5 Lei

Romania's National Bank contracted the Banque de France to produce this series during a period of significant political instability — King Carol II had dissolved the constitution and declared his royal dictatorship in February 1938, just months before the first notes of this type entered circulation. The choice of a French printer reflects the longstanding Franco-Romanian financial relationship of the interwar decades, not any shortage of domestic printing capacity.

Georges Duval was a staff engraver at the Banque de France responsible for a number of Romanian commissions during this period. Notes from the later end of the 1940 date range circulated under radically different political conditions than those issued two years prior, as Romania moved toward the Axis sphere under mounting pressure from Berlin.