The 30-day state of emergency was proclaimed by the President of Romania, in the context of the COVID – 19 outbreak in Romania.

The Decree no. 195/2020 (the “Decree”) instituting such state of emergency is effective as of 16 March 2020 and substantially impacts not only the day-to-day life, but the businesses too.

Closely related to the businesses, the Trade Registry continues to function in a way protecting the public health: Article 45 of the Decree set forth that the communication with the public and the procedure shall be performed by using electronic means.

The National Office of the Trade Registry (NOTR) adopted specific instructions for implementing the provisions of Article 45 of the Decree, according to which:

• the registration requests, accompanied by the relevant documentation, shall be transmittedsolelyby electronic means, either by using the portal of the NOTR [https://portal.onrc.ro] or by electronic mail, the relevant e-mail addresses (of the NOTR and those of the county offices thereof) being available on the website of the NOTR [www.onrc.ro];
  
  
• once submitted, the status of a registration request can be monitored by accessing the section “Status of the file” (in Romanian “Stadiu dosar”) of the NOTR portal [https://portal.onrc.ro];
  
  
• the excerpts revealing the status of the company, as resulting from the Trade Registry, as well as the copies of various documents submitted to the Trade Registry can be obtained also only by electronic means; the portal of the authority [https://portal.onrc.ro] or the communication by e-mail can be used for such requests too;
  
  
• all the templates used in the activity of the Trade Registry are available for free, either by accessing the relevant section of the portal [Online services – offline templates RC – in Romanian:Servicii online RC-Formulare offline RC] or on the Trade Registry’s website [www.onrc.ro];
  
  
• the assistance services which are offered by the Trade Registry for fee are currently available by using on-line means;
  
  
• similarly, the activity related to the publication and distribution of the Bulletin of the Insolvency Procedures (“BPI”) shall be performed solely online; the portal can be used for both publication and distribution purposes, while when the e-mail communication is preferred, the addresses are different: for the transmission of the documents to be published one of the following addresses should be used: [email protected], [email protected] (xx being the code of the county), while for obtaining BPIs, one should use the e-mail [email protected].
  
  

Notes: – in order to be able to perform the procedure by using electronic means, all the applicants (except for court instances) must have qualified (extended) electronic signature; such are provided by certified entities, in accordance with the provisions of the European Regulation 910/2014 – eIDAS; the list of such trusted entities is available at https://www.comunicatii.gov.ro/semnatura-electronica/.

– in order to have access to the portal of NOTR, it is necessary to create an account (for no cost), while various services (including the
RECOM Online Service which allows you to obtain information on all legal entities registered with NOTR) are available for costs.