A US federal court has ordered Romania to pay an additional USD 5.8 million in accrued sanctions in the long-running Micula case, adding to the financial pressure on the Romanian state in one of its most complex international legal disputes.

The ruling is the latest development in the long-running international dispute between investors Ioan and Viorel Micula and the Romanian state, which began with an investment arbitration claim and has since expanded into enforcement battles across multiple jurisdictions.

The April 14, 2026 ruling was issued by the US District Court for the District of Columbia in enforcement proceedings related to the Micula arbitration award. The court found that Romania remains in non-compliance with earlier discovery obligations and said the latest sum reflects sanctions accumulated over a 58-week period between August 23, 2024, and October 3, 2025.

The decision does not concern the merits of the original investment dispute itself, but rather Romania’s conduct in the US enforcement phase. According to the court, the Romanian state has continued to ignore a post-judgment discovery order requiring it to answer certain interrogatories, despite earlier contempt findings and sanctions.

The court argued that Romania had done nothing to “purge itself of contempt” since a previous sanctions judgment and had made no substantive effort to justify its continued non-compliance. Romania’s response merely reserved its right to challenge future enforcement attempts by the claimants, rather than disputing that further sanctions were warranted.

The judge therefore granted the investors’ request for a third judgment on accrued sanctions in the amount of USD 5.8 million and warned that Romania’s continued refusal to comply could result in further penalties covering any subsequent period of non-compliance.

Contempt sanctions on Romania are rising

The latest sanction is part of a broader pattern that has developed in the Washington proceedings over recent years. The US court had already imposed civil contempt sanctions on Romania in 2020 and 2021 for failing to comply with post-judgment discovery orders. Those sanctions were later upheld on appeal by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

A second judgment for accrued sanctions worth USD 13.7 million was issued in November 2024. That amount covered sanctions accumulated between August 2021 and August 2024. Romania did not appeal that ruling.

Taken together, the sanctions reflect the US court’s increasingly firm approach to Romania’s handling of the enforcement proceedings. They are separate from the underlying award sought by the claimants, which exceeds USD 356 million in the US judgment.

A 20-year investment dispute

The broader dispute between the Miculas and the Romanian Government dates back to Romania’s pre-EU accession period. Foreign investors Ioan Micula and Viorel Micula, together with three companies , brought arbitration proceedings against Romania after the government prematurely withdrew a package of investment incentives in the early 2000s, while maintaining the correlative obligations for 20 years. The claimants argued that they had relied on those incentives when making investments in Romania and that the state’s decision to prematurely repeal them and its behavior beached the Romania-Sweden Bilateral Treaty for protection of investments, causing them significant losses.

In December 2013, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the rules of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ordered Romania to pay compensation to the claimants. The award, initially quantified at around EUR 178 million, plus accruing interest quickly became one of the most prominent investor-state disputes involving an EU member state.

However, the case soon moved beyond arbitration. In 2015, the European Commission issued an administrative decision which argued that payment of the compensation would amount to incompatible state aid under EU law mainly because the dispute resolution mechanism (through arbitration proceedings) was found incompatible with the EU law and ordered Romania to recover amounts that had already been paid. That finding created a legal conflict between the enforcement of an international arbitration award and the EU’s state aid regime.

The dispute then expanded into several parallel tracks. The Micula side challenged the Commission’s decision before EU courts, while also pursuing recognition and enforcement of the arbitral award in jurisdictions outside the European Union, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

In the EU courts, the legal picture has shifted several times. The General Court initially annulled the Commission’s decision in 2019. But in 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union set aside that ruling, finding that the Commission did have competence to examine the measure in light of Romania’s accession to the EU. The matter returned to the General Court, which in 2024 dismissed the actions brought against the Commission decision. This ruling was appealed by Ioan Micula, Viorel Micula and the companies, the case being now before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

In the United States, the Micula claimants succeeded in obtaining recognition of the ICSID award. In September 2019, the US District Court for the District of Columbia entered judgment in the amount of USD 356.4 million, and that judgment was later upheld on appeal. Since then, the proceedings in Washington have focused on enforcement and on Romania’s obligation to provide information relevant to collection efforts.

In December 2019, Romania made a partial payment of approximately USD 274 million, but hasn’t paid the rest of the amount.

The new USD 5.8 million sanction is not a new damages award tied to the original arbitration. Instead, it is a court-imposed penalty linked to Romania’s failure to comply with procedural obligations during enforcement. To date, Romania owes to the investors USD 21 million as sanctions.

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