Compare with all programs: second passport cost in 2026

What a Romanian passport gives in 2026

The Romanian passport opens 178 destinations without a prior visa, counting visas on arrival and electronic travel authorisations. For comparison, the Russian passport opens 114 destinations, the Ukrainian 142 and the Moldovan 120.

What Romanian citizenship gives beyond travel

• The right to live, work, study and run a business in any EU country without residence or work permits.
• Full Schengen: since 1 January 2025 Romania has also dropped checks at land borders.
• Dual citizenship: Romania does not require giving up a previous passport.
• Consular protection from any EU country where Romania has no embassy.
• The right to vote in European Parliament and Romanian elections, including at polling stations abroad.

Where the Romanian passport still needs a visa

The US remains the main exception. In January 2025 Washington announced Romania's entry into the Visa Waiver Program, put it on hold on 25 March and rescinded it on 2 May 2025. Romanians still need a visa for the US. Canada, the UK, New Zealand and South Korea admit them with an electronic travel authorisation, while Japan, China, the UAE, Brazil and Mexico are visa-free. More on passport strength in our passport ranking 2026.

Citizens of Russia, Ukraine and Moldova: what to check

For citizens of Russia, Ukraine and Moldova a Romanian passport comes with three different sets of risks. Romania allows dual citizenship, but the other country may see it differently.

Citizens of Russia

Russia does not ban a second passport; its own reporting rules are covered in our article on dual citizenship in 2026. The bigger problem lies elsewhere: Romania now reviews files from Russian citizens with particular suspicion. After the citizenship factory investigations, prosecutors are hunting holders of forged certificates, and, unofficially, the border police counted almost 300 Russians who obtained Romanian documents illegally. Genuine descendants of Bessarabians should prepare a flawless archive trail and a B1 certificate: without the language, the law leaves only the exemption for applicants aged 65 or over.

Citizens of Ukraine

Since 16 January 2026 Ukraine has had a law on multiple citizenship, but Ukrainian citizenship can be kept only alongside citizenship of countries on a government list. The first list, approved by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1412 of 5 November 2025, covered only Canada, Germany, Poland, the US and Czechia. Romania joined the list on 8 May 2026, when Resolution No. 589 added 28 more countries. A Ukrainian citizen can now take a Romanian passport and keep the Ukrainian one. Graduates of Ukrainian high schools and universities taught in Romanian benefit from an exemption: 3 years of such study replace the B1 certificate.

Residents of Moldova

Moldovans have the strongest position: archives are easier to access, many speak Romanian natively, and a transcript from a high school or university taught in Romanian replaces the exam. But the route to a Romanian identity card (carte de identitate) through someone else's address is closed. Since 31 May 2023 no more than 10 unrelated people can be registered at one address, and between 31 May 2023 and the end of 2025 Romania cancelled more than 100,000 identity cards of people born in Moldova who were registered at mass addresses. Even people who really live in Romania got caught up in the checks.

Moldovans who stay at home can manage with a Romanian passport showing their country of residence: it lets them work and travel across the EU. In March 2025 the Romanian government also used an emergency ordinance to allow citizens without an address in Romania to obtain an electronic identity card with such a passport or proof of registration in their country of residence, provided they have a verified account on the Romanian Interior Ministry's HUB platform.

Taxes for Romanian passport holders

A Romanian passport does not make its holder a Romanian tax resident. Taxes in Romania depend on where life actually happens: a permanent home, the centre of vital interests, or more than 183 days in Romania within 12 months.

For passport holders who stay in Moldova, Ukraine or another EU country, that is good news: citizenship alone adds no new taxes. Those who move should know the basic 2026 rates: 10% income tax and 16% dividend tax from 1 January 2026. All rates, contributions and regimes for sole traders are covered on our page on taxes in Romania, and comparisons with other countries are in the taxes by country section.

One practical detail for those returning to live in Romania after years abroad: Romania's passport service grants a customs exemption to people who held a passport showing a foreign country of residence for at least 12 consecutive months and then moved their address to Romania.

The catch: risks and the bill against descendants

The biggest risk in 2026 is political. On 15 September 2026 thirteen PSD MPs registered a Senate bill that removes the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of former citizens from Article 11 and keeps the right to restoration only for those who personally held Romanian citizenship. The authors cite a sharp rise in applications from people who never held Romanian citizenship themselves and no longer have real cultural or linguistic ties with Romania, and one of them noted that 37 years have passed since 1989, which, in his view, gave everyone enough time.

The bill caused an uproar. Former Moldovan ambassador to Romania Victor Chirilă called the right to restore citizenship the greatest investment Romania has ever made in Moldova and urged MPs not to play into the hands of enemies. The opposition Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) also objected. The bill is now in Senate committees: to become law it needs votes in both chambers and the president's signature. Will new rules affect an application already filed? Ask an expert.

Who Romanian citizenship does not suit

• Those without documented Romanian ancestors who are not ready to live in Romania for 8 years.
• Those who need a passport quickly: the ANC queue and document checks stretch cases over years.
• Those counting on visa-free travel to the US: a Romanian passport does not provide it.
• Those not ready to learn Romanian to B1 who do not qualify for exemptions.

What can go wrong

• Refusal if a foreign archive or registry office does not confirm the authenticity of documents.
• Cancelled documents and a criminal case if a forgery is found in the chain of kinship, even one made by a middleman.
• Loss of a Romanian identity card if registered at an address with more than 10 unrelated residents.
• New restrictions if parliament passes the PSD bill.

Alternatives: other EU passports by descent or through residence

If Romanian roots cannot be proven or speed matters, Romania is worth comparing with its EU neighbours. The closest equivalents are descent programs in Bulgaria, Greece and Italy, and without roots, a residence permit followed by naturalization.

The full catalogue of passports by descent, marriage and naturalization is in our second citizenship section.

What a Romanian passport gives

FAQ