Your EETS box does not cover Romania until 15 January 2027. What to do until then

From 1 October you pay TollRo by hand, trip by trip. Here is how

If you already run a tolling device that covers Hungary, Poland or Germany, the first thing to know about TollRo is that the device does not cover Romania from 1 October.

Full interoperability arrives on 15 January 2027, when the Romanian system becomes interoperable with the other member states through the European Electronic Toll Service (SETRe), and SETRe-accredited providers can handle Romanian payments in an integrated way.

Between 1 October 2026 and 15 January 2027 there are three and a half months in which Romania is a separate arrangement. And as we write this, no SETRo provider is authorised yet, so the domestic on-board-unit option cannot be contracted either.

In practice: from 1 October you pay TollRo by hand, trip by trip. That is not a setup problem. It is a dispatch problem, every day, until January.

Here is what actually works, and what you need to do.

What works now, and what does not

The route ticket is the emergency option and the once-a-quarter option. You declare the trip in advance (departure and arrival) and pay for those kilometres before you set off. Fine for a genuine one-off. Unworkable as a routine, because a re-route becomes a compliance problem rather than a dispatch problem.

The eTarife app is provided free by CNAIR and is available on Google Play and the App Store. It removes the friction of finding a sales point, but it does not remove the human step: someone still has to remember, before every trip. For a fleet of three, workable. For a fleet of thirty, it is a recurring failure waiting to happen.

A SETRo contract with an on-board unit is where any operator with regular Romanian activity will end up: you sign with an authorised provider, the OBU goes in the vehicle, it reports distance, and the charge settles without the driver doing anything. That is the destination. It is not the starting point, because as we write this there is no authorised SETRo provider to sign with.

For international work, the date that matters is 15 January 2027. From then, one device and one contract can cover Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and Germany alongside Romania, through SETRe-accredited providers. Until then, Romania stays on a separate invoice.

Why 15 January 2027 matters

For a Romanian operator running domestically, the difference is convenience: you pay manually for a few months, then move onto a device.

For anyone running international, the difference is money and time. If you assume your EETS box covers Romania from 1 October, you will find out that it does not, and the place you find out is the border. Check with your provider now what the contract covers from October and what only from January. It is the single most likely source of unpleasant surprises in the whole transition.

What a foreign carrier has to arrange, specifically

1. Get your fleet data ready now, even though there is nowhere to register it yet. Plates, maximum authorised mass, Euro emissions class, in one clean list. The day the first authorised SETRo provider appears, contracting becomes an hour of paperwork instead of a week of digging through files.
2. Install the eTarife app and test it on a real trip, before 1 October. Not on the morning of 1 October, with the load on the bay.
3. Confirm your Euro class is recorded correctly. A truck wrongly recorded a class down pays 15% too much on every kilometre, indefinitely. This is worth checking on day one rather than reclaiming later.
4. Decide your fallback. What happens if a device fails mid-country? Someone in dispatch should know the answer before it happens.

How enforcement actually works

There are two forms of control. The first is after the vehicle is stopped, through interrogation terminals, carried out by CNAIR staff at border points, ISCTR inspectors, road police and border police. The second is automatic control, through video camera systems across the national road network. According to CNAIR, the system will use more than 300 fixed locations and 50 mobile systems.

The officer is no longer just checking whether you paid, as with the vignette. The system has to correlate the vehicle with its emissions class, its weight, the route driven and the tariff category.

Here is a distinction that will be lost in a lot of coverage, so it is worth holding onto: the 2,000 lei is not the fine. If non-payment is established, you owe the TollRo. If the distance driven can be established, the amount for that distance is calculated. If the distance cannot be established, the law provides for payment of 2,000 lei as the TollRo owed. Only if that sum goes unpaid does the contravention sanction, the fine proper, apply.

The model of the information letter used for automatically detected non-payment is set by Order no. 590/2026. If you believe TollRo was calculated incorrectly, the legal appeal procedures are available and are handled by CNAIR.

Before your next run: the checklist

Every vehicle over 3.5 t sorted by weight band and Euro class

Payment channel chosen per vehicle type (occasional vs regular)

Fleet list prepared for the day the first authorised SETRo provider appears

eTarife app installed and tested on a real trip

Euro class verified as recorded, not as assumed

Expected Romanian toll cost built into your rates: run it through the calculator

RO e-Transport GPS reporting handled (see below: this one catches people out)

The other Romanian obligation you should check while you are here

TollRo is the change everyone is talking about. It is not the one generating fines right now.

Since 1 January 2026, ANAF enforces GPS reporting under the RO e-Transport system, and liability extends to foreign carriers, with penalties reported in the €4,000 to €10,000 range per event. If you carry goods into, out of or across Romania, that obligation already applies to you today. TollRo has not started yet.

LoadHub is a Romanian compliance platform built for exactly this: UIT code management and automated GPS reporting to ANAF. 500+ companies, integrated with Wialon and 15+ telematics providers, self-service setup in about 15 minutes, free English driver app that works from a phone alone.

And in the coming weeks, the toll estimate joins it: generate a UIT code, and the estimated Romanian toll cost for that transport appears alongside it automatically: no re-entering routes, plates or Euro classes. Included on the Starter, Plus, Max and Global plans.

Create a free account. 7-day trial, no card required.

Sources: Law 226/2023; Order of the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure no. 1925/2025; Law 170/2026; Order no. 590/2026; CNAIR communications, including CNAIR’s response to Revista Tranzit on control and appeals; the SETRe interoperability date of 15 January 2027. Informational only, not legal advice.