Did the Romanian government, under Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, ban cash salaries starting in 2024? No, that's not true: Law 406/2023 initially outlawed employers paying employees in cash, but this provision was eventually taken out following a public backlash.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by user @rednews.ro on December 24, 2023. The caption (translated from Romanian to English by Lead Stories staff) was:
No more cash salary!
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jan 2 07:52:27 2024 UTC)
Law 406/2023 initially provided for a ban on employers paying salaries in cash, but this was eventually removed. The act appeared on December 19, 2023, in the Official Monitor and was due to come into effect after 180 days (i.e. on June 16, 2024), according to an explainer on Avocatnet.ro. However, it was not originally specified exactly how the salaries could be paid, only that the method had to be cashless. "Payment of incomes of a salary nature, assimilated to salaries and social assistance benefits is carried out by non-cash means of payment," the document initially stated.
But members of Parliament rephrased the provision so that it officially establishes the possibility of only paying the salary into a bank account: "Beneficiaries of salary payments paid by the employer, pensions, allowances and social assistance allowances paid from the state social insurance budget, the budget of the Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity or from the local budgets of communes, cities, municipalities, sectors of Bucharest municipality, counties, and Bucharest municipality have the right to receive the amounts due in cash or by non-cash means of payment."
Thus, following the reformulation, the provision becomes almost useless, because employees can already receive their salary by bank transfer.
