Many companies are using internship in Romania as a way of hiring temporary workforce, or are planning on using internship. This is a potential solution that’s part of their workforce restructuring plans in Romania, following the current economic conditions.
Individuals lacking professional experience are also looking for entry or temporary jobs, where they can benefit of the opportunity to gain significant experience, without being actual employees.
Either if you are an employee looking for an internship, or if you represent a company looking to hire as part of an internship, you must know that this type of activity is officially regulated by the Romanian legislation.
Thus, the Romanian legislative framework regulating the use of internship provides for a number of conditions and obligations that a Romanian employer must comply with, as well as certain rights for the interns.
If an individual wants to sign an internship contract with a Romanian employer, he/she must know that there are certain conditions imposed by the applicable law, as follows:
In addition to the conditions described above, which are applicable for the intern directly, an employer planning for using an internship in Romania must also know that the Romanian internship law (Law no. 176.2018) stipulates certain obligations that must strictly be observed by any company, as follows:
IMPORTANT: If during a labor law audit the authorities identify interns working within your company that do not have an internship contract signed, they can impose fines of up to 20,000 lei for each intern. The same fine can be applied if the inspector identifies that the internship contract was not reported to the Romanian labor authorities through registration in the specific online register for internships.
The applicable law also stipulates certain rules regarding the number of interns with whom a company can sign contracts at the same time. Specifically, the number of interns with whom an employer can enter into internship contracts simultaneously cannot exceed 5% of the total number of employees of that employer.
However, as an exception to the above rule, the law allows companies that employ no more than 20 employees (such as a microenterprise company) to simultaneously conclude no more than 2 internship contracts (10% of total number of full-time employees).
After the completion of the internship program, any contract signed with the intern can be converted into an employment contract, and the Romanian state even encourages this. Thus, if within 60 days from the end of the internship program, the employer signs an employment contract with the respective person, they can benefit, based on a request submitted to ANOFM, from an employment promotion bonus of approximately 1,000 euros for each person so employed.
The employment promotion bonus is paid by the state after fulfilling the obligation to maintain the employment relationship for an uninterrupted period of at least 24 months.
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