The deadline to install cash registers in commercial vending machines in Romania has been officially extended to December 31, 2023.

Have you heard that the previous deadline of December 31, 2022, has been officially pushed back another year, to December 31, 2023? On December 8th, the Romanian government published Emergency Ordinance No. 168/2022 in which they defined the officially changed deadline for an earlier defined obligation of the operators using commercial vending machines in their businesses. As previously stated, changes were somewhat expected in regard to the previous deadline, which was shortly due (by the end of 2022), in particular for these entities to outfit their commercial vending machines with the fiscal electronic cash registers (FECR). However, without the final publication of regulations, there was no certainty as to whether there would be another postponement of a particular deadline or not. Based on this new provision, the previous deadline of December 31, 2022 has been officially pushed back another year, to December 31, 2023. The last date up to which these vending machines need to be properly equipped with a FECR.

The new article of the above noted GEO 168/2022 states this change, emphasizing that all economic operators who deliver goods or services through commercial vending machines that accept card payments as well as banknotes or coins, have until December 31, 2023, to outfit the vending machines with the fiscal electronic cash registers outlined in Article 3 paragraph (2) of the Government Emergency Ordinance No. 28/1999, as amended.

A reminder to those concerned: based on Law 136/2019, the initial deadline for equipping commercial vending machines with electronic cash registers was December 31, 2019. It was first postponed to December 31, 2020 (GEO 1/2020), then to December 31, 2021 (GEO 226/2020), then to December 31, 2022 (GO 11/2022), and now, according to a newly published GEO, to December 31, 2023. Basically, the government had to establish, the configuration and technical and functional characteristics of the special machines. However, this has not occurred thus far, despite their appearance in the debate around March 2020 and even later. Only after that specification information from the government appears in the Official Gazette will distributors be able to request the technical approval of special models of cash registers at the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics. After approval, the products will be placed on the market, and only then will the operators be able to buy them and equip their commercial vending machines with the needed updates.