In brief
- The Constitutional Court dismissed, by a unanimous vote, as unfounded, the plea raised by a cement plant against Article VII of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 102/2013. That text runs to a single sentence: the royalties introduced by the ordinance apply, from the date it entered into force, to all licences and permits, including those signed years earlier. Unfounded means that this time the Court went to the substance, weighed the criticism and found that the text complies with the Constitution.
- What was at stake was the price paid to the State for a quarry or a mine already in operation. Mining Law no. 85/2003 promises, in Article 21(2), that the legal regime of the licence remains unchanged for its entire duration, except for rules more favourable to the holder. The company argued that the State changed the price in the middle of the contract. The Court replied that a mining licence is not an ordinary contract but an administrative contract, and that the royalty was never left to the agreement of the parties, neither under Mining Law no. 61/1998 nor under the 2003 one.
- The rule is not dead law. Law no. 571/2003, the old Tax Code, was repealed with effect from 1 January 2016, but Article VII of the ordinance was untouched by that repeal: it concerns the royalties in the Mining Law, which is still in force today. The text remains the basis of the sums owed since November 2013 and still decides tax cases pending before the courts. 1,713 days passed between the referral and the ruling, and another 276 between the ruling and publication.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 774 of 11 September 2026
In force from: 11 September 2026, the date of publication
Anyone who was granted a mining licence and believed they would pay the State the same percentage until the end of it has definitively lost the legal argument. By Decision no. 713 of 9 December 2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 774 of 11 September 2026, the Constitutional Court found that Article VII of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 102/2013 is constitutional: the royalties raised in November 2013 applied immediately to all licences and permits, without the holder’s consent. It is the same logic of a State that decides on its own how much it collects from the exploitation of a public asset, the logic behind this year’s 0.75% royalty and the fees for the offshore wind perimeters in the Black Sea.
The plea was raised by Societatea CRH Ciment România S.A. of Bucharest, in proceedings on an appeal against a judgment given in a tax complaint. At issue were a tax assessment decision and the late-payment interest and penalties attached to it. The Bucharest Court of Appeal, Ninth Division for administrative and tax disputes, referred the question to the Constitutional Court by Civil Decision no. 815 of 1 April 2021, delivered in Case no. 44.741/3/2018. At the Court, the case was registered under no. 1.731D/2021.
To see where the dispute comes from, it is worth following what the 2013 ordinance did. Through Article VI it rewrote Article 45(1) of Mining Law no. 85/2003, the article that sets the mining royalty due to the State budget, a percentage of the value of production for ores and metals, a sum in euro per unit of production for sand, gravel, limestone and the other rocks. Through Article VII, the one that reached the Court, it stated that these royalties apply from the entry into force of the ordinance to all licences and permits. Through Article VIII it gave holders and the competent authority, the National Agency for Mineral Resources, 90 days to sign the addenda that write the new values into the licence.
The company attacked this construction on two fronts. First: Article 21(2) of the Mining Law guarantees that the legal rules in place on the date the licence entered into force remain valid for its entire duration, except for rules more favourable to the holder, and a higher royalty is not a more favourable rule. Second: Article VII says the new royalties apply immediately, while Article VIII makes the change conditional on a signed addendum, so the same piece of legislation gives two different answers to the same question, namely when exactly the sum changes.
The Court did not build a new line of reasoning. In paragraph 16 it noted that the same provisions had already been reviewed, by Decision no. 176 of 26 May 2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 708 of 6 August 2020, and it carried over from there paragraphs 38 to 40, 45 and 46. The substantive point, repeated in paragraph 19, is that the setting of the mining royalty was never left to the parties, „in the sense of negotiation, agreement or determination by common accord”, but was always fixed by the legislature, as a percentage of the value of production, for each resource belonging to the public property of the State.
The second pillar is the nature of the contract. In paragraph 20 the Court takes from the 2020 decision the idea that a mining concession licence is an administrative contract, whose main feature is the unequal position of the parties: the authority, as holder of public power prerogatives, may set and unilaterally amend certain clauses, unlike private contracts, which change only by agreement of the parties. One line further down, in paragraph 21, it states that the concession holder’s right is itself precarious, and may be extinguished or amended whenever the public interest so requires.
