Guide to paternity leave in 2026: 10 working days, +5 after the puericulture course, the 8-week deadline, the indemnity and the documents required.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
The birth of a child brings a lot of paperwork for a young family, but also a clear right for the father: paternity leave. Legea 210/1999 was amended in 2022, as part of transposing a European directive on work-life balance for parents, and the current rules are more generous than the old “5 days” version. Here is what any employer or HR manager in an SME needs to know.
Paternity leave is governed by Legea nr. 210/1999 (Law 210/1999), substantially amended by Ordonanța de Urgență nr. 117/2022 (Emergency Ordinance 117/2022), which transposed into Romanian law Directiva (UE) 2019/1158 (EU Directive 2019/1158) on work-life balance for parents and carers. The implementing rules were set out in detail by Hotărârea de Guvern nr. 1577/2022 (Government Decision 1577/2022).
The purpose of the directive was explicit: to increase fathers’ involvement in caring for the newborn from the very first weeks, through a dedicated, paid leave, separate from parental leave.
Paternity leave has two components:
In practice, a father who attends the course can reach 15 working days of paternity leave. The days are granted as working days, not calendar days, so weekends are not consumed from this entitlement.
The 15 days (10 basic + 5 after the course) are granted “for each newborn child or for each birth in the case of multiple pregnancies”, according to the methodological rules updated by HG 1577/2022. The legal wording is generic and does not explicitly detail an automatic additional accumulation per child for twins or triplets, so we recommend checking specific cases of multiple births directly with the territorial labour inspectorate or with a specialist consultant.
Paternity leave is available to the biological father of the newborn child, holding an individual employment contract, as well as to the adoptive father, under certain conditions relating to the adoption procedure.
Important: the law does not make paternity leave conditional on a minimum length of service, in general or with that employer. The right exists from the first day of the contract, unlike other benefits which require a minimum contribution period.
Paternity leave is granted within the first 8 weeks from the birth of the child. The days can be taken all at once or split up, within this window, depending on the family’s needs and on agreement with the employer. If the father does not request the leave within this interval, the entitlement for that birth is lost — it is not carried over after the legal window expires.
From an HR perspective, this means that any paternity leave request has a strict deadline, easy to miss if there is no system actively tracking it.
To take paternity leave, the employee generally has to submit to the employer:
The employer grants the leave on the basis of these documents, without additional unjustified conditions.
During paternity leave, the employee receives an indemnity equal to the salary corresponding to that period (the base salary, calculated for the working days of leave). Unlike other types of leave (for example sick leave, partly reimbursed from a fund), the paternity leave indemnity is borne entirely by the employer.
Because it is treated as salary, the indemnity is subject to the normal tax regime — income tax and the usual social contributions (CAS, CASS) — just like any other period of paid work. It is not exempt income and is not given preferential tax treatment.
Legea 210/1999, as amended, gives explicit protection to an employee who requests paternity leave:
This protection reflects directly the objective of the transposed directive: removing the barriers in employer practice that in the past discouraged fathers’ involvement in the child’s first weeks of life.
The two types of leave are frequently confused, but they are completely different:
| Paternity leave | Parental leave (CCC) | |
|---|---|---|
| Duration | 10 days (+5 after the course) | Up to 2 years (or 3, for a child with a disability) |
| Who pays | The employer, at salary level | The state budget, a monthly indemnity |
| Window | The first 8 weeks from the birth | Any time up to the child’s age limit |
| Who benefits | Mainly the father | Either parent |
Paternity leave is not deducted from CCC and does not replace it — they are separate rights, with different rules and different sources of payment.
A less well-known but important provision: if the child’s mother dies or is in a medical situation that does not allow her to take the rest of her maternity/confinement leave, the father can take over the remaining period of that leave, on request, in order to ensure continuity of care for the child. This take-over is distinct from paternity leave itself and has specific conditions, laid down in the implementing rules. In such an exceptional situation we recommend that the employer check the exact procedure with the competent institutions (the health insurance house, the labour inspectorate).
Paternity leave is a simple right on paper, but easy to manage badly in practice, mainly because the 8-week window is strict and easy to lose sight of in the bustle of an SME. The Leave module in Workly automatically tracks this window from the date of birth reported, alerts HR and the employee about the deadline and keeps a record of the required documents (birth certificate, puericulture course certificate), without depending on anyone’s memory.
Once approved, paternity leave goes straight into the payroll module, where the indemnity equal to the salary for those days is calculated automatically, with tax and contributions applied correctly, ready for export for the D112 declaration.
For specific questions such as “how many days does X have left in the 8-week window” or “which documents are missing for the 5 additional days”, the internal assistant Modi answers deterministically, on the basis of the configured data and rules — without an external language model, so with no risk of inventing a deadline or a number of days.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not tax or legal advice. The legislation on paternity leave (Legea 210/1999, as amended by OUG 117/2022, and HG 1577/2022) may change or may have exceptions for particular situations — always check at the official source (Monitorul Oficial) or with a specialist before taking a decision.
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