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Romania wants to limit the proportion of foreigners in team sports
November 20, 2025 – 4:42 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
The country is waving through the initiative of a right-wing extremist party. The decision will have consequences – and is already being sharply criticized.
From 2026, team sports such as football will only be allowed to be played in Romania with a set number of foreign players. Parliament has passed a corresponding law – with the support of the right-wing opposition and votes from the government.
The new law requires that at least 40 percent of the players used must be Romanian citizens. Violations face penalties of between 500,000 and one million lei, the equivalent of around 200,000 euros. The regulation should apply from 2026 – although President Nicușor Dan still has the option of stopping the law or forwarding it to the Constitutional Court for review.
The initiative came from the right-wing extremist opposition party AUR. Their MP Ciprian Paraschiv justified the initiative by saying that Romanian young athletes needed to be protected from foreign competition. “I don’t want your children to have their wings broken if they want to play a competitive sport because of the impresarios, obscure foreign players and perhaps the black money circulating in this economy,” he said in Parliament.
Not everyone shares this view. Former Sports Minister Ionuț Stroe (PNL) sharply criticized the new regulations. It is “populist”, unrealistic and discriminatory because it dictates who can take part in competitions.
Support, however, comes from the Romanian Football Federation (FRF), which stated that it was involved in drafting the law. The aim is to promote investments in Romanian football academies, to employ more local players and to increase the offer for clubs and the national team. The so-called “5+6” rule already applies internally: five of the eleven players on the field should be Romanians.
George Becali, owner of FCSB Bucharest, also welcomed the law. “I have said for a long time that I dream of using 100 percent Romanian players,” he said, according to the portal “prosport.ro”. The club currently has ten foreign professionals in its squad. Becali was himself a member of parliament for the AUR and is considered a nationalist hardliner.