Romanian citizenship by descent: the route through your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents

A passport is a right, not a permit. If you obtain one through your ancestry, you are not buying anything and you are not asking for a favour: you are reclaiming what belonged to your family. Which countries open this door and how far back into the past they look is set out in the overview of citizenship by descent. Romania is among the most generous countries in Europe, because its rules reach down to the great-grandchildren and it does not ask you to live there.

Who gets a Romanian passport through family ties

Romania's Citizenship Law 21/1991 offers descendants two doors. Which one applies to you depends not on you but on your ancestor: how did they lose their Romanian citizenship?

Article 11 covers people who were Romanian citizens and lost that citizenship for reasons not attributable to them, or had it withdrawn against their will. The embassy in Berlin specifies that this means people who had acquired citizenship by birth or adoption. For these cases the law expressly extends reacquisition to descendants down to the third degree: children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Article 10 covers every other former citizen, including those who lost their citizenship in some other way, and their descendants down to the second degree. The Romanian embassy in Germany expressly names stateless persons of Romanian origin and people who lost Romanian citizenship before 22 December 1989, together with their children and grandchildren.

If your family comes from Transylvania, the Banat, Bukovina or Bessarabia, take a close look at the year and the reason the citizenship was lost. That is exactly what decides whether you go through Article 11 or Article 10, and whether your great-grandchild line still counts.

One more case is often overlooked: perhaps you never lost Romanian citizenship at all. If you are Romanian, live abroad and no longer hold any Romanian documents (no passport, no identity card, no Romanian civil status certificate), you apply through the embassy or a consulate to have your citizenship clarified. The result is then a certificate, an atestat de cetățenie română, rather than reacquisition.

Applying for Romanian citizenship: how the procedure works

The competent body is the Autoritatea Națională pentru Cetățenie, ANC for short, an authority under Romania's Ministry of Justice. For the Article 11 route, the procedure looks like this:

1. File the application in person

You hand in the application in person: in Bucharest at the ANC, at its offices in Iași, Suceava and Galați or, if you live abroad, at the Romanian embassy or a consulate in your country of residence. At the ANC in Romania you only get in with an online appointment booked through its website. When you file, your facial image and the prints of two fingers are taken; the same applies to children aged 14 and over, while younger children only have their facial image taken. The law makes no exception to this.

2. Review by the commission

Once the application is registered, the president of the citizenship commission sets a first review date, no later than five months after the application was received. In parallel, the commission asks other authorities for information on your loyalty and your background, normally within 60 days. If a document is missing, you get a maximum of four months to supply it. If you don't, the authority rejects the application as unsupported.

3. The president's order

If the commission finds the requirements met, it submits its report to the president of the ANC. The president issues the order on reacquisition within three days, and it reaches you by registered post with acknowledgement of receipt. If the application is refused, you can appeal to the Tribunalul București (Bucharest Tribunal) within 15 days. A new application is possible six months after the refusal.

4. Oath of allegiance and certificate

You only become Romanian when you take the oath of allegiance. In substance, you swear to be devoted to the homeland and the Romanian people, to defend the national rights and interests, and to respect the Constitution and the laws of Romania. If you keep your residence abroad, you take the oath before the head of the Romanian mission in your country of residence or, with that official's consent, at the formal ceremony in Romania. You then receive the certificat de cetățenie română bearing your photograph.

The documents you need for the application

The list is long but logical: you prove your identity, your life history and every generation between you and the ancestor who was Romanian. It is based on Order 85/2025 of the ANC president, published in the Monitorul Oficial (Romania's official gazette) in April 2025.

If you apply from Germany, there is a genuine shortcut. Germany is a party to Convention No. 16 of the International Commission on Civil Status (ICCS). That means you submit multilingual extracts from the civil status registers in the original, with no apostille and no translation. They must be no more than two years old when you apply. Documents from states outside the Convention need an apostille or legalisation plus a certified Romanian translation.

Your ancestors' Romanian records are often the hardest part. Municipal archives, parish registers, Romanian registry offices: the traces are scattered across a century and several border changes. How to track them down systematically is explained in genealogy for your passport. The commission may also ask for any further document that reliably proves your ancestor's Romanian citizenship.

Language proof, oath and deadlines

These three points decide whether your application goes through smoothly. None of them is hard once you know about it.

