Importing a car to Romania as a foreigner: paperwork, costs, wait times in 2026

Cluj-Napoca’s car dealerships and the informal Facebook groups that serve the city’s foreign residents field the same question on a loop: how much does it actually cost to bring a car into Romania. The answer, according to the agencies and specialist guides that publish current figures, is that the price and the calendar both depend heavily on one variable — whether the vehicle is coming from inside the European Union or from outside it.

There is no single “import tax” anymore. Romania scrapped the old first-registration environmental levy — known over the years as taxa de primă înmatriculare, taxa de poluare, or timbrul de mediu — through Law 1/2017, which took effect on February 1, 2017 and repealed the emergency ordinance that had underpinned the charge, according to registration agency Delta Speed Solutions. Delta Speed Solutions traces the move to a June 2016 ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU that found the stamp discriminated against imported used vehicles. Delta Speed Solutions notes that many owners had been registering cars in Bulgaria specifically to dodge the Romanian levy before it was axed, and that used-car imports surged once the requirement disappeared. Car-tax guide eCarsTrade confirms that, “at the moment, there’s no environmental tax for cars in Romania” — and the emissions-based change it flagged for January 1, 2026 did take effect, but inside the annual local vehicle tax, not as a registration levy.

That 2026 change is not a revival of the old import tax, however. As CSID.ro anticipated, the measure turned out to be a reform of the existing annual ownership tax (impozitul auto), applied to vehicles already registered in Romania regardless of when they arrived and calculated by pollution norm as well as engine size. The final rules have applied since January 1, 2026 (Fiscal Code art. 470, as amended by Law 239/2025 and OUG 78/2025): the tax is charged per 200 cm³ of engine capacity, with the highest rates for non-Euro and Euro 0-3 cars, so a 1.6-litre Euro 2 car owes a base 156 lei a year and a 2.0-litre Euro 2 car 297 lei — far below the 350-400 euros floated before the law passed — local councils may add up to 100%, fully electric cars pay 40 lei, and the tax applies to ownership rather than to the act of importing.

For the import itself, the routes diverge by origin. A vehicle coming from another EU member state moves freely across the border with no customs duty, and if it is more than six months old and has covered over 6,000 kilometres it is generally not treated as a “new means of transport” for VAT purposes, according to vehicle-documentation service GetCOC. If the car does count as new, a private buyer owes Romanian VAT of 21% on it — declared on ANAF form 301 before registration — and for any EU-sourced car, new or used, a buyer not registered for VAT needs an ANAF certificate confirming the VAT was paid or is not due before the registration office will accept the file. A car arriving from outside the bloc — the UK, the US, or elsewhere — requires a customs declaration, an EORI number for the importer, and is liable for customs duty of around 10% of the vehicle’s value plus Romania’s standard VAT, according to used-car exporter RosM Autos. That VAT rate itself rose from 19% to 21% in August 2025, per eCarsTrade’s tax breakdown.

Two agencies anchor the paperwork on the Romanian side. The Registrul Auto Român (RAR) verifies the car’s identity, chassis number, technical condition and compliance with EU or UN type-approval rules, and — where the vehicle was previously registered abroad — issues the Romanian identity card (CIV) that Romanian plates require, according to RAR’s own description of its type-approval role and GetCOC’s process guide. For EU cars, RAR asks for the original foreign registration document, the purchase invoice or contract and, for vehicles whose emissions were measured under WLTP (in practice most built after August 31, 2018), the manufacturer’s certificate of conformity (CoC), and works by appointment only. RosM Autos puts the RAR technical inspection itself at roughly 45-90 minutes once an appointment is secured, though it warns that about 12% of imported vehicles fail on the first attempt, most often over headlight alignment, emissions readings, tyres or brakes. A failed check adds a re-inspection fee and another wait for a slot.

Within 30 days of RAR issuing the CIV, the owner must declare the car at the local tax office for the address where they live (in Cluj-Napoca, the city’s tax directorate), and the annual vehicle tax is owed from January 1 of the year after registration.

Once RAR has cleared the car, the county Serviciul Public Comunitar Regim Permise de Conducere și Înmatriculare a Vehiculelor — coordinated nationally by the Direcția Generală Permise de Conducere și Înmatriculări (DGPCI), which replaced the old DRPCIV — handles the actual registration, the step that produces Romanian plates. A foreigner can register a car in Romania once they have a Romanian domicile or residence (reședință), at the registration service covering that address. DGPCI’s own checklist for a car previously registered abroad lists the application, the owner’s ID, the ownership document bearing its registration number in the local tax office’s vehicle records, a valid RCA third-party liability policy (mandatory before the car can legally be driven at all), the RAR identity card (CIV) with a valid RAR authenticity certificate and ITP, the original foreign registration documents and foreign plates, and — for a car bought in another EU country by someone not registered for VAT — an ANAF certificate showing the VAT was paid or is not due. Since September 15, 2026 the registration certificate costs 76 lei (up from 49 lei) and a standard pair of plates 52 lei (26 lei each, under MAI Order 55/2025); the separate 60/145-lei registration stamp duty some guides still list is not on DGPCI’s checklist, and the stamp-duty law it came from (Law 117/1999) was repealed from February 1, 2017 by Law 1/2017. The periodic technical inspection itself runs 150-180 RON depending on the provider, due every two years for cars under twelve years old and annually beyond that, eCarsTrade adds. Every document arriving from abroad — the foreign registration certificate, the sales invoice or contract, any certificate of conformity — needs a certified Romanian translation, GetCOC notes.

Timing varies with origin and season. RosM Autos estimates five to seven business days end-to-end for an EU-sourced car and ten to fourteen for one arriving from outside the bloc, with port clearance at Constanța accounting for much of the non-EU delay; it adds that spring and early summer bring two to three extra days as volumes rise. The legal clock matters more than the agency estimate: a foreign-registered car owned by someone with domicile or a registered office in Romania may be driven on Romanian roads for at most 90 days after it enters the country, and only while it has valid third-party insurance. GetCOC’s own certificate-of-conformity delivery service, separate from the RAR inspection itself, takes about one business day digitally or three to five days by courier, per the firm’s site. Total cost estimates from RosM Autos range from roughly 800 to 1,200 euros for an EU import against 1,500 to 2,500 euros from further afield, once transport, port handling, RAR fees, translations and registration are added together — figures the site frames as typical rather than fixed, since insurance, transport distance and any technical corrections needed to meet Romanian standards all move the total.

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