# Romania — records retrieval dossier > EasyPassport knowledge base for citizenship-by-descent record retrieval. **General > guidance to confirm on the official pages listed under Sources — not legal > advice.** Fees, URLs, offices, and processing times change; verify before quoting. ## Vital records (birth / marriage / death) - **Holding office:** There is NO central vital-records office in Romania. Civil birth/marriage/death records (acte de stare civilă) are held by the local civil-registration office — the Oficiul de Stare Civilă within the Serviciul Public Comunitar Local de Evidența Persoanelor (SPCLEP) at the Town Hall (Primărie) of the commune/town/city sector where the event was registered. Each office keeps its own registers for roughly the past 100 years; older registers are transferred to the county branch of the National Archives. - **How to request:** Write to (or apply in person at) the Civil Registration District Office in the Town Hall where the birth/marriage/death occurred (per U.S. Embassy Romania guidance). Request a certified copy (certificat/duplicat) or — better for use abroad — an 'extras multilingv' (multilingual extract issued under the Vienna Convention/international form). A descendant living abroad can also apply through a Romanian embassy/consulate, which relays the request to the competent Primărie. A non-relative/agent must supply a notarized power of attorney (procură). The Embassy explicitly cannot obtain documents on your behalf and does not translate them. - **Online portal:** No single national portal — see *How to request* (often per-region / per-office). - **Who may request:** The record subject, their spouse, and direct-line relatives (ascendants/descendants) — i.e. a descendant may request an ancestor's record. Records less than 100 years old can, under EU/Romanian privacy law, be released only to direct descendants (or with a court order); a third party needs a notarized power of attorney. Older records held at the National Archives are researchable more openly. - **Cost:** Fees are set locally and vary by district and document; a standard civil-status certificate/duplicate is a modest administrative fee (typically a few tens of lei), and the multilingual extract is low-cost or free. Prices 'vary by document and district' (U.S. Embassy Romania). - **Timeline:** No official service standard published; local-office turnaround ranges from days to several weeks, longer when the request is routed through a consulate or when the register has already moved to the county archive. Could not confirm an exact statutory timeline from an official source. - **Language:** Romanian. Requests should be made in Romanian; ask specifically for the international/multilingual extract to minimise later translation. - **Notes:** Civil registration (starea civilă) began 1865 in the Old Kingdom (Wallachia/Moldavia); 1895 in Transylvania and Banat (Hungarian system); and only 1919 in Bukovina, Bessarabia and Dobrogea. A few city registries run earlier (Sibiu from 1607). The ~100-year local-retention rule means recent ancestral records stay at the Primărie while older ones are scattered across the 42 county archive branches — you must first pin down the exact locality. ## Historical & church records (before civil registration) - **Parish / church:** Before civil registration, church registers (registre parohiale) are the primary source and cover ~1600s in Transylvania, ~1700s in Banat, ~1775 in Wallachia/Moldavia/Bukovina, and ~1814 in Bessarabia/Dobruja. Local parishes keep roughly the last 100 years; older registers were transferred to the county (județ) branches of the National Archives. Denominations to target by region and ethnicity: Romanian Orthodox (majority), Greek Catholic/Uniate (mostly N. Transylvania), Roman Catholic (Hungarians/Germans/Csangos), Calvinist-Reformed and Unitarian (Hungarians, services in Hungarian, bishoprics at Cluj/Oradea), Lutheran/Augustan (Saxon Germans), and Jewish community records. Write to the local parish priest (in Romanian) for recent records, or to the diocese for older Catholic records; the Unitarian Church in Cluj has digitized its registers (archives.unitarius.org). - **National / state archive:** Arhivele Naționale ale României (National Archives of Romania), HQ at Bd. Regina Elisabeta nr. 49, sector 5, Bucharest 050013 (secretariat@arhivelenationale.ro; +40 21 314 4331) — arhivelenationale.ro, with an online-research request page (/site/cercetare/cercetare-online/). It operates 42 regional branches — one Direcție Județeană in each county plus a Bucharest municipal branch — which hold the transferred civil-status and parish registers for their territory. Transylvanian civil/parish registers are indexed via the Historical Population Database of Transylvania (hpdt.ro). Note: the National Archives site is behind an anti-bot filter and could not be scraped directly during this research. - **Notes:** For pre-1918 Transylvania/Banat, Hungarian state civil registration (1895+) and Hungarian/German/Latin-language church books apply; Bukovina records are largely German; Bessarabia records are Russian/Cyrillic. Some 1865-1903 registers for places now in Moldova (Bolgrad, Cahul, Hreața) are held by the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova, not Romania. ## Apostille / legalization - **Competent authority:** Split by document type under Law no. 202/2010 (per Romania's HCCH Art. 6 designation): (1) OFFICES OF THE PREFECT (Instituția Prefectului) apostille