Same points, different pensions depending on the year of retirement: the CCR says this is not discrimination

The Constitutional Court dismissed the claim of a pensioner who argued that he had been treated unfairly for the sole reason that he retired in a year when the correction index was lower than it later became. By Decision no. 733 of 9 December 2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 770 of 10 September 2026, the Court found that Article 170(2) to (4) of Law No 263/2010 is constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised. The same day, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 768, brought Decision no. 728/2025, delivered in the same sitting, on paragraph (3) of the same article. The difference between the two lies in the question rather than in the provision: there the argument was about which of one person’s two pensions the index attaches to, here it is about whether the index may differ from one year to the next between different people and whether it has to be updated for those already in payment. Both ended with the plea dismissed.

The correction index is the number by which the average annual point score is multiplied when a person’s pension is established for the first time. It was designed as a remedy for a single event, the tightening of the retirement conditions from 1 January 2011, and that is why it is granted only once. What the text of the law does not show is that its value has never been the same, and this case was fought over that difference.

The author of the plea, Aurel Barz, retired in 2012, with an index of 1.17. He applied to the Arad Tribunal for his pension to be recalculated, pointing out that, for exactly the same average annual point score, retiring in 2021 would have brought him an index of 1.41. The ratio between the two values is 1.2051, that is a point score 20.5% higher. Calculated with the value of the pension point that he uses in his own example, 1,442 lei, a point score of one point gives 1,687 lei with his index and 2,033 lei with the 2021 index. The difference is 346 lei every month, for the rest of his life. The Arad Tribunal referred the matter to the Court by interlocutory judgment of 11 May 2021, in case no. 938/108/2021.

His criticism had three levels, one for each contested paragraph. Paragraph (2) states that, from 2013, the average gross wage in the formula is the final one, communicated by the National Institute of Statistics for the previous year, and the author argued that this is precisely where „discrimination from one year to the next” arises. Paragraph (3) states that the index is applied only once, at the initial award of the pension, and the author asked for it either to be constant over time or to be updated for all pensioners in payment. Paragraph (3¹), added by Law No 160/2017, provides that, if the newly calculated index is lower than the previous one, the previous one is kept; the author read this as proof that the legislature itself had acknowledged the risk of discrimination but had remedied it only in favour of new pensioners. Paragraph (4), which states that the point score resulting after the index is applied is the score used to calculate the pension, would in his view seal the result.

The Court answered along two lines, both taken from its own case law. The first: the correction index is a social measure par excellence, and on social measures the State has a wide margin of appreciation, wider than in other areas of constitutional review. It said so in Decision no. 291 of 28 May 2024, paragraph 13, and in Decision no. 670 of 19 October 2021, paragraph 33. It added an argument of jurisdiction: were it to review the specific level of the index, the Court would encroach on the role of Parliament under Article 61(1) of the Constitution. The second argument, taken from Decision no. 546 of 29 October 2024, paragraph 17: the index is granted once precisely because the event that generated it happened once, unlike indexation, which is repeated because inflation is repeated. Paragraph (3¹) is therefore not, as the author argued, a half remedy for discrimination, but merely a correlation between paragraphs (1) and (2), made to ease the administration’s calculation work.

What it changes in practice

The decision is final and generally binding from the date of publication, 10 September 2026, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution. From that day, the ground of unconstitutionality can no longer be invoked with success in any case, and a court can no longer refer the same question to the Court.

Two categories of claim lose out in concrete terms. First: anyone arguing that the index should be the same for everyone who retired under Law No 263/2010, whatever the year. Second: anyone asking for the index set at the first pension to be updated later to the value of a better year. Both are dismissed on the substance rather than on procedure, so they cannot be reframed.

What has already been won on other grounds is untouched. The two earlier decisions upholding pleas on the same article, Decision no. 702 of 31 October 2019 and Decision no. 670 of 19 October 2021, concern people who had drawn their first pension under the old law, Law No 19/2000, and their effects continue to apply. A dispute on the facts also stays open on other grounds: where a person had applied to them the index of a year other than the one in which their first pension was established under Law No 263/2010, that is a case of misapplication of the law rather than of unconstitutionality, and it goes on being heard. The rule for setting the date was confirmed by the Constitutional Court in February 2026 as well, in Decision no. 124/2026.

The group of people the decision concerns is closed and no longer growing. The correction index existed only for pensions established under Law No 263/2010, that is between 1 January 2011 and 31 August 2024. Law No 263/2010 was repealed by Article 168(1)(a) of Law No 360/2023, which entered into force on 1 September 2024 under Article 167, and the new law has no correction index. The Court was nevertheless able to rule on a repealed provision, relying on Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, because the provision continues to produce effects in proceedings started earlier.

A text long out of force decides today’s pensions too: Article 30(3) of Framework Law no. 330/2009 fell out of force 5,745 days ago, and the re-grading made under it remains the basis of the recalculation.

The least visible effect is that, for anyone with a case on the docket, the gain melts away of its own accord. Article 144(1) of Law No 360/2023 recalculates every old pension by multiplying the total number of points by the value of the reference point, so with no trace of the correction index. Paragraph (6) of the same article provides that, if the recalculation gives a lower amount, the previous amount continues to be paid, but only up to the date on which the recalculated one overtakes it as the value of the reference point rises. A point score increased in court for the past raises the amount kept and postpones the crossover, but it does not prevent it. After that, the correction index no longer influences anything.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the letter of the law nothing changes, and the law in question is not even in force any more. The Court struck out no word and added no binding interpretation, as it had done in 2019 and in 2021. What changes is the status of the question: until 10 September 2026 there was an answer for the particular case of a person with two successive pensions, but not a public and reasoned answer to the general question, whether the index may be a different one each year and whether it has to be updated. From that date there is one.

The scale of what has been dismissed changes too. Decision no. 728/2025 closed a narrow gate, the case of a person moving from a partial early retirement pension to an old-age pension. Today’s decision closes a wide one: the author’s argument, had it been accepted, would have required every pension established between 2011 and 2024 to be recalculated at the highest index reached, 1.41, because that is exactly what „updated for all pensioners in payment” means. It is a consequence the decision nowhere quantifies, even though it explains why the Court talks about the State’s margin of appreciation and about the role of Parliament.

Finally, the mechanism that produced the difference has itself changed. Law No 360/2023 dropped the correction index and the contribution periods that differed between generations, that is the two reasons why two people with the same points ended up with different pensions. The rule for recalculating the contribution period applied to old pensions was in turn confirmed by the Court in Decision no. 126/2026. The difference did not disappear along with the instrument, though: it survives in the amounts kept in payment after the 2024 recalculation, until the value of the reference point catches up with them.

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