Romania

01EMFA compliance since the 2025 report

Following the tumultuous election years of 2024 and 2025 and the steep rise of the far right, Romania had a new government in place in June 2025, supported by a broad coalition of four parties. Faced with a huge budget deficit, the new administration made restoring fiscal balance its top priority. The austerity measures brought economic recession, which also affected the media market, even though total media revenues remained steady.¹ Austerity also split the coalition: the Social Democratic Party (PSD) withdrew in April 2026, and on 5 May 2026 a no-confidence motion initiated by the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and backed by PSD brought the government down.² A caretaker government has been in office since then.

In this volatile context, political interest in aligning the legislation with the EMFA, or in respecting its provisions, has been low or non-existent. The Ministry of Culture ran a round of consultations with media and civil society organisations in 2025, before the new government was installed. There have been no follow-up public consultations since, and no legislative initiatives have been introduced to align the legal framework with the EMFA. Public institutions have also taken no measures to adapt their practices on issues such as state advertising transparency to their obligations under the EMFA.

Regulatory AuthorityAVMSD Art. 30

The National Audiovisual Council (CNA) continues to function without a president. Its meetings are chaired by Vice-President Valentin Jucan, who also represents the institution.

The CNA’s 2026 budget rose by 126.59% compared with 2025, to RON 47.77 million (around EUR 9.37 million).³ The increase is due to funds for DECA, an EU-funded digitalisation project, while total staff expenditure fell by 4.72%. The project is meant to provide the technology and software the CNA needs to increase its monitoring capacity and detect coordinated campaigns on social media. The equipment and software to be acquired through it⁴ were still not operational at the time of writing. The institution remains understaffed. In 2025, the CNA operated with an average of 113 staff against 151 approved positions, and its budget was cut as part of the government’s austerity measures.⁵

The CNA has been more active since the 2024 elections. It reacts more promptly to serious breaches, examines more cases and applies harsher penalties. However, the sanctioning framework in the current legislation does not deter broadcasters from breaking the law, as sanctions remain relatively mild. In 2025, the CNA imposed 179 sanctions, including 66 fines totalling RON 1,707,500 (about EUR 340,000); the rest were warnings or other non-financial sanctions.⁶ For online content, the Council adopted 412 decisions ordering the removal of illegal content from very large online platforms.

The CNA did, however, apply the maximum penalty in two cases, withdrawing in April 2026 the licences of the news channel Realitatea Plus⁷ and the radio station Gold FM⁸ for failing to pay their fines on time. Both broadcasters challenged the decisions in court and the Bucharest Court of Appeal suspended them pending a final ruling. AUR accused the CNA of censorship and called in Parliament for the Council to be dissolved and its responsibilities transferred to the courts.⁹

Political influence remains a problem for the credibility and functioning of the institution. In December 2025, after the public channel TVR1 aired a documentary by the independent investigative platform Recorder¹⁰ into dysfunctions in the judicial system, one of the CNA members, nominated by PSD, summoned the public television to a hearing, and accused it to be part of a campaign trying to influence the appointment of the heads of judicial institutions by broadcasting the investigation.¹¹ The hearing ended without any sanction.

In its zeal to combat disinformation, the CNA has also continued to apply controversial interpretations of the regulations. As noted in the 2025 report, it has sanctioned audiovisual material outside its jurisdiction, including so-called disinformation content posted on the social media accounts of ordinary internet users, who cannot be considered media service providers.

In February 2026, the CNA adopted a new regulation (Decision No. 116/2026,¹² published on 28 August 2026 and in force from 27 September 2026) revising and clarifying the rules on the notification, licensing and authorisation of audiovisual programme services. Besides provisions for traditional, linear services, the decision introduces specific rules for some providers of on-demand (non-linear) audiovisual media services, namely those with a channel on video-sharing platforms. It sets new criteria for determining when a video-sharing platform user qualifies as an on-demand audiovisual media service provider, and introduces a notification procedure for some of these providers, based on five further criteria, such as a combined audience or subscriber base of at least 100,000, commercial activity bringing financial or other benefits, and targeting users in Romania or Romanians abroad. Notification requires submitting a set of data and documents¹³ in a format specified by the CNA, which nevertheless may be rejected for bureaucratic reasons, transforming the notification process into a de facto registration.¹⁴

This secondary legislation, which effectively turns a large group of video platform users into audiovisual media service providers, has been criticised¹⁵ for creating legal uncertainty, overstepping the audiovisual law and being excessively bureaucratic for a large number of users.

