Cătălin Raiu is an associate professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania.

Mihai Miron is a senior expert in the government of Romania’s State Secretariat for Religious Affairs.

Tiers of Religious Entities in Romania

In Romania, religious freedom is guaranteed both at the constitutional level and through Law No. 489/2006 on Religious Freedom and the General Status of Religious Denominations. This law was negotiated and adopted by the Romanian Parliament as a prerequisite for Romania’s accession to the European Union in 2007.

Romania fits into the mainstream European religion-state model[1] as it does not have a state or national church. All religious organizations are legally equal in their relationship with state authorities and among one another, and discrimination is prohibited. The Romanian legal framework permits the operation of all types of religious communities, whether registered or unregistered, making the free exercise of religious freedom completely unlinked to formal registration.

Under the current legal framework, the Romanian state officially recognizes four distinct types of religious communities, in a “tiered” system. The first three possess legal personality, while the fourth may choose to obtain legal personality. The level of public support and benefits they can access differs according to their legal status.

Tier 1 | Religious denominations (numbering 19) are granted recognition by government ordinance, contingent on the organization demonstrating a stable membership exceeding 0.1% of the national population (roughly 19,100 individuals), based on the most recent census. Religious denominations are eligible for partial state funding of clerical salaries and support for the construction and maintenance of places of worship.

Tier 2 | Religious associations (numbering 51) require a minimum of 300 members for government recognition. Their sole state benefit is tax exemptions for their places of worship.

Tier 3 | Associations and foundations with secondary religious activities or aims are NGOs officially recognized through legal proceedings conducted by the judiciary, under Government Ordinance No. 26/2000 on Associations and Foundations. Registration of such organizations requires a minimum of 3 members. These organizations often serve cultural, social, or charitable purposes and are either affiliated with recognized religious denominations or comprise individuals who share a common religious belief system. They are not entitled to public funding.

Tier 4 | Religious groups (grupări religioase) comprise a fourth category of religious communities that may function either without legal personality or as NGOs, depending on their internal priorities. This label applies to some ad hoc religious communities, which could be established for a very short period and then self-dissolve. The category also covers the scenario when members of a religious congregation decide to leave the parent community and establish a new religious organization, functioning in the meantime freely without legal personality.

Naming of Religious Organizations

Concerning the naming of Tier 1 religious denominations, Law No. 489/2006 on Religious Freedom stipulates only that the name of a religious denomination must not be identical to that of another already recognized denomination (Art. 8(4)). No additional restrictions or prohibited terms are explicitly outlined, which has led to similarities in the names of several entities: for example, Biserica Ortodoxă Română (Romanian Orthodox Church) and Biserica Ortodoxă Rit Vechi din România (Old-Rite Orthodox Church of Romania); or Biserica Evenghelică Română (Romanian Evangelical Church) and Biserica Creștină după Evanghelie din România (Christian Church of the Gospel of Romania).

The same naming principle applies to Tier 2 religious associations. However, these organizations must first submit documentation to the State Secretariat for Religious Affairs—a public body of the executive branch responsible for religious affairs—which reviews the application from a documentation standpoint and issues a consultative opinion. Additionally, the judiciary must confirm that the proposed name is not already in use, as verified against the Ministry of Justice’s NGOs registry, according to Article 41(e) of Law No. 489/2006. Courts do not question the faith principles of the new religious organization and rarely reject applications to register religious associations, unless the documentation is incomplete.

Tier 3 entities must also submit proof that the desired name is available for associations and foundations with religious activities. Verification is issued by the Ministry of Justice following a public regulation adopted in 2000, which establishes the same standards as those required of nonreligious organizations:

• The proposed name must differ from any already-registered entity.
• The name must not include terms that may create confusion with public institutions (e.g., commissariat, inspectorate, guard, authority, police, gendarmerie, or consumer protection).
• The name must comply with public order and accepted moral standards.

Additionally, the regulation requires prior approval from the government’s General Secretariat for use of the terms national or Romanian, or their derivatives.

Amendments to Naming Rules

Currently under parliamentary debate is a draft law amending Government Ordinance No. 26/2000. The proposed amendments to Article 7, paragraphs 3(1) and 3(2), explicitly prohibit NGO names from including terms likely to create confusion with public authorities or institutions, including party, union, employers’ association, church, and cult. The use of the term religious association (Tier 2) for newly established NGOs with religious aims (Tier 3) is only permitted with the consultative opinion of the State Secretariat for Religious Affairs, and the judiciary can overrule this opinion. This rule is meant to maintain a clear distinction between Tier 2 religious associations and NGOs that do not (yet) have Tier 2 status but want to promote themselves as a religious association.

This legislative initiative by the Romanian government was submitted to Parliament in November 2023 and is still under discussion. The prime goal of this draft law is not to regulate religious organizations specifically but rather to respond to civil society organizations’ call to simplify the bureaucratic NGO registration process. Moreover, it follows the European Court of Human Rights ruling in Cegolea v. Romania (2020), which requires the Romanian state to eliminate the possibility of arbitrary executive decisions in granting so-called “public utility”[2] status to NGOs that meet legal criteria. While the draft law does not include an explanatory memorandum for religious organizations specifically, it does propose banning the use of the terms church (biserică) and cult (cult religios) in the names of newly registered NGOs following adoption of the amendments.

Currently, 4 out of 19 Tier 1 religious denominations include the term cult in their names (while the term is pejorative in English,[3] it is completely neutral in the Romanian language), and 24 organizations use the term church (10 Tier 1 religious denominations and 14 Tier 2 religious associations). While church is not a legal term in national legislation, cultis a strong legal term defined by Law no. 489/2006. The term cult entered the Romanian language through French administrative law in the nineteenth century, when the modern state chose to use unified and neutral ideological terminology in a nondiscriminatory manner in relation to all religious organizations performing religious worship, without categorizing them as churches, branches of churches, or sects in a pejorative way.  

Nevertheless, without explicitly clarifying the rationale behind the lexical ban on particular terms in the names of different religious organizations, the legislature intends to avoid public confusion between NGOs with religious activities and recognized religious denominations or associations. The aim is to ensure that newly formed religious communities do not adopt misleading or cloned names; in this way, the draft law mirrors the ban on secular organizations’ use of terms with state/official connotations such as police, commissariat, or authority.

Romanian law does not restrict the naming of categories of religious workers (e.g., priest, imam, rabbi) or internal organizational units (e.g., parish, diocese, episcopate, congregation). Each denomination, religious association, or religiously active NGO may freely determine its internal structure and terminology without any form of registration or approval from the state.

Conclusion

Overall, the Romanian state’s involvement in the naming of religious organizations can be characterized as minimal and consistent with international standards on the autonomy of religious communities. This approach reflects a rather liberal understanding of religion-state relations, prioritizing clarity and public transparency without imposing excessive limitations on religious expression or organizational identity.

References:

[1] See Catalin Raiu, From Asset to Liability—Considerations on the Constitutionalizing of Religious Freedom Within the European Union Member States 13(6) Laws 72 (2024).

[2] According to national legislation, “public utility” status refers to the fact that those organizations are eligible for public financial grants, while NGOs without this status are not. 

[3] Over time, cult has taken on a strongly pejorative meaning in English, referring to a religious group that exercises authoritarian or manipulative control over its members, with a charismatic leadership, promoting isolation from mainstream society in a rather extremist manner. While the technical meaning of cult can be neutral (linked to worship) in modern English, especially in media and legal contexts, the term is loaded with negative connotations of manipulation, fanaticism, and harm.

Return to the Series introduction