The answer to the criticism of lack of clarity comes in paragraph 25: Articles VII and VIII do not exclude each other, they govern successive stages of the same process. The first establishes when the new values start to apply, the second obliges the parties to write them into the licence through an addendum, within 90 days. The addendum does not create the payment obligation, it records it. In the same place the Court adds that Article VII applies exclusively for the future, so it does not affect acquired rights.
What it changes in practice
The decision is final and generally binding from publication, that is from 11 September 2026, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution. Being a dismissal, it removes no text from the statute book and changes not a single letter of any law. Anyone looking here for a change of rule will find none.
The first effect concerns the case from which the question came. The appeal continues before the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Ninth Division for administrative and tax disputes, and the decision is communicated to it. The constitutional argument falls away, and the court is left to check what remains: whether the sums were correctly calculated, whether the limitation periods were observed, whether the interest and penalties were properly established.
The second effect shows up in any dispute in which the holder of a licence or a permit contests the royalty owed for the period after 15 November 2013. The defence built on the stability of the licence’s legal regime, on the absence of an addendum or on the contradiction between Articles VII and VIII is now closed. This is not one possible reading by a court, it is a decision binding on all courts.
The third effect is the most practical and concerns the addendum. Paragraph 25 makes clear that its absence protects nobody. If the authority did not call the holder in to sign, or if the holder refused, the payment obligation existed anyway, from the date the new royalties began to apply. Paragraph 19 goes further still: failure to implement the rule is a breach of the law attributable to both parties, so the authority cannot hide behind its own passivity either.
The fourth effect concerns the future. A dismissal as unfounded does not freeze the text for ever, but it closes the well-trodden path. Paragraph 23 states that no new elements have arisen such as to warrant a reconsideration of the case law, so the solution and the reasoning of 2020 remain valid. A fresh plea on the same text would need an argument the Court has not yet weighed, not a rewording of the same reproach, which has now been rejected twice.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Nothing has changed in the law, and that is the first useful clarification for those affected. On 11 September 2026, Article VII of the ordinance applies exactly in the form that was reviewed, without any amendment and without being repealed.
The possible confusion comes from the title of the ordinance. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 102/2013 is called „amending and supplementing Law no. 571/2003 on the Tax Code and laying down certain financial and fiscal measures”, and Law no. 571/2003 was repealed with effect from 1 January 2016 by Law no. 227/2015, the current Tax Code. Anyone who stops at the title may believe that the ordinance disappeared along with the law it amended. That is not what happened. Articles VI, VII and VIII belong to the second half of the title, the financial and fiscal measures, and do not touch the Tax Code at all: they amend Mining Law no. 85/2003 and set the rules for the transition to the new royalties. The Mining Law is still in force today, and Article VII carries no note of repeal or amendment.
The consequence for a taxpayer is direct. The decision is not about a rule that has fallen out of use, but about the legal basis of the sums claimed by the State for mining output over almost thirteen years. Between the entry into force of the ordinance, on 15 November 2013, and the publication of this decision, 4,683 days went by, and throughout that interval the text produced effects without interruption.
What has genuinely changed is the case-law position. In 2020, by Decision no. 176, the same provisions had already been declared constitutional, in a case brought by other producers of construction materials. Now there is a second decision to the same effect, on a closely related criticism, and the two together leave little room for a third attempt.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The answer goes to the substance. The Court actually examined the criticisms based on Article 1(3) and (5) of the Constitution, so the reader learns why the text holds, rather than that the plea fell on a procedural defect.
- The relationship between Articles VII and VIII, clarified in paragraph 25, was the very source of the dispute: one says from when the sum is owed, the other says how it gets into the licence. This is the most useful part for anyone with a pending case.
- The obligation is placed, in paragraph 19, on both parties, not only on the holder, and it expressly names the competent authority, the National Agency for Mineral Resources. A holder who was never called in to sign the addendum has something to point to in showing that the delay was not his alone.
- The decision was delivered by a unanimous vote, with no dissenting or concurring opinion, so it leaves no doubt about what the Court meant to say.
- Nothing changes overnight in ongoing relationships: the text remains untouched and licences need no fresh adjustment.
What remains a problem
- The promise in Article 21(2) of the Mining Law stays on paper. The Court does not explain what purpose a guarantee of stability of the licence’s legal regime still serves if the State can change the costliest component at any time; it merely shows that it can.
- The reasoning is taken almost entirely from Decision no. 176/2020. The new criticisms, that of internal contradiction and that of lack of clarity, receive an answer of their own in only two paragraphs, 24 and 25.
