On Monday, the 7th of August 2017, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 53 was published in the Official Journal of Romania, Part I, no. 644 for the amending and supplementing of Law no. 53/2003.
The series of amendments is as follows:

• `Undeclared work` is defined, including the following situations – employing a person without an individual employment contract in written form, the day before the start of the activity; employing a person without submitting an employment report to the General Register of Employees no later than the day before the start of the activity; employing a person when their individual employment contract is suspended; employing a person outside of part-time working hours.
• The employer’s obligation to keep a copy of the individual employment contract for employees in the respective workplace. The civil fine for the failure to comply with this legal provision is LEI 10,000.
• The written conclusion to the addenda regarding individual employment contracts becomes mandatory before the change is made.
• The employer’s obligation to keep records of hours of work performed by each employee, showing the starting, and ending hours of the work schedule – the employer must keep an attendance book/report that shows the time spent by the employee at work every day.

The sanctioning regime for undeclared work is also modified:

• Employing a person (i) without an individual employment contract in written form, the day before the start of the activity, or (ii) without submitting the employment report to the General Register of Employees, no later than the day before the start of the activity is sanctioned with a civil fine of LEI 20,000;
• Employing a person, when their individual employment contract is suspended, is sanctioned with a civil fine of LEI 20,000;
• In the situations above, labour inspectors have the obligation to dispose, as a complementary sanction, the cessation of the organised workplace’s activity. The employer can resume activity only after the fine is paid, and the deficiencies that led to the suspension of the activity are rectified;
• Employing a person outside part-time working hours is sanctioned with a fine of LEI 10,000;
• The possibility of pay half the amount of the fine within 48 hours from the date of offence report’
• The provision that incriminated as an offence the act of employing more than 5 persons without an individual employment contract is repealed;
•  Employing a person found in the situation of illegal stay, knowing they are a victim of human trafficking, is a criminal offence, sanctioned with imprisonment from 3 months to 2 years, or with a fine. [source]

Ioana-Cătălina Barbu