EPR in Romania: AFM Fund, PROs & RetuRO

In Romania, the packaging bill is written as a penalty. You report your packaging to the Environmental Fund Administration (AFM), and if the national recovery and recycling targets are not met, the Fund charges a contribution of 2 lei for every kilogram that fell short - a rate a 2026 legislative proposal would raise to 4 lei. That single mechanic shapes almost every packaging decision a seller makes here: either transfer the target to a licensed producer responsibility organisation (PRO) that is obliged to hit it, or carry the risk yourself and settle the shortfall in cash.

Romania also splits its producer duties across two authorities, which is where cross-border sellers tend to stumble. The AFM handles packaging, tyres, single-use plastics and waste oils; electronics and batteries report to a separate national agency; and a deposit-return scheme has run on top of all of it since late 2023. Here is how the money, the registers and the deadlines actually work.

How the AFM Environmental Fund prices a missed target

Packaging compliance runs on OUG 196/2005 and Legea 249/2015, with Romania's Environmental Fund Administration (AFM) as the counterparty. There are two ways to satisfy the duty, and they behave very differently on cost.

The first is to join a licensed producer responsibility organisation (PRO). The PRO takes on your legal recovery and recycling target for the packaging you place on the market, arranges the collection and treatment, and reports to the Fund on your behalf. You pay a negotiated tariff based on your material mix and tonnage, and the target becomes the PRO's problem to meet.

The second is to report directly to the Fund and pay the environmental contribution yourself. This is where the penalty economics bite: the contribution is owed on the packaging for which the recovery and recycling targets are not achieved, at 2 lei per kilogram, with the proposed 2026 increase pointing to 4 lei per kilogram. A direct filer that recovers nothing effectively pays the rate on the whole target shortfall, so on any real volume the contribution quickly overtakes what a PRO tariff would have cost. Either way, you declare the weight of packaging placed on the market by material through periodic filings.

Producer from the first shipment, with a route that splits by stream

Romanian law treats the first economic operator to place regulated products on the national market as the producer. An online retailer based outside Romania that ships directly to Romanian consumers is captured on the same basis as a domestic importer. Romania does not publish a de minimis weight or turnover exemption for its core packaging duty, so the safe assumption is that your first shipment into the country is already reportable. You can check which EPR duties apply to you across the markets you sell into.

The rules for foreign sellers are not uniform across streams. For electronics and batteries there is a confirmed authorised-representative route: a producer without a Romanian entity appoints a representative established in Romania to hold the registration and file the reports. For packaging, foreign sellers generally meet the obligation through a licensed PRO rather than a standalone representative, and the precise packaging route for a distance seller is worth confirming before you commit to it.

Electronics, batteries and the ANPM registers

The second authority is the National Agency for Environmental Protection (ANPM), which runs the two product registers that sit outside the Fund. Electronics fall under the Romanian implementation of the WEEE Directive 2012/19/EU and register on the ANPM-EEE register; batteries fall under HG 1132/2008 and register on the ANPM-Batteries register, with battery producer duties taking effect on 18 August 2025.

Both registers work the same way in principle: you report the volume of equipment or batteries placed on the market and finance the collection and recovery of that stream at end of life, either individually or through a licensed compliance organisation. This is the part of Romanian EPR where the authorised-representative route for foreign producers is settled, so an overseas seller of consumer electronics should budget for a representative here even if it can lean on a PRO for packaging.

Tyres, single-use plastics and the waste-oil rollback

The Fund also administers three further streams, and one of them runs against the usual direction of travel. Tyres operate under a national scheme reporting to the AFM. Single-use plastics fall under the EU single-use plastics directive, in force in Romania since 3 July 2021, capturing specific food containers, wrappers and lightweight carrier bags, with reporting again routed through the Fund.

Waste oils are the outlier. Romania used to run a dedicated waste-oil producer scheme, but the waste-regime ordinance OUG 92/2021 repealed the earlier HG 235/2007 decree that underpinned it. What survives is an environmental fee of 0.30 RON per kilogram on oils placed on the market, plus information duties - an eco-tax rather than a full collection scheme, and a rare instance of an EPR obligation contracting instead of expanding. Fishing gear is flagged as upcoming under the EU single-use plastics directive but has no operational scheme in place yet. Several categories carry no dedicated Romanian scheme at all - furniture, graphic paper, toys, DIY and garden goods, construction materials, sports and leisure equipment, recreational boats - though the packaging those products ship in stays obligated.

RetuRO and the SGR deposit, a layer outside EPR

If you sell drinks, there is a separate obligation that has nothing to do with the packaging contribution. RetuRO operates the Guarantee-Return System (Sistemul Garantie-Returnare, or SGR), a national deposit-return scheme live since 30 November 2023. A refundable deposit of 0.50 lei applies to every eligible single-use plastic, glass and metal beverage container.

Practically, that means registering the specific containers with the SGR operator, carrying the correct SGR mark and barcode on the label, and running the deposit accounting. The scheme sits outside your AFM packaging declaration: for containers inside the SGR, the recovery duty is generally handled through the deposit operator rather than filed separately to the Fund, so it is worth confirming how your RetuRO reporting lines up with your packaging contribution before you assume you are paying twice.

The Romanian EPR calendar, past and pending

The obligations have arrived in waves, and the near-term calendar centres on the EU packaging layer.

Two of these deserve a closer watch. When the PPWR applies from 12 August 2026 it is not yet confirmed which body will run Romania's PPWR packaging producer register, so treat the current AFM route as the working assumption rather than a settled one. Textiles then follow in 2028, with separate collection already the EU baseline ahead of the scheme itself.

Keeping packaging weights, PRO targets and a live deposit scheme in sync across every market you sell into is where the reporting overhead compounds. See how Gram turns one packaging spec into filing-ready reports.

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Sources:

• Romania's Environmental Fund Administration (AFM)
• National Agency for Environmental Protection (ANPM)
• Waste-regime ordinance OUG 92/2021
• EU single-use plastics directive (EU) 2019/904
• Revised Waste Framework Directive (EU) 2025/1892