In brief

  • The 15% increase for the complexity of the work could not be claimed for 2017 or for 2018. The Constitutional Court unanimously rejected the objection through which the Solidaritatea Cluj-Napoca National Trade Union attacked the way the High Court of Cassation and Justice read note 2 of Annex no. VIII to Framework Law no. 153/2017 back in 2018. The text remains constitutional, and the supreme court’s reading remains binding on every court.
  • The people concerned are civil servants in the deconcentrated services of four ministries. Note 2 grants a 15% increase in basic salary to civil servants working in the deconcentrated public services of institutions subordinated to, coordinated by or under the authority of the ministries of the environment, health, education and labour. In practice, the staff of county environmental protection agencies, public health directorates, school inspectorates and territorial agencies for social payments and inspection.
  • The timetable remains the one fixed in 2018. The increase is not granted for the period from 1 July 2017 to 31 December 2017, nor for 2018, and for the period 2019 to 2022 it is absorbed into the staged rise of one quarter a year under Article 38(4) of the law. The single exception: it is granted from January 2018, or from the day on which the salary exceeds the level the law set for 2022.
Act: Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 732 of 9 December 2025 on the objection of unconstitutionality raised against note 2 of point (c) of section II.A of Chapter I of Annex no. VIII to Framework Law no. 153/2017 on the remuneration of staff paid from public funds, as interpreted by Decision no. 82 of 26 November 2018 of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Panel for the Resolution of Points of Law
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 776 of 14 September 2026
In force from: 14 September 2026, the date of publication

A wave of court cases brought in 2020 by a public-sector trade union has ended in nothing: the Constitutional Court has ruled that the 15% increase for the complexity of the work cannot be claimed for 2017 or for 2018. Decision no. 732 of 9 December 2025 appeared in Official Gazette of Romania no. 776 of 14 September 2026 and continues the line the Court has held for years on public-sector pay, the same line that produced its ruling that bonuses do not fall under the principle of „equal pay for equal work”. In short, what one person obtained through a court judgment does not automatically become a right for every colleague in the same category.

The whole dispute turns on a single sentence in Annex no. VIII to Framework Law no. 153/2017, the annex covering the occupational family of public-sector posts called „Administrație” (Public Administration). Note 2 there says that civil servants in the deconcentrated public services of institutions subordinated to, coordinated by or under the authority of the ministries of the environment, health, education and labour receive a 15% increase in their basic salary for the complexity of the work. The law took effect on 1 July 2017, and the staff claimed the money from that date.

They did not get it. The reason lies in Article 38 of the same law, the article providing that the text applies in stages. Paragraph (2)(a) froze salaries at their June 2017 level until 31 December 2017. Paragraph (3)(a) raised the whole package by 25% from 1 January 2018. Paragraph (4) split the road to the salaries written into the law for 2022 into four annual steps, a quarter of the difference each year from 2019 to 2022. In a scheme of that kind, a new entitlement is not paid separately; it dissolves into the general rise.

That is exactly what the High Court of Cassation and Justice established in Decision no. 82 of 26 November 2018, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 130 of 19 February 2019. The Panel for the Resolution of Points of Law was seised by the Iași Court of Appeal and said three things: the 15% increase is not granted for 1 July 2017 to 31 December 2017 or for 2018; for 2019 to 2022 it is granted under Article 38(4); and, by way of exception, it is granted from January 2018 or from the date on which salaries become higher than those set for 2022. Under Article 521(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, that ruling became binding on every court from the day it was published, namely 19 February 2019.

It was this reading that the union attacked. Its argument, summarised in paragraphs 5 to 9 of the decision, was that the High Court’s interpretation contradicts Decision no. 794 of 15 December 2016 of the Constitutional Court and produces discrimination: whoever obtained a court judgment ends up with a higher salary than the colleague doing the same work under the same conditions who never went to court. Articles 1, 16(1) and (2), 126(3) and 147 of the Constitution were invoked.

The Court answered briefly, in paragraphs 17 and 18. It pointed out that in Decision no. 175 of 21 March 2024, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 721 of 24 July 2024, it had already held that Article 38(1), (4) and (6) draws no distinction between people in the same socio-professional category as regards the way this bonus is granted, and that the supreme court’s ruling does not lead to differentiated treatment of people in the same legal situation. Since nothing new had emerged, the reasoning and the outcome of 2024 still stand. The representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office had also asked for rejection, relying on Decision no. 40 of 30 January 2025 of the Constitutional Court.

What it changes in practice

The decision is final and generally binding. Under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, decisions of the Court become generally binding from the date of publication and have effect only for the future, so their effects run from 14 September 2026.

Note 2 remains in force, untouched, and Decision no. 82/2018 of the High Court remains its official interpretation. For a civil servant in a deconcentrated service of those four ministries, this means there is no constitutional ground left to raise for the 2017 to 2018 period. Anyone with a pending claim for the salary differences for those two years still has their arguments on the merits, but no longer the constitutional one.

For the case that produced the referral, no. 4.145/117/2020 before the Argeș Tribunal, Civil Division, the decision is served on the court and the proceedings carry on. Law no. 47/1992 does not provide for the trial to be stayed while the Court examines the objection, so in the more than five years since the referral order of 26 March 2021 the case could be heard in parallel.

