The law lets you leave an employer of your own accord only after six months of work, and the rule was extended to people already employed. Family rights here are 100 out of 100.
On paper Romania is one of the most even-handed countries in our sample. The income bar for the work route is no higher than the minimum wage, there are no mandatory integration courses or language tests for a residence permit, a spouse may work, children attend state school free of charge and a family member's permit is decided within 30 days.
The weak spot is delivery. The state does not publish refusal statistics for the work route. In Bucharest the wait for an in-person filing runs to weeks, and until August 2026 there was no fully online chain; the new platform is meant to fix this, but it has not been tested in practice yet.
The April 2026 reform is restrictive. The quota was cut for the first time in three years, the general work route is tied to a shortage list, and the six-month rule with the first employer also applies to people already working. Yet the state is not acting against legal residents: we found no raids and no permit revocations, while the immigration service ran a regularisation campaign that settled the status of 3,666 people. Hostility comes from below: a party leader called for a boycott of foreign couriers, there were street attacks, and the president publicly condemned them.
Status after a job loss is secure: the right to stay lasts up to 90 days (longer while you receive unemployment benefit), and the employment agency must offer at least two vacancies in that time. Renewals are filed at least 30 days before expiry, and you may live and work until the decision.
Day to day, the main hurdle used to be the bank: accounts need a personal CNP number, issued during the residence process. Since August 2026 the number is printed on the work visa itself and employers must pay wages into a bank account, so the barrier is going away. Proof of address, a lease or ownership, is mandatory for a residence application.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free short stays, as in the rest of the Schengen area (up to 90 days within 180): Romania has been a full Schengen member since 1 January 2025. For living and working there, the same procedure as for other non-EU citizens.
No work permit or labour market test: EU free movement rules give the right to live and work.
EU temporary protection is extended to 4 March 2028. Since 31 July 2026 new applicants must show they left in line with their military obligations; people who already hold the status are not affected.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality restrictions. The quota and occupation list are allocated by profession, not by passport.
The place interval 8-16 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Pressure on newcomers: 100 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 53 against 48.7. Above the world average: 7 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
Under the 2026 scheme approval takes 30-60 days, followed by a consular visa and the residence card, which the rules allow 30 days to decide. Under the old scheme practice stayed close to the official times; how the new platform performs will be clear once it has been running for a while.
Yes. There is a digital nomad visa with a threshold of about €5,400-5,500 a month and a permit for business activity or self-employment. Neither requires a Romanian job offer.
A long-stay visa through the e-Visa portal costs €300, the residence card 265 lei (≈€53) at each renewal, plus 128 lei for the first long-term permit.
If you lose your job, your right to stay lasts up to 90 days, during which you need a new employer. You may resign and change employers only after six months of work, earlier only if the employer seriously breaches its obligations.
Long-term status after 5 years of continuous legal residence. Citizenship after 8 years (5 if married to a Romanian citizen), with a test of Romanian, history and the constitution and an interview; dual citizenship is allowed.
The state is broadly even-handed: a low income bar, full family rights and 90 days to find a new job. The recent restrictions hit new workers and job changes, and hostility comes not from the authorities but from some politicians and the street.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.