Legal procedures for debt recovery in Romania

Creditors in Romania have  possibilitiy of initiating a common law procedure, procedure for payment injunction or a payment warrant.
A mandatory preliminary stage is the mediation procedure.

Mediation procedure

Since 2013, the mediation procedure is a mandatory preliminary stage. Mediation is applied in all cases where the parties can negotiate the dispute solving subject: any civil dispute, any trade dispute, matters of family law, the field of consumers' protection, conflicts of rights in labour disputes and criminal matters (with some exceptions).

Legal and summary procedures – payment injunction and payment warrant

Most common procedures are the payment injunction and the payment warrant, which are considered the simplest and fastest procedures for legal debt recovery.

The payment injunction procedure is considered a special and urgent procedure which starts at creditor’s request and aims to recover the claims.

The payment warrant procedure is applicable only to claims from commercial contracts or from contracts between merchants and authorities (limited field application). The court must judge the request concerning the payment warrant within 90 days maximum.
If the sentence issued out of one of these procedures is not voluntarily observed by the debtor, the creditor may enforce the sentence.

Common law procedure

The common law procedure for debt recovery is based on the Civil Procedure Code, which states that conciliation procedure is mandatory prior to taking the case before the court. The creditor shall notify the debtor in writing about his intention regarding amicable debt recovery. The invitation to the conciliation procedure is sent to the debtor at least 15 days prior to the date proposed for conciliation. The disadvantages of the common law procedure are the long duration and high costs.

Insolvency procedure

 The insolvency procedure applies to claims which are actual, liquid and matured, older than 30 days and which are greater than 40 000 RON (cca. 9 000 EUR).
After the initiation of this type of insolvency procedure, all other judicial or extrajudicial procedures are suspended by law. The judicial administrator must notify all creditors about the deadline to lodge their claims.

The stages of proceedings that can be used are:
- a general proceedings through which, after a period of observation, a debtor enters judicial reorganization proceedings or bankruptcy proceedings,
- a simplified proceedings through which the debtor enters bankruptcy proceedings directly followed by liquidation and erasure from the Trade Registry.

Legal costs

Legal costs consist of court fee, attorney fee, translation costs, costs in connection with witnesses or appointing an expert. The losing party must reimburse legal costs to the party who won the lawsuit.

 Litmitation period

General limitation period of commercial claims in Romania is three years.