Several websites and social media accounts claim that Romania has stopped paying child benefits and pensions to citizens of the Republic of Moldova who also hold Romanian citizenship. The statement, accompanied by political accusations and alarmist descriptions of a supposed “abandonment” of Moldovans by Romania, is false. In reality, the benefits are maintained, even if they are not indexed, and pensions depend on contributions, not citizenship, reports Stopfals.md.
On April 22, the website Timpul Moldova (timpulmd.info) published a news story, in Romanian and Russian, stating that “Bucharest has ceased the extension of child benefits and pensions for Moldovan citizens who hold Romanian citizenship”. The message is accompanied by political accusations and emotional phrases such as “the same ‘brother’ Romanians calmly leave the Moldovans in the lurch”.
Similar statements have been published by the site Moldanalytics.info, suggesting that “thousands of our citizens have been left without social benefits” (in the original: «тысячи наших граждан остались без социальных выплат») and by Moldovalibera.info which cites dramatic cases and generalizes individual situations about how “a woman from Moldova, whose child suffers from a serious illness, was left with an empty card after a forced withdrawal” (in the original: «жительница Молдовы, чей ребенок страдает тяжелым заболеванием, осталась с пустой картой после принудительного списания») and writes that “Romania is now turning against ordinary Moldovans” (in the original: «Румыния идет против простых молдаван»).
The message was amplified by several accounts on Facebook and Odnoklassniki.
Parents continue to receive allowances
The claim that Bucharest has “ceased the extension of child benefits and pensions” for citizens of the Republic of Moldova who also hold Romanian citizenship is false. There is no official decision by the Romanian authorities confirming such a general measure. Several parents who receive benefits have confirmed for Stopfals.md that they have continued to receive payments in recent months.
Excerpt from a bank account (George application) showing regular monthly payments of the state child allowance, amounting to 292 ron, made by the Vaslui County Agency for Payments and Social Inspection in the months of February–April 2026. The image confirms that the allowances continue to be paid.
Even in situations such as the cancellation of the Romanian identity document, the right to allowance is not lost, and the payment can be made to the other parent, a legal representative or a person empowered by proxy, according to the Ministry of Labor, Family, Youth and Social Solidarity of Romania.
As for the pension, it is granted based on contributions to the social insurance system and is not automatically guaranteed by citizenship.
The Real Situation of Allocations
It’s true that in Romania, the amount of the state allowance for children is “frozen” in the year 2026, for the second consecutive year, even though the law explicitly provides for automatic annual indexing with the average inflation rate. Thus, the allowances are maintained at the level of those in 2024, and the fact that they do not increase does not mean that they have been cancelled.
Currently, the allowances are 292 lei per month for children over 2 years old and 719 lei per month for children under 2 years old or for children with disabilities.
Disinformation amplified by emotional language and unconfirmed cases
To create a false perception of the situation and support the false narrative about the cessation of allowances, sources use emotional language and political accusations intended to provoke strong reactions. Statements like “thousands of our citizens have been left without social benefits” are not based on data, statistics, or verifiable sources to confirm them.
At the same time, undocumented and unverifiable individual cases are invoked. These examples erroneously suggest that isolated situations represent a general phenomenon. And the use of phrases like “the same ‘brother’ Romanians leave Moldovans in peace” aims to induce the feeling of intentional abandonment by the Romanian state, fueling negative perceptions in the relationship between the two states.
This is not a new narrative. It is part of a repetitive pattern of disinformation, used by pro-Kremlin propaganda sources.