- Paragraph 18 describes the rule differently from the way paragraph 14 quotes it, both as to the moment from which it applies and as to whom it applies. The details are in the errors section below.
- 276 days passed between the ruling and publication, and the decision produces effects only from publication. No rule imposes a deadline on the Court for this step.
- 1,713 days passed between the referral and the ruling, even though the answer had been published 238 days before the referral order, and the court that sent the question had itself cited it.
- The decision says nothing about Article IX of the same ordinance, which sets 1 January 2014 as the date from which its provisions apply, even though the whole criticism of lack of clarity was about the moment from which the sum is owed.
Practical advice
- If you have a tax case on mining royalties for the period after November 2013, drop the constitutional defence and move the effort onto the figures. Check the calculation base, the declared value of production, whether the resource was placed in the correct category under Article 45(1) of the Mining Law, and how the interest and penalties were computed. That is where ground can still be won; in the legal reasoning it cannot.
- Do not build a defence on the absence of an addendum. Paragraph 25 states plainly that Article VIII merely sets a later stage, and that the payment obligation arises from Article VII. An unsigned addendum does not postpone the due date.
- Do check the limitation period for the tax authority’s right to establish tax claims. The fact that the legal basis is constitutional does not mean that every sum can still be demanded today, and the period at issue begins in 2013.
- If you hold an exploitation permit rather than a licence, read Article VII carefully: it speaks of licences and permits alike, so it concerns you in the same way. The distinction between the two does not take you outside the text.
- When you raise a plea of unconstitutionality against a text that has already been reviewed, bring a constitutional ground the Court has not yet weighed. An earlier dismissal does not block a referral, because Article 29(3) of Law no. 47/1992 covers only texts already found unconstitutional, but an identical criticism will get the same answer, after years of waiting.
- If you are now negotiating or extending an exploitation licence, treat the royalty as a variable, not as a fixed clause. The decision confirms that it can be changed by law in the middle of the contract, so the business plan needs a scenario in which the percentage goes up.
Frequently asked questions
What did the Constitutional Court decide, in short?
What does Article VII of the ordinance actually say?
Does the text still produce effects today, or is it dead law?
Whom does this affect, in concrete terms?
Did the law not guarantee me that the licence regime stays unchanged?
If I signed no addendum, do I owe the higher royalty?
Why is this not a retroactive application of the law?
What does it mean that a mining licence is an administrative contract?
Has the Court ruled on this text before?
Why did it take so long?
Where can I find the full text of the decision?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Paragraph 18, the moment from which the new royalties apply. Paragraph 14 reproduces Article VII within quotation marks, word for word: the royalties „se aplică de la data intrării în vigoare a prezentei ordonanțe de urgență a Guvernului tuturor licențelor/permiselor”, that is they apply from the date of entry into force of the ordinance to all licences and permits. Paragraph 18, however, describes the same provisions differently: „prevederile legale supuse controlului de constituționalitate prevăd că noile taxe și redevențe se aplică, de la data intrării în vigoare a legii de aprobare a ordonanței de urgență care a instituit noile valori, tuturor permiselor, licențelor și acordurilor petroliere”, in other words the new charges and royalties apply from the entry into force of the law approving the emergency ordinance, to all permits, licences and petroleum agreements. An approving law is by definition later than the ordinance it approves, so the two sentences point to two different moments for the same payment obligation. Paragraph 25 returns to the first version and says that Article VII establishes the immediate application of the new royalties from the date the emergency ordinance entered into force. That moment is the very subject of the tax dispute from which the plea came, and a holder reading the decision in good faith may arrive at two different starting dates for the sums owed. The wording comes from Decision no. 176 of 26 May 2020, from which the whole passage is taken, but in the text published now it appears as a description of the rule under review in this case, without quotation marks and without a reference.
- Paragraph 18, who falls under the rule. The same sentence extends the addressees to petroleum agreements, a category that appears neither in Article VII, quoted in paragraph 14, nor in the operative part of the decision. Article VII speaks exclusively of licences and permits, and Article VI of the same ordinance amends Mining Law no. 85/2003, not the petroleum legislation. The holder of a petroleum agreement who reads paragraph 18 may understand that the decision confirms the application of the new royalties in his case too, which the reviewed text does not say. The scope of the rule cannot be established from the decision without comparing paragraph 18 with paragraph 14.
