If you let your technical inspection expire, the car stays put — automatically. On 9 July, Parliament passed, in the second reading, a law that, by default, suspends the registration of vehicles with an expired periodic technical inspection or with dangerous technical defects. It is a change that concerns anyone who owns a car, including in Ungheni — and there is a reason, below, why it matters here in particular.
How the suspension will work
Today, an expired technical inspection exposes you to a fine if you are stopped in traffic. The new law goes further: the state will block your right to use the car through an entry in the State Vehicle Register, without cancelling your registration certificate and without requiring a new registration.
The mechanism has three triggers:
- the technical inspection expires — the suspension applies immediately;
- dangerous technical defects are found at inspection — the suspension kicks in after 30 days;
- dangerous defects are found in traffic — likewise, after 30 days.
During the 30-day grace period, the car may be driven, as an exception, only to a repair workshop or for the inspection — but not if the defect is classed as dangerous. The suspension ends automatically the moment you obtain a technical-inspection certificate confirming that the vehicle may return to traffic. The information flows between the inspection stations and the Public Services Agency through the «Autotest» information system, and according to ASP, the driver will be notified at least 10 days before the inspection expires.
Anyone who still drives a car with a suspended registration risks more than before: the fine under the Contravention Code rises to 12–24 conventional units — between 600 and 1,200 lei — on top of having the registration plates removed.
When it takes effect
Not tomorrow. The law, which amends Law no. 131/2007 on road traffic safety and partly transposes a European directive, takes effect six months after publication. In the same period, the Government is to approve the concrete procedure — including the exact mechanism for notifying drivers. Until then, today’s rules stand.
Why it matters here
The authors’ argument — road safety — rests on figures that, in Ungheni’s case, are official and heavy. According to police data collected by the National Bureau of Statistics, 87 people died in road accidents on the roads of Ungheni district over the past ten years (2015–2024), and more than 400 were injured. 2024 was the best year in the series — 5 killed and 23 injured — but the decade’s toll remains grim.
When compliance becomes mandatory under the threat of automatic suspension, it collides with a hyper-local reality: the town of Ungheni has just three technical-inspection stations — on Lacului, Oleg Ungureanu and Scuterniceni streets — and there is none in the district’s villages. How many cars are affected in the district cannot be said precisely: the statistics bureau does not publish the vehicle fleet by district, only at national level, where more than 894,000 cars were registered at the end of 2025. At the national motorisation rate, Ungheni district would have around 28,000 cars — but that is a newsroom estimate, probably lower in reality, because the national average is pulled up by Chișinău.
It remains to be seen how the 10-day notification will work in practice, and how the three stations in town will cope once a missed inspection no longer means just a fine but a car taken off the road. These are questions the procedure the Government has to write in the next six months will have to answer.