Romania now prices its road vignette by emissions: EVs pay 228 lei a year, Euro 3 cars pay 330

Starting Thursday, October 1, 2026, Romania's road vignette (the rovinieta, required on national roads and motorways) no longer has a single price for every passenger car. The price now also depends on the car's emissions class, following the EU "polluter pays" principle. Electric cars get the lowest rate: 228 lei for a year, compared with 254 lei for a Euro 6 car and 330 lei for Euro 3 or older. (At recent exchange rates, 228 lei is roughly €45.)

The new price grid comes from Transport Ministry Order no. 888 of September 22, 2026, published in the Official Gazette (Monitorul Oficial) no. 818 on September 25. I read the order's annex and checked the figures against Digi24, Antena 3 and other Romanian outlets. They all match.

All passenger-car prices (lei, VAT included)

Category A covers cars and other passenger vehicles with up to 9 seats, driver included.

Validity	Electric	Euro 6	Euro 5 – Euro 4	Euro 3 – Euro 0
1 day	20	22	26	29
10 days	27	30	35	39
30 days	43	48	55	62
60 days	68	76	87	99
12 months	228	254	292	330

Source: annex to Transport Ministry Order no. 888/2026.

For comparison, Antena 3 notes that until September 30 every car paid the same rate. It was set in euros (€50 a year) and converted to lei at the CNAIR rate: 262.92 lei for 12 months, 18.40 lei for one day and 49.95 lei for 30 days.

Who pays less, who pays more

Compared with the previous annual rate of 262.92 lei:

Your car	12-month vignette	Change vs. before
Electric	228 lei	about 35 lei less (−13%)
Euro 6	254 lei	about 9 lei less
Euro 5 or Euro 4	292 lei	about 29 lei more
Euro 3 or older	330 lei	about 67 lei more (+25%)

The gap between an EV and a Euro 3 car is 102 lei a year. That won't decide anyone's next car purchase. Still, it's the first time Romanian national roads are charged by emissions and not just by vehicle type.

One quirk: on the one-day vignette, even EVs now pay slightly more than before (20 lei vs. 18.40). The EV discount only shows up from 10 days upwards.

How an EV qualifies

Many EVs have no Euro class in their papers, because they have no tailpipe emissions. The order handles that as follows: what counts is the electric energy source entry in the registration certificate (field P.3) or the equivalent document of the registering country. If it says electric, the "Electric vehicles" column applies.

This matters, because the order also says that a vehicle with no emissions-class data is put into Euro 0, the most expensive bracket. EVs are explicitly exempt from that fallback.

The order defines an electric vehicle as one with a battery or capacitor, driven by one or more electric motors instead of an internal combustion engine. From that wording, hybrids, plug-ins included, don't count as electric and pay according to their Euro class. That's our reading of the order. If you drive a plug-in hybrid, check the classification when you buy.

Validity and vignettes already bought

• 1 day: valid on the day you paid for.
• 10 / 30 / 60 days: the start day plus the next 9 / 29 / 59 days.
• 12 months: from the start date up to and including the day before the same date the following year.

Vignettes bought before October 1 stay valid until they expire, whatever the car's emissions class. The new prices only apply to vignettes whose validity starts on or after October 1, 2026.

Prices will be indexed every year to inflation (the consumer price index published by Romania's statistics institute, INS), rounded down to the nearest leu. Each update applies from January 1 of the following year, so the prices above may already change in January 2027.

What changes for trucks

Also from October 1, goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes leave the vignette system and move to TollRo. There, the toll is based on actual distance driven, vehicle weight, Euro class and road type. Cars and vans up to 3.5 tonnes stay on the vignette. For vans up to 3.5 t (category B), the annual vignette ranges from 521 lei for EVs to 752 lei for Euro 3 – Euro 0.

What it means for drivers

• If you drive an EV, your next annual vignette costs 228 lei. Make sure the "Electric vehicles" category is selected when you buy it, not a default Euro class.
• If your current vignette is still valid, you don't need to do anything until it expires.
• If your car is Euro 3 or older, you'll pay about a quarter more per year than before.
• Buy the vignette only through the official channels listed by CNAIR, the national road company. Lookalike sites resell the same product with added fees.
• In the total cost of running an EV, the vignette saving is small next to what you save by charging at home. If you're shopping for an EV, you can compare models on EVMobile.ro.