administrative/public documents — this is the office for civil-status certificates (birth/marriage/death) and criminal-record certificates; (2) CHAMBERS OF NOTARIES PUBLIC (Camera Notarilor Publici) apostille notarial acts, legalized copies and certified translations; (3) TRIBUNALS (Tribunalele) apostille court/judicial documents. - **URL:** https://www.hcch.net/en/states/authorities/details3/?aid=340 (official HCCH authority record); national apostille portal https://www.apostile.ro ; Prefect offices directory https://gov.ro/en/government/organization/prefectures ; Notary chambers https://www.uniuneanotarilor.ro ; CNRED guide https://cnred.edu.ro/en/the-hague-apostille/ - **Process:** For an ancestor's BIRTH/MARRIAGE/DEATH certificate: obtain a freshly issued certified copy from the Primărie, then take it to an Office of the Prefect (apostille office within the prefect's institution). By statutory exception, civil-status certificates and criminal-record certificates may be apostilled at ANY prefect's institution (not only the issuing county's); other administrative documents must go to the prefect of the issuing county or the holder's county of residence. For a certified Romanian translation or a notarized copy, the apostille is applied instead by the relevant Chamber of Notaries Public. Apply in person or via an authorized representative; some counties accept mail. Romania issues e-apostilles in some offices. - **Cost:** Apostille on original ADMINISTRATIVE documents (incl. civil-status certificates) is FREE. Apostille on NOTARIAL acts (translations/legalized copies) is a single fee of 35 lei + 20% VAT. Apostille on JUDICIAL documents carries a 10 lei judicial stamp per document + 10 lei for the application (OUG 80/2013). - **Notes:** Romania is a full party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention, so a single apostille (no consular legalization) suffices for use in other member states. The most error-prone point is routing: civil-status certificates → PREFECT, not the notary chamber or a court. > **Apostille authority — verification (✓ confirmed against HCCH, 2026-07):** Fact 1 (apostille authority) is fully confirmed against the official HCCH Art. 6 record (https://www.hcch.net/en/states/authorities/details3/?aid=340), which states verbatim: Offices of the Prefect = Art.1(b) administrative documents (civil-status + criminal-record certificates); Chambers of Notaries Public = Art.1(c) notarial acts; Tribunals = Art.1(a)+(d) court/judicial documents + official certificates; changes made by Law no. 202/2010 (art. V, Official Journal 178/26 Oct 2010). No correction needed. Note the national portal is spelled with a SINGLE 'l': www.apostile.ro (as HCCH's own 'useful links' confirm) — the research already used this correct spelling. Fact 2: the vital-records portal URL supplied in the research was EMPTY (""), so there was no URL to verify; portalUrlLive is FALSE by default. Romanian civil-status/vital records are handled at the local town hall (primărie) / SPCLEP, not a single national online portal; if a portal is needed, cite the Prefect's office or apostile.ro rather than an invented URL. ## Translation - **Requirement:** Yes. For the ANC citizenship-by-descent (redobândire) file, foreign-issued documents must be apostilled/legalized AND accompanied by a certified translation into ROMANIAN. Romanian-issued ancestral certificates are already in Romanian, but any foreign civil-status or criminal-record document in the chain must be translated. - **Notes:** The translation must be done by a traducător autorizat (a translator authorized by the Romanian Ministry of Justice) and then legalized by a notary (legalizare notarială / 'traducere legalizată'). A translation done abroad is generally accepted only if itself apostilled, or it is redone in Romania by an authorized translator and notarized. Confirmed via Romanian SPCLEP/consular guidance and the ANC Article 11 document list (foreign documents 'apostilat/supralegalizat ... cu traducere în limba română'); the primary ANC site (cetatenie.just.ro) is WAF-protected and could not be scraped directly. ## Emigration & naturalization (the chain-break) - **Emigrant / exit records:** Romania kept emigration/exit controls, especially under communism: passport-issuance and emigration-approval files, plus Securitate surveillance files on émigrés, survive at the National Archives (Arhivele Naționale) and the CNSAS (Securitate archive). For the classic pre-WWI/interwar emigration wave (1910-1925), use foreign departure/arrival lists rather than Romanian exit records: Hamburg passenger lists (1850-1934), Bremen departure lists (1904-1914), and New York/Ellis Island arrivals (1892-1924) — many indexed on FamilySearch/Ancestry. There is no single online Romanian emigrant register. - **Destination naturalization:** Check the DESTINATION country's naturalization records (e.g. U.S. NARA/USCIS Genealogy Program, UK/Canada/Argentina/Israel archives) to establish exactly if and WHEN the ancestor naturalized. Romania-specific twist: historically, acquiring a foreign citizenship (and communist-era deprivation decrees) caused LOSS of Romanian citizenship — but this is usually the PREDICATE for the descendant's claim, not a fatal chain-break. The main descent route, Article 11 of Law 21/1991 ('redobândire'), is designed precisely for persons who LOST Romanian citizenship for reasons not attributable to them, and extends to their descendants up to the 3rd degree (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren). So proving the ancestor WAS a Romanian citizen (and the loss) matters more than avoiding a naturalization event — but the timeline still must show the ancestor held Romanian citizenship when the descent line began. - **Notes:** Distinguish Article 11 (redobândire for former citizens/descendants) from Article 10 (persons connected to lost territories) — the correct legal basis, and thus the document set, depends on the ancestor's history and place. General guidance only, not legal advice; the exact ANC basis should be confirmed with the National Authority for Citizenship. ## Gotchas - Territorial-jurisdiction shift is the biggest trap: 'Greater Romania' (1918-1940) included Bessarabia (now Republic of Moldova), Northern Bukovina and parts of the Banat now in Ukraine/Serbia. An ancestor who was a Romanian citizen in the 1920s-30s may have birth/marriage records now held by the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova or Ukrainian/Serbian archives — not in Romania at all (FamilySearch's 1865-1903 collection explicitly notes Bolgrad/Cahul records are in Moldova). - Record language and start-date vary sharply by region: Old Kingdom civil registration from 1865 (Romanian), Transylvania/Banat from 1895 under the Hungarian system (records often in Hungarian, older church books in Hungarian/German/Latin), Bukovina (German) and Bessarabia (Russian/Cyrillic) only from 1919. Expect to read and translate multiple scripts. - No central vital-records office: you must first identify the exact locality (comună/oraș/sector) and write to that specific Primărie. The ~100-year local-retention rule splits a family's records — recent ones sit at the town hall while older ones are dispersed among 42 county National Archives branches. - Apostille mis-routing is the classic error: civil-status certificates go to the OFFICE OF THE PREFECT (free, and civil-status/criminal certs can be done at ANY prefecture), while only notarized copies and certified translations go to a CHAMBER OF NOTARIES PUBLIC and court papers to a TRIBUNAL. Sending a birth certificate to a notary chamber or court gets it rejected. - ANC 'freshness' rule: the citizenship authority requires recently issued civil-status certificates (commonly not older than ~2 years, and some criminal-record certs within 6 months) — so you must obtain FRESH re-issued copies of the ancestor's records with current apostille and translation, not rely on decades-old original certificates. - Greek Catholic (Uniate) record disruption: the Church was outlawed 1948-1989 and its parishes/registers were seized and partly absorbed by the Romanian Orthodox Church, whose property/records disputes continue — retrieval for Greek Catholic ancestors (mostly northern Transylvania) can require chasing both Orthodox holdings and the county archives. - Name-spelling drift: Romanianization, Hungarianization and Germanization of the same surname across regimes, plus diacritics and Cyrillic transliteration (and distinct Jewish/German/Hungarian community spellings), mean the ancestor's name can appear several ways — search variants across civil, church and passenger records. ## Sources - [HCCH — Romania Competent Authority (Art. 6), Apostille Convention (official designation of Prefect/Notary Chamber/Tribunal + fees)](https://www.hcch.net/en/states/authorities/details3/?aid=340) - [CNRED (Romanian Ministry of Education) — The Hague apostille (procedure, prefect apostille office is free, any prefecture for civil-status certs, notary chambers for translations)](https://cnred.edu.ro/en/the-hague-apostille/) - [U.S. Embassy Romania (.gov) — Obtaining Vital Records (no central office; write to Civil Registration District Office in the Town Hall; records from 1865; apostille needed)](https://ro.usembassy.gov/obtaining-vital-records/) - [FamilySearch Wiki — Romania Civil Registration (local Oficiile stării civile hold ~100 yrs; older to National Archives + 42 branches; regional start dates; <100-yr direct-descendant restriction)](https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Romania_Civil_Registration) - [FamilySearch Wiki — Romania Church Records (parish registers, denominations, coverage from ~1600s, local parish ~100 yrs then county archives)](https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Romania_Church_Records) - [FamilySearch Wiki — Romania Emigration and Immigration (Hamburg/Bremen/Ellis Island passenger lists; destination-country records; Moldova descent note)](https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Romania_Emigration_and_Immigration) - [Autoritatea Națională pentru Cetățenie — Articolul 11 redobândire (document list incl. foreign docs apostilat/supralegalizat cu traducere în limba română; WAF-blocked, read via search snippet)](https://cetatenie.just.ro/articolul-11-2/) - [SPCEP/SPCLEP civil-registry transcription guidance (translation by traducător autorizat, legalized by notar)](https://spcepcv.ro/stare-civla/nasteri/transcrierea-certificatelor-de-stare-civila-pentru-cetatenii-care-au-dobandit-sau-au-redobandit-cetatenia-romana/) - [National Archives of Romania (Arhivele Naționale ale României) — HQ + online research (WAF-blocked; details via FamilySearch citation)](https://arhivelenationale.ro/site/cercetare/cercetare-online/) --- General guidance, not legal advice. EasyPassport is a document-organization tool, not a law firm. Confirm your own case with the relevant authority or a qualified professional.