Public Service MediaEMFA Art. 5

No progress has been made in implementing the EMFA provisions on public service media. No legislative proposal has been developed by Romanian authorities to align national media legislation with EMFA Article 5. As a result, the long-standing structural problems in the legal framework, which undermine the independence and proper functioning of the public broadcasters and directly contradict the EMFA, resurfaced in 2025 and 2026.

In November 2025, after the mandates of the previous boards expired, Parliament voted in new boards for the public television (TVR) and the public radio (SRR). The governing coalition parties had agreed on the members each would propose, so the vote went smoothly. One controversial nomination was that of Ioana Ene Dogioiu, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson, proposed by the Government for the board of the public radio. A well-known former journalist, Dogioiu accepted the nomination without giving up her position in the Prime Minister’s office, drawing harsh criticism from a number of media and civil society organisations.¹⁶

An even more serious problem led to the entire process being challenged before the Constitutional Court. AUR argued that the parliamentary parties’ nominations for the eight board seats reserved for them by law were unconstitutional, because they ignored the legal requirement that these seats be distributed according to the political configuration of Parliament. On 29 April 2026, the Constitutional Court upheld AUR’s complaint and asked Parliament to restart the appointment process for the eight seats, reflecting the current parliamentary configuration.¹⁷ The decisions¹⁸ took effect on 3 September.¹⁹

On 8 September, the Permanent Bureaus of Parliament appointed the journalist Sorina Matei as interim head of the public television, replacing Adriana Săftoiu, for 60 days pending the appointment of the new eight members of the board. Matei was nominated by AUR, and her appointment was backed by PSD as well as by far-right parliamentarians outside AUR.²⁰ On the same day, Răzvan Dincă, who headed the public radio as President-Director General from 2021 to 2025, was appointed its interim head.

Both broadcasters say their funding is insufficient to achieve their mission and has remained almost unchanged from previous years, and have asked for increases, especially for technical infrastructure and maintenance.²¹ Their 2026 budgets rose by 3.34% (TVR) and 5.45% (SRR) compared with 2025.²² These increases should be seen in the context of high inflation (7.3% in 2025²³, and expected to be 6.1% in 2026²⁴), which means that both budgets have fallen in real terms.

The funding mechanism itself, under which the two broadcasters receive their money directly from the state budget, remains at odds with the EMFA’s requirement of adequate, sustainable and predictable funding based on transparent and objective criteria, and there have been no recent initiatives to change it.

Misuse of State FundsEMFA Art. 25

No steps have been taken to implement the EMFA provisions on use of public funds in the media. Despite the austerity measures, local administrations continue to fund loyal media preferentially. The methods range from direct subsidies for outlets owned by local authorities²⁵ to contracts for advertising space and promotion, as well as other inventive mechanisms, such as subscriptions for large numbers of printed copies, event organisation and the production of promotional materials.

The government’s austerity measures also targeted state subsidies for political parties, which were cut by 20% in the 2026 budget.²⁶ In recent years, these subsidies have been a substantial source of revenue for many media outlets. Despite the cut, the parties remain as opaque as before about what they spend on political advertising and propaganda in the media. Two mainstream parties, PSD²⁷ and PNL,²⁸ still refuse to publish their political advertising contracts with the media, despite promises made during the 2024 and 2025 election years. Some online news outlets and TV news channels continue to give favourable editorial coverage to the political actors with whom they have political advertising contracts, most visibly Realitatea Plus, which, most of the time, openly supported AUR.

One step forward, although not stemming from EMFA, has come from the Regulation (EU) 2024/900 on the transparency and targeting of political advertising,²⁹ which has applied since October 2025: some outlets have started to publish transparency notices on their websites for political advertising contracts.³⁰ These notices show the sponsor of the published material, the amount paid for each campaign and the duration of the contract. Nevertheless, these notifications allow to identify only a part of the political advertising spend.³¹

There have also been positive examples of voluntary disclosure of public funds among mainstream media outlets, as required by Article 6.1 of EMFA, one example being the online outlet HotNews, which disclosed the total revenue it received from national and European public budgets as well as from political advertising contracts.³²

Yet, public authorities have thus far failed to act on the EMFA transparency requirements related to public spend in the media.

Media Pluralism and Political InfluenceEMFA Art. 6 & 22

No EMFA-required provisions on transparency of funding and ownership, or on the assessment of media market concentration and media pluralism have been implemented to date. Apart from CNA’s list of audiovisual providers, Romania has not taken steps to implement EMFA Article 6, which requires the establishment of a media ownership database as a tool to provide transparency of ownership.

