Entering Romania through distributors: SEAP tenders, framework call-offs and a first contact by letter

Romania suits a manufacturer that is ready to sell to hospitals, councils and utilities through a local partner: almost every public purchase leaves a trace on one national platform, and the distributors that win are named in it.

Putting it simply: Romanian public buyers purchase through SEAP, the national e-procurement system at e-licitatie.ro, and the larger contracts also appear on TED. Much of the buying runs through framework agreements with several suppliers and many small call-off contracts, so the same distributors appear again and again in the award notices, but a framework's headline value is a ceiling, not a sale. Your distributor invoices through RO e-Factura, declares road deliveries in RO e-Transport and, for medical devices, holds an ANMDMR licence. Commercial e-mail needs prior consent even when the recipient is a company, so the first contact is a letter, a fair or an introduction.

How the market buys

Local distributors carry the tender

Romanian buyers expect a supplier who can bid on SEAP, invoice locally, deliver to sites across the country and provide service. In our analysis of TED award notices for supplies (September 2026), 99% of the winners in the 8,563 notices from buyers in Romania were companies registered in the country (methodology). Those winners include independent distributors as well as manufacturers' own Romanian subsidiaries. A foreign manufacturer usually enters by being listed with one of them.

Framework agreements and call-offs

Law 98/2016 on public procurement lets a buyer conclude a framework agreement with a single supplier or with several (article 115(2)). A framework may not last longer than four years, save in exceptional cases the buyer justifies (article 115(1)). Contracts under it can be placed only between the buyers named in the original notice and the suppliers that are party to the agreement (article 116(1)); with several suppliers, orders go by objective rules set in advance, after a fresh mini-competition among them, or partly each way where the tender documents allowed it (article 118(1)).

The practical consequence is that the first door is the framework. A distributor that is not a party to the agreement cannot receive its call-offs while the agreement runs, so the framework tenders of hospitals and councils matter more than any single order.

Central purchasing

Central purchasing units, and the cases in which buyers must use them, are set by Government decision or by decisions of local councils (article 40). A buyer that buys through such a unit's contracts, dynamic purchasing systems or framework agreements runs no procedure of its own (article 41). If your category is bought that way, the suppliers on the central agreement are the companies to approach.

The proof Romanian buyers expect

A company that can be checked

Romanian companies are registered with the National Trade Register Office (ONRC). Each receives a trade register number, which starts with "J" for legal persons, and a unique registration code (CUI) assigned by the Ministry of Finance; for companies in the trade register the CUI also serves as the tax identification code. Expect your distributor, and the hospitals it supplies, to identify every party by CUI, and give your own company number and VAT number in the same plain form.

Licensed distribution for medical devices

For medical devices, Title XX of Law 95/2006 makes import, distribution and service activities subject to an operating licence (aviz) issued by ANMDMR, the national medicines and medical devices agency, after it has assessed the applicant's competence and capability (article 926(2) and (3)). Activities carried out by the device's own manufacturer are exempt (article 926(2)), and companies established in another EU or EEA member state that carry out these activities lawfully at home do not need the licence when they provide them in Romania (article 927(2)). In practice the hospital will check that your Romanian distributor holds one; ask to see it at the first meeting. The medical supplies page covers the EU rules on the product itself.

Documents ready for a bid

Bids on SEAP are prepared in Romanian, so give the distributor technical sheets, instructions, declarations of conformity and a price list it can use as they are, plus references from other public buyers and a service and spare-parts plan.

Where public demand is visible

Romanian public procurement is published in layers, and SEAP carries each of them.

• Above the EU thresholds. From 1 January 2026, a buyer must publish in the Official Journal of the EU, and so on TED, for supplies and services worth 698,460 lei (EUR 140,000) or more excluding VAT, or 1,077,624 lei (EUR 216,000) where the buyer is a county council, a local council, the General Council of Bucharest or an institution subordinated to them (article 7(1)).
• Below the EU thresholds. Purchases under those values are awarded through a simplified procedure (article 7(2)).
• Direct purchases. A buyer may buy supplies and services directly below 270,120 lei excluding VAT (article 7(5)). Above 200,000 lei it must use the SEAP electronic catalogue or publish a notice, on its own website or on SEAP, describing what it is buying (article 7(7)), and every quarter it must notify SEAP of its other direct purchases, grouped by need, with at least the object, quantity, value and CPV code (article 7(8)).

