The new system for employment contracts has failed the court test. Why was REGES abolished. HR expert: “A symbol of missed digitization”
The Government decision that introduced REGES Online, the new electronic employee record system that replaced Revisal, was annulled by the Constanța Court of Appeal, following an action initiated by the National Union of Labor Law Experts (UNELM).
“It looks like software designed at the end of the 90s” Photo: Freepik
The decision brings back into focus the criticisms made since the launch of the platform by human resources specialists and labor law experts, who complained about technical problems, excessive bureaucracy and the lack of consultation of those obliged to use the system.
According to the information published by Profit.ro, the Constanța Court of Appeal ordered the full annulment of HG no. 295/2025, the normative act by which the REGES Online system was introduced, replacing Revisal. The decision is not final and can be appealed.
The National Union of Experts in Labor Legislation (UNELM), the organization that challenged the decision in court along with several companies, said that the solution is a confirmation of the problems reported since the launch of the platform.
According to the organization, the criticism did not concern a single article of the normative act, but the entire legislative structure, being invoked rules considered unclear and contradictory, additional administrative obligations for employers, the lack of an impact analysis on SMEs and the absence of a real consultation with professionals in the field.
“UNELM will continue to argue that the digitization and modernization of REGES is necessary, but it must be done under conditions of legality, predictability and real consultation. We build systems together with those who use them every day, not against them.” the organization sent, quoted by Profit.ro.
In fact, UNELM has signaled since 2025 the existence of technical problems, such as delays in authorizing access, operating errors, the lack of an official user manual and the risk that certain situations generated by platform malfunctions will be interpreted as undeclared work.
REGES was launched in 2025 to replace the old Revisal and to centralize information on employment contracts in Romania. The platform is managed by the Labor Inspectorate and was created within a project financed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). Since its introduction, numerous employers, HR specialists and labor law experts have complained about difficulties of use, bottlenecks and procedures considered more complicated than those existing in the previous system.
“It looks like software designed at the end of the 90s”
Human resources expert Doru Şupeala believes that the decision to challenge the REGES platform in court is justified and blames the system's current problems on the way it was implemented.
“Those who challenged REGES in court are right in their initiative: this system was introduced by force, overnight, without having been sufficiently tested, discussed and analyzed beforehand with the social and economic partners and without having consulted those who were subsequently forced to use it”, declares Doru Supeala for “Adevărul”.
According to him, many companies and HR specialists have found themselves forced to use a platform that they consider more cumbersome and bureaucratic than the old Revisal.
Supeala says that users frequently complain of technical blockages and difficulties in operating the system.
“People say there are a lot of cases where the system crashes, the data doesn't save, and you have to start over with entering all the data“, explains the expert.
Criticisms also target the user experience. In his opinion, the platform does not function as a modern digital tool to help users fulfill their administrative obligations, but reproduces in the online environment the bureaucratic logic of the old paper procedures.
“The way the user experience is thought is very rudimentary. The system seems like an inflexible and stupid bureaucratic goblin, not an intelligent support to help you with a friendly and flexible user experience. It doesn't guide you, it just penalizes you and pulls you by the ears, calls you to the physical counter for any mistake and threatens you with fines.” supports Doru Supeala.
According to the expert, the fundamental problem is that REGES was built primarily for the needs of the administration and the bureaucratic apparatus, not for those of the companies and employees who are obliged to use it on a daily basis.
“In short, it's a tool made to make life easier for the state and bureaucrats, not for companies and employees. That's not digitization,” says Doru Supeala.
“The Labor Inspectorate is one of the state's institutions with the lowest level of trust, because most people who ask for support and send notifications about employers' abuses are treated as a joke. And honest employers are often saddled with absurd checks and fines, not helped and advised to do things the right way”, supports it.
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Moreover, the expert compares the difference between user expectations and the experience offered by REGES with the difference between current technology and applications from a few decades ago.
“Basically, they just moved a rusty and sinister bureaucratic formulaic thinking from physical to online. It looks like software designed in the late 90s, not 2025. It's like telling a 2026 smartphone owner to enjoy playing a game like “Snake” on the Nokia 3310″he states.
Doru Şupeala admits that the new platform also brings some improvements, especially through integration with the databases of other institutions and through the possibility offered to employees to consult their own information. However, he believes these advantages are overshadowed by system design and operation issues.
“There are also some advances from the perspective of integration with other institutions' databases, which reduces red tape a bit, and from the perspective of access given to employees, who can see what status they have by entering personal data. But all these benefits are overshadowed by the cumbersome and outdated way in which user experience design is thought out”he says.
Doru Şupeala also raises questions about the transparency of the project, stating that he has not been able to publicly identify the company that developed the application.
“I tried to find out which is the software company that created this system, and this information does not exist anywhere online. Or it is very well hidden. It only says that it is done by PNRR, at the behest of the Ministry of Labor”, says the expert.
In his opinion, for a project of such magnitude, the authorities should have been inspired by the solutions implemented in other states and called upon international expertise in the field of digitization of public services.
“Digitalization without automation”
Criticism of REGES does not come only from the area of human resources. In an analysis published on the juridice.ro platform in July 2025, accounting expert Daniel Udrescu described the “new system” as an example of “digitalization without automation”, arguing that the state transfers additional administrative tasks to employers without offering them concrete benefits in return.
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“REGES is the clearest expression of this anomaly, a system built from the top down, without consultation, without transparency and without vision,” wrote Udrescu.
According to him, one of the main problems is that employers are forced to manually enter information that already exists in other state systems, instead of institutions communicating with each other automatically.
The accounting expert claims that Romania has lagged behind the models used in most developed states, where employee reports are integrated directly into payroll and accounting programs.
“In Germany, France, Italy or Great Britain, the data flows between institutions without human intervention, directly from the payroll software. In Romania, the same employer must send the same information in both D112 and REGES, without the systems communicating between them”, it looked like this.
Udrescu considered that the new platform reproduces an old bureaucratic logic, instead of simplifying the relationship between the private environment and the state.
“REGES is not just a bureaucratic platform. It is a symbol of missed digitization: no interoperability, no efficiency, no respect for the private environment. It is the result of an administration that confuses control with modernization, centralization with progress and obligation with partnership”, argued the accountant.
In his analysis, he proposed the full integration of REGES with the ANAF systems and with Declaration 112, so that reporting is done automatically and the repeated entry of the same data is eliminated.
“Real digitization is not about forms and slow interfaces. It is about trust, collaboration, transparency and relieving people of unnecessary burdens,” concluded Daniel Udrescu.