Language. For descendants, the ANC's list of documents requires a certificate of Romanian at level B1 or higher of the Common European Framework of Reference. It may be issued by Romanian universities with an accredited preparatory year in Romanian, by the Institutul Limbii Române, by the Institutul Cultural Român or by the Romanian cultural institutes abroad. A certified copy of a diploma from an upper secondary school or university in the state whose citizen you are, or where you live, is accepted as equivalent if it confirms at least three years of teaching in Romanian. Anyone who was a Romanian citizen themselves needs no proof, and on the Article 10 route neither does anyone aged 65 or over when applying.

Oath deadline. Once the order has been served on you, you have six months to take the oath of allegiance. In justified cases the deadline is extended once, provided you request the extension before it expires and back it up with evidence. If you miss the deadline through your own fault, the order lapses.

Children. You include your minor children in your application. For applications filed since 1 September 2024 a strict rule applies: the ANC disregards documents for a child born before the application but only submitted later, because biometric data is only taken at filing. If you don't bring a child along, you file a separate application for that child later, once the parent is Romanian. How to bring the whole family along with citizenship by investment is shown in the family overview.

Downsides of Romanian citizenship

People who ask about the downsides usually mean two things: what does the route cost me, and what ties me down afterwards? On the first point the honest answer is that the route costs time and patience.

• Appearing in person. No appointment on site, no application, because biometric data is only taken there. That applies to your children as well.
• Language. If you have never learned Romanian, plan for a course to reach the B1 certificate.
• Paperwork. Up to four generations, with name changes, shifting borders and archives in several countries.
• Deadlines. Four months to supply missing documents, six months for the oath. Miss them and you lose your progress.

After that, a Romanian passport ties you down less than many fear. Romania lets you keep the citizenship you already hold, and you choose for yourself when you apply whether your residence stays abroad. If one day you really do move to Romania, the tax side is covered in the tax overview for Romania and the general rules under taxes.

The upside weighs more. An authority can refuse or revoke a visa or a residence permit; citizenship is your right. And a second passport is the lawful way forward if your first is lost, stolen or withheld abroad. What other roles a second passport can play is described in why a second passport.

Romanian passport: from certificate to passport

The citizenship certificate is not yet a travel document. For a Romanian passport you need Romanian civil status certificates, and there is a separate step in between: civil status documents of Romanian citizens issued by foreign authorities only carry evidential weight in Romania once they have been transcribed into the Romanian registers. The embassy in Berlin accepts these registrations for births, marriages, divorces and deaths.

With your Romanian birth certificate you then apply for the passport. If you live in Germany, the embassy or the consulates issue you an electronic passport marked "domiciliu Germania", the CRDS passport. Among other things, you need to bring your original birth certificate and any marriage or divorce certificates.

As the passport of an EU member state, the Romanian passport opens the Union to you just as the German one does. Its value lies in a second, independent citizenship. If you are also looking for a passport outside the EU, every open citizenship by investment programme is set side by side in the comparison.

Dual citizenship: Romania and Germany

For Germans the starting position has never been better. Since 27 June 2024, acquiring another citizenship on application no longer means losing German citizenship. Romania, for its part, does not ask you to renounce anything: in the Article 11 procedure the ANC expressly mentions the option of keeping your foreign citizenship.

So a family with Romanian roots ends up holding two EU passports, without moving and without giving anything up. What German law allows in detail is covered in the article on dual citizenship for Germans.

Declare every citizenship you hold in the Romanian application: it requires certified copies of all your passports and criminal record certificates from every state whose citizen you are.

No Romanian roots: naturalisation or another route

There is no Romanian citizenship by investment: the ANC runs no procedure that grants citizenship in return for capital. Naturalisation under Article 8 requires eight years of legal residence in Romania and, when you apply, a long-term or permanent residence permit, or five years from the wedding for spouses who are married to and live with a Romanian citizen. A year in which you spend more than six months outside Romania does not count. On top of that come knowledge of Romanian, a basic grasp of the culture, the Constitution and the national anthem, and secure means of support. The period can be cut by up to three years for citizens of the EU, the EEA and Switzerland, for people born in Romania and for recognised refugees who show their integration.

For Germans this means: after five years at the earliest, during which you genuinely live in Romania. If you want to take this route, everything about daily life in the country is covered under moving to Romania. Why Transylvania appeals so strongly to Germans today is described in the piece on Germans in Transylvania.

Naturalisation is the affordable route and often the better one in the end, but it costs years. This is exactly where citizenship by investment comes in: it buys you the time that naturalisation needs. Why you should pursue both in parallel is explained in CBI and naturalisation. The open programmes with their investment amounts and timelines are listed under programmes.

If, on the other hand, your family has roots in several countries of the former Austria-Hungary, it pays to compare with the neighbours. The route for descendants of Hungarian citizens is set out under Hungarian citizenship.

Frequently asked questions