Parliament has recently adopted a major legislative proposal aimed at amending Law no. 176/2018 on internships, with the purpose of encouraging employers (host organizations) to integrate more young people and improve the conditions offered to them. Although the amendments bring significant simplifications and new rights for interns, the proposal failed to secure an increase in the state-funded bonus.
The most important amendment concerns the maximum number of interns a company may employ simultaneously:
- New Limit: The percentage increases to 10% of the total number of employees, doubling the current limit of 5%.
- Motivation: The initiators argued that the previous limit disadvantaged small organizations. For example, a company with 20–30 employees could hire at most one intern, which was considered unfair. By increasing the limit to 10%, access for more companies to young workforce is facilitated.
The draft introduces a new right for interns, aligning the internship program with the standards of paid employment:
- Right to Paid Leave: Interns will be entitled to a number of paid leave days, calculated directly in proportion to the total duration of the internship program.
- Use: If the intern chooses to exercise this right, the host organization is obliged to grant it.
- No Compensation: If the leave days are not requested during the contractual duration of the internship, they will not be financially compensated by the employer at the end of the program.
In addition, to encourage the conversion of internships into long-term employment contracts (minimum 24 months), Parliament has adopted a radical simplification of the procedure for claiming the state-funded bonus:
- Major Simplification: Almost the entire list of supporting documents previously required (such as copies of employment contracts) is eliminated.
- Required Documents: The employer will only need to submit the application for the bonus and a copy of the internship certificate.
- Motivation: This simplification is a direct response to excessive bureaucracy, which resulted in an extremely low number of bonuses being granted (for example, only 7 in 2021 and 19 in 2022), despite the fact that the number of registered interns has steadily increased.
Although during the proposal stage senators requested a significant update to the state-funded bonus (suggesting an increase to over 7,000 lei), the Chamber of Deputies decided to maintain the current value for budgetary reasons, despite the fact that Law 176/2018 provided for the annual indexation of this amount.
- Bonus Value: It remains at 4,586 lei for each internship converted into an employment contract for a minimum of two years.
The legislative proposal is not yet in force. It must now be promulgated by the President of Romania and will apply three days after publication in the Official Gazette.