Editorial analysis
The outcome on the substance is hard to contest. The mining royalty has always been a percentage set by law, not a figure negotiated across a table, and whoever signs a concession licence over a State resource signs a contract in which the other party holds public power prerogatives. The Court says this correctly and briefly, in paragraphs 19 and 20. The problem is what goes unsaid. Article 21(2) of the Mining Law promises the holder that the legal rules in place on the date of the licence remain valid for its entire duration, and the decision does not explain what is left of that promise once the costliest element of the contract can be changed by law at any moment. Paragraph 22 deals with the argument in two lines and rejects it for the same reasons, that is for the reasons carried over from 2020, which had not been written for the criticism now before the Court.
The second observation is not visible when reading the decision, only when placing it beside the ordinance it reviews. The criticism of lack of clarity was about a conflict of dates: Article VII says from the entry into force of the ordinance, Article VIII says an addendum within 90 days. The Court reconciles them in paragraph 25, presenting them as successive stages, and stops there. Yet the same ordinance also has an Article IX, which provides that its provisions apply from 1 January 2014. That is a third date in the same act, 47 days later than the one in Article VII and 43 days earlier than the expiry of the 90-day period in Article VIII, which fell on 13 February 2014. A decision that answers a criticism about the moment of application, without mentioning the article that fixes a third moment, leaves the very question that was asked untouched.
The third observation concerns the arithmetic of the file and is the most awkward. Decision no. 176 of 26 May 2020, on which the present reasoning rests almost entirely, had been published on 6 August 2020. The order by which the Bucharest Court of Appeal referred this plea to the Constitutional Court is dated 1 April 2021, that is 238 days later. More than that, paragraph 10 shows that the referring court itself considered the plea unfounded and invoked precisely Decision no. 176/2020. The court knew the answer, wrote it in the referral order and was obliged to refer in any event, because Article 29(3) of Law no. 47/1992 blocks only texts already found unconstitutional, not those already declared constitutional. The result: 1,713 days to the ruling and another 276 to publication, 1,989 days in all, in order to repeat a solution that had been published before the file even started.
The last observation concerns the way material is carried over from precedent. Paragraphs 17 to 22 reproduce passages from the 2020 decision, sometimes with attribution, as in paragraph 20, where it is stated expressly that the Court held as much in paragraphs 45 and 46, and sometimes with none at all, as in paragraph 18. Unattributed borrowing brings into today’s text the contextual inaccuracies of yesterday’s: paragraph 17 says of Articles VII and VIII that both are challenged in the case, even though the subject of this plea, according to paragraph 14 and to the operative part, is Article VII alone. In 2020 both were challenged, in the present case they are not. The copying brought over the description as well, not only the reasoning.
What should be changed
- Correction of paragraph 18, by replacing the reference to the approving law with the wording of Article VII, and removal of petroleum agreements from the list of addressees. Effect: a licence holder would read the same starting date for the sums owed throughout the decision, and holders of petroleum agreements would no longer appear to be covered by a rule that is not addressed to them.
- Visible marking of every passage carried over from an earlier decision, through quotation marks and a reference to the paragraph of origin. Effect: the reader would tell apart what was written for the present case from what was written six years ago for other parties, and outdated descriptions, such as the one in paragraph 17 about which articles are challenged, would no longer migrate silently from one decision to the next.
- An explicit answer on the relationship between Article VII and Article IX of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 102/2013. Effect: a binding decision would settle whether the higher royalties are owed from 15 November 2013 or from 1 January 2014, a difference of 47 days of output that in large cases translates into real money.
- A statutory deadline for publishing in the Official Gazette of Romania the decisions delivered on pleas of unconstitutionality. Effect: intervals of 276 days between ruling and publication would no longer be possible, and the court hearing in the meantime the case from which the question came would know from when the decision becomes binding.
- A short procedure before the Court for pleas identical to those already dismissed on the substance, with a reduced time limit and reasoning by reference. Effect: a file such as this one, in which the referring court had itself cited the precedent, would close in months rather than in over five years, and the panel would keep its time for the cases that have no answer yet.
- Clarification, by statute, of what the guarantee in Article 21(2) of Mining Law no. 85/2003 still covers. Effect: holders would know in advance which elements of the licence are stable and which can be changed unilaterally, and investment plans running over ten or twenty years would start from a written rule rather than from a promise that the case law is emptying step by step.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 774 of 11 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 127 KB the act starts on page 3
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.