Award notices are due within 30 days of the contract or framework agreement. Contracts placed under a framework are grouped every quarter and published within 30 days of the quarter's end (article 145(1) and (2)). Those grouped notices are why Romanian data holds so many award lines: each call-off under a framework can be published with the distributor that received it.

Read them with one rule in mind. The value given for a framework agreement is the maximum the buyers may spend, not what any supplier sold, and in Romanian notices a call-off is sometimes published with the supplier's framework offer instead of the price of that order. Count the repeat orders and the buyers, not the headline sums (why a framework value is a ceiling, not a price).

Invoicing and delivery

RO e-Factura

Under article 10(1) of Emergency Ordinance 120/2021, as in force today, invoices between taxable persons established in Romania for supplies that take place in Romania must be sent to the customer through RO e-Factura, the national e-invoicing system (simplified-invoice till receipts and intra-Community supplies to a Romanian buyer that gives a VAT number from another member state are excluded). According to the ANAF guide, the B2B obligation was introduced in two stages, reporting from 1 January 2024 and transmission through the system from 1 July 2024, after the obligation for supplies to public buyers had applied since 1 July 2022. A manufacturer invoicing a Romanian distributor from another member state is not in that circle, but every invoice your distributor issues to its customers is, and its systems will be built around it. If you register for VAT in Romania, check your own position with a Romanian tax adviser.

RO e-Transport

Emergency Ordinance 41/2022 set up RO e-Transport, which monitors international road transport of goods and domestic road transport of goods with high fiscal risk (article 1(2)). For an intra-Community acquisition, the duty to declare an international transport falls on the beneficiary in Romania (article 8^1(b)), so your distributor declares your truck, not you. According to ANAF, a consignment is caught where the vehicle has a maximum technically permissible mass of at least 2.5 tonnes and the goods weigh more than 500 kg gross or are worth more than 10,000 lei, and the system issues a UIT code for the whole load. Send the shipment details early enough for the code to exist before the goods move, and confirm the current thresholds and declaration duties with your distributor or a Romanian tax adviser.

Payment terms

Law 72/2013 caps payment terms between companies at 60 calendar days; a longer term may be agreed only if the clause is not abusive (article 5(1)). Public buyers must pay within 30 calendar days of receiving the invoice (article 6(1)), or within at most 60 days for public health institutions and public bodies providing medical services (article 6(4)), and may contract up to 60 days only exceptionally, where the term is set expressly in the contract and the procurement documents and is objectively justified (article 7(1)). A creditor paid late may claim a fixed EUR 40 on top of interest (article 10). Expect your distributor to raise how long hospitals actually take, and the credit terms it needs from you, early.

Lawful first contact

Romania requires prior express consent for commercial e-mail, and it says in so many words that companies are covered. Article 12(1) of Law 506/2004 prohibits commercial communications by e-mail or any other method using public electronic communications services unless the subscriber or user has given prior express consent, and article 12(4) applies the rule to subscribers that are legal persons. A polite, relevant first e-mail to a distributor's office address therefore still needs consent.

The lawful routes are a letter by post to the company's director (administrator) with a one-page product sheet in Romanian and a specific reason why your range fits what the distributor already wins; a stand or a visit at the sector's trade fair; or an introduction through a chamber of commerce, an association or an existing partner. Once the distributor has replied or asked for information, e-mail is fine. The Romania market page sets out the rule in full.

Where Cresques fits

Create a market for Romania, choose your CPV categories (or let the materials reader suggest them from a brochure or website), and Cresques shows the companies named in TED award notices for those categories, with personal details removed and framework ceilings kept apart from prices. A company profile adds the award history and an AI-researched role, to tell an independent distributor from a manufacturer's subsidiary; Romanian trade-register companies and, where filed, financials are listed too. Below-threshold contracts from SEAP are not in Cresques; search SEAP for them.

What this means for a manufacturer

• Find the distributors through the public trail: TED for the larger awards, SEAP for national notices and the quarterly call-off notices.
• Look for the framework agreements in your category and when they end; a distributor outside the framework waits years for the next one.
• Treat framework values as ceilings; count repeat orders and buyers instead.
• For medical devices, check that the distributor holds its ANMDMR licence.
• Plan for RO e-Factura and RO e-Transport on your distributor's side, and send shipment data early.
• Keep payment terms within 60 days, and expect questions about how long public buyers take to pay.
• Make the first contact by letter, at a fair or through an introduction. Not by e-mail.