How to check a Romanian company before you sign

Why this is easier in Romania than you expect

Company information in Romania is public by design. A company must register its identification details, registered office, activity and the people who run it with the Trade Register, and must file annual financial statements. Publicity is the point of the register: it exists so that anyone entering into a commercial relationship can find out who they are dealing with.

For a foreign founder this is genuinely useful. Before you sign with a Romanian client, supplier, landlord or future business partner, you can establish in about ten minutes whether the company is real, active and roughly the size it claims to be, at no cost. What follows is the order we use in practice.

Start from the CUI, not the trading name

Ask for the CUI, the unique registration code. It appears on any invoice or formal offer, and a counterparty who hesitates to give it has already told you something. Romanian companies also often trade under a brand name that differs from their legal name, so the CUI is the only reliable identifier, and it is the legal name that must appear in the contract.

With the CUI you can confirm the legal name, the legal form, the Trade Register number, the registered office, the incorporation date and, most importantly, the company status: active, dissolved, in insolvency or struck off. A company that has been struck off no longer exists as a legal entity, so there is nobody to contract with. A company in insolvency can still trade, but payments follow the statutory order of creditors through the insolvency practitioner.

These details, along with the filed financial statements, can be looked up free of charge, without an account, on public company directories. One of them is cautarefirme.ro, run by the same team as this site, which we mention as our own service rather than as a neutral recommendation. The underlying sources are the Trade Register, the tax authority ANAF and the Ministry of Finance, and they can be consulted directly.

Check that the activity matches what is being sold

Every Romanian company has a declared object of activity made up of CAEN codes, one main code and any number of secondary ones. If a company whose registered activity is retail is offering to build you an office fit-out, that is not necessarily fraud, but it is a mismatch that an audit or a dispute will surface.

This matters most in regulated fields such as construction, transport, security, healthcare and hospitality, where permits are issued against specific codes. No code, no permit. Bear in mind that Romania moved to CAEN Rev. 3, with a recodification deadline of 25 September 2026, so you will see both nomenclatures in the market during the transition. Compare the description of the activity, not just the digits. Our note on CAEN Rev. 3 for foreign founders explains the change.

Confirm who is entitled to sign

This is where contracts fail. A contract signed by someone who lacked authority to bind the company is a contract the company can dispute. Check three things before signing:

• who is registered as administrator, and whether that name matches the person signing;
• how the powers of representation are set, because where two administrators represent the company "jointly", one signature is not enough;
• written authority where the signatory is not an administrator, obtained and annexed to the contract.

For larger transactions there is a fourth layer, the beneficial owner, that is the natural person who ultimately owns or controls the company. Romania keeps this in a register held by the Trade Register, but access is not open to everyone: it is granted to authorities and to persons who can demonstrate a legitimate interest.

Read the financial statements, and know their limits

Filed annual accounts are public and available for several years back. You do not need to be an accountant to use them. Look at turnover to judge real size, at profit or loss over three years to judge trend rather than a single good year, at debt relative to assets, and at the number of employees against what the company claims about its team.

The important caveat is timing. A balance sheet is a snapshot at 31 December, published some months later. It is a good indicator of size and direction and a poor indicator of whether the company can pay you next month. For significant amounts, combine it with the checks below and with a partial payment in advance.

Look for the problems: tax, insolvency, litigation

Four free checks catch most unpleasant surprises:

• Fiscal inactivity. ANAF publishes a register of taxpayers declared inactive. This is the check with the most direct financial consequence for you, because invoices received from an inactive taxpayer do not give a right of deduction.
• VAT registration. If your counterparty invoices with VAT, confirm they are registered in ANAF's register of taxable persons, and for intra-EU transactions verify the number in VIES.
• Insolvency. Openings of insolvency proceedings are published in the Insolvency Proceedings Bulletin (BPI).
• Court cases. The Romanian courts portal shows the cases in which a company is a party. A run of debt-recovery claims over two years describes a company that does not pay its suppliers.

When information is not enough

Everything above gives you information. Some situations require a document: an official extract issued by the Trade Register that can be placed in a file. A screenshot does not substitute for one. That document is the certificat constatator, and the official Trade Register fee for the standard version is 30 RON. Our guide on the company registration certificate in Romania explains which version to ask for, how to obtain it, and what is involved in using it abroad.

Turn what you found into contract terms

Checks are only worth doing if they change something. A young company or weak accounts justify an advance payment and staged delivery. A pattern of debt claims justifies payment on delivery rather than 30-day terms. A signatory who is not an administrator justifies annexed written authority. A cross-border contract justifies clear governing law and jurisdiction clauses. And the preamble should carry the details you verified: exact legal name, registered office, CUI, Trade Register number, and the name and capacity of the signatory.

Pricing for our services

Formation for foreign citizens starts from €300, with a registered office from €150 per year and a combined remote SRL and registered office package from €450. Later company changes start from €200. The final quote depends on your citizenship, your documents, the number of shareholders, whether translations are required, and whether the shareholder is an individual or a foreign legal entity.

Ask us to look at a specific case

If you are about to sign with a Romanian company and something in the public data does not add up, send us the CUI, the nature of the deal and your country of residence, by WhatsApp or through the contact form. We will tell you what the register shows, whether an official certificate is worth ordering, and which points belong in the contract.