Both the market structure and editorial practices have changed little since the 2025 report. With the market stagnating and little prospect of economic improvement, fierce competition in a market dominated by large platforms and television channels forces outlets to adapt and fight over limited resources.

The toxic relationship between some media outlets and political parties persists. The political interests or overt affiliations of some owners, and the party money still flooding the market, distort both the market and the public agenda: such outlets spread narratives designed to serve particular political actors, with little or no regard for the public interest or the public’s right to fair information. This undermines trust in journalism and in the media’s democratic role, and contributes to political and social polarisation and the accelerated rise of far-right movements.

The starkest example is Realitatea Plus, one of the most influential news channels. Its main talk-show host, Anca Alexandrescu, ran for mayor of Bucharest in December 2025 as an “independent”, with the full backing of AUR.³³ Alexandra Păcuraru, member of the family that owns the channel, who used to host a primetime show on the channel, currently holds leading positions in AUR.³⁴ Maricel Păcuraru, the channel’s former owner and the husband of its current owner, Daniela Madi Păcuraru, lent AUR candidates around EUR 2.3 million during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign, and the candidates in turn lent the money to the party. The Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) refused to reimburse these amounts because they exceeded the statutory limits, and the candidates sued the party.³⁵ During the same elections, Realitatea Plus political advertising contracts with AUR increased to EUR 2 million.³⁶ Realitatea Plus was sanctioned in July 2026 by the CNA for making changes in its ownership structure without notifying the Council and without its prior consent³⁷.

Ownership changes over the past year have pointed in different directions. At the end of 2025, HotNews announced that the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), a US non-profit that invests in independent media in more than 50 countries, had joined its shareholders.³⁸ Another online publication, cotidianul.ro, was sold by its owner, the journalist Cornel Nistorescu, to the Clever EAD group,³⁹ which publishes several other outlets, such as profit.ro and primanews.ro, owns TV stations such as Prima and Prima Sport, and holds the broadcasting rights to the national football league. The deal is another example of consolidation among the large media groups and reinforces the concentration of the media market.

The situation of Hungarian-language media is of particular concern, given both the size of the Hungarian minority and the political leverage of the party that represents it, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), which has been part of almost every governing coalition for the past 30 years. UDMR Senator Lorand Turos, a former journalist and CNA member who owns the publication Szatmári Friss Újság, is set to acquire a 55% stake in Alamo Impex 97 SRL from the Hungarian non-profit association MMTK.⁴⁰ Until recently directly funded by the Hungarian government, the company holds the licences for 12 local radio stations (Radio GaGa), as well as the trademarks for these stations and for other Hungarian-language publications in Transylvania, Krónika and Székelyhon. The transaction was notified to the CNA and discussed at its meeting on 22 July 2026.

02Has the situation improved?

03Outstanding problems

Media regulatorsAVMSD Art. 30

The CNA still has no appointed president and works with a quarter of its approved posts unfilled. Its sanctions remain too mild to deter repeated breaches, while its reach into online content, from sanctioning ordinary social media users to the new notification regime for video-sharing channels, has been criticised as going beyond its legal mandate. Political pressure on the Council continues.

Public service mediaEMFA Art. 5

Nothing has changed in the appointment and funding model that conflicts with the EMFA. Boards and heads are still chosen along party lines, both broadcasters are now run by interim heads installed by Parliament’s leadership pending new boards, and funding is still set annually from the state budget, falling in real terms in 2026, which undermines stable and sustainable funding required under EMFA Article 5.

Misuse of state fundsEMFA Art. 25

State subsidies to political parties, though cut by 20%, still pay for favourable coverage, and the majority of political parties still refuse to publish their media contracts and spending. This spending falls outside Article 25, which binds public authorities and entities rather than political parties; it is nonetheless public money buying editorial coverage, and in its effect on editorial independence it is indistinguishable from captured state advertising.⁴¹ State advertising by public authorities is conducted in a non-transparent manner, without effective enforcement of rules on objectivity or proportionality. Local authorities keep funding loyal outlets through subsidies, advertising and other contracts. No rules for the fair and transparent allocation of state advertising, as Article 25 requires, have been proposed.

Ownership transparency and pluralismEMFA Art. 6 & 22

No steps have been taken on the EMFA’s ownership transparency and concentration provisions. Consolidation continues, as the sale of cotidianul.ro to the Clever group shows, while the Realitatea Plus case shows how closely ownership, party politics and party money are intertwined. The planned transfer of a Hungarian-language radio network, once funded by the Hungarian government, to a UDMR senator will test the CNA’s scrutiny of ownership changes.