One absent effect deserves saying out loud: a rejection opens no route to revision. Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure allows a final judgment to be revised only where, after it became final, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the text that was the subject of the objection. Here the text was declared constitutional, so judgments already delivered cannot be reopened by that route.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the letter of the law, nothing. Not a comma of Framework Law no. 153/2017 is amended. What changes is the procedural standing of a complaint the union has been carrying through the courts since 2020.

This is the third time the Court has rejected the same complaint about the same text in the same interpretation. The first was Decision no. 175 of 21 March 2024, which settled five cases at once, from the tribunals of Bihor, Ialomița, Neamț, Satu Mare and Prahova. The second was Decision no. 40 of 30 January 2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 564 of 18 June 2025, which settled six more, from Covasna, Galați, Harghita, Mureș, Suceava and Vrancea. The third is this one, closing the twelfth case, the one from Argeș. Further back, on Article 38 of the law, stand Decision no. 618 of 5 October 2021 and Decision no. 519 of 3 November 2022.

Something else changes too, something the decision does not spell out but that becomes visible when the two rulings relied on are set side by side. Decision no. 794 of 15 December 2016 of the Constitutional Court, which the union used as a weapon, concerned Article 31(12) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 57/2015 and established that the maximum level of basic salary used for levelling up must also include increases recognised by court judgments, a subject covered at length in the case where police officers are entitled to the highest salary in their institution. Decision no. 82/2018 of the High Court concerned something else entirely: not what goes into the maximum level, but in which years a new entitlement introduced by a later law is paid. Two different texts, two different periods, and the same sense of unfairness for the person behind the counter.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It closes an uncertainty that had kept cases open since 2020. A civil servant wondering whether it is still worth claiming the differences for 2017 and 2018 now has a clear answer.
  • It preserves the predictability of the pay system. Had a new bonus been paid separately, outside the timetable in Article 38, the entire mechanism of staged progression towards the 2022 level would have become unworkable for dozens of categories.
  • The unanimous vote and the explicit reference to the Court’s own case law show a settled position rather than one reached by a narrow margin, so the next referral on the same text is unlikely to get a different answer.
  • The text of the decision is short and checkable: every statement rests on an earlier decision identified by number, date and place of publication.

What remains a problem

  • The inequality the union complained about stays on the payroll. Someone with a court judgment and someone without, in the same institution and in the same post, can keep drawing different salaries, and the decision offers no remedy.
  • The reasoning amounts to a reference to Decision no. 175/2024, which in turn refers to Decisions no. 618/2021 and no. 519/2022. A reader who wants the full argument has four acts to open, published in four different years.
  • Between the ruling on 9 December 2025 and its publication on 14 September 2026, 279 days went by. Until publication the decision had no effect at all, so the courts ruled without it.
  • Paragraph 14 reproduces note 2 in its 2017 wording, with the ministry names of the time, without saying that this is the original version. Anyone opening the law as it now stands finds different ministry names in the same text.

Practical advice

  1. If you have a pending claim for the 15% increase for 2017 and 2018, ask your lawyer to reassess your chances. The constitutional argument has fallen for good, and what is left depends on the specific situation in your institution and on how the pay was actually calculated.
  2. Check your payslip to see whether the 15% increase appears separately or has already been absorbed into the basic salary. Once the staged progression under Article 38(4) ended, in many cases it no longer shows as a separate line, which does not mean it is not being paid.
  3. Ask the human resources department in writing for the calculation of your basic salary, with the legal basis for each component. It is the cheapest check there is and it leaves a paper trail.
  4. Do not confuse the two discussions. Decision no. 794/2016 is about what goes into the maximum level in payment, while Decision no. 82/2018 is about the years in which the 15% increase is granted. A claim that mixes them has little chance.
  5. If you have already lost your case, do not start a revision application based on this decision. Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure requires the text to have been declared unconstitutional, and here exactly the opposite happened.
  6. For periods after 2022, check the position separately. The 2018 interpretation concerns the staging up to 2022, and the annual budget laws and austerity ordinances have since added capping rules of their own.

Frequently asked questions

What did the Constitutional Court actually decide?
It rejected the objection as unfounded and held that note 2 of point (c) of section II.A of Chapter I of Annex no. VIII to Framework Law no. 153/2017, as interpreted by the High Court in Decision no. 82/2018, is constitutional in the light of the criticisms raised. The decision was taken unanimously and is final and generally binding.
Who does the 15% increase in note 2 apply to?
To civil servants in the deconcentrated public services of institutions subordinated to, coordinated by or under the authority of the ministries of the environment, health, education and labour. In practice, the staff of these ministries’ county structures, from environmental protection agencies and public health directorates to school inspectorates and agencies for social payments and inspection.
Can I still claim the money for 2017 and 2018?
Not on the ground of unconstitutionality. The High Court’s reading, under which the increase is not granted for 1 July 2017 to 31 December 2017 or for 2018, remains binding on the courts, and the Constitutional Court has now confirmed that it does not breach the Constitution. The exception laid down by the 2018 ruling itself still stands, for cases where the salary had already exceeded the level set for 2022.
What happened to the increase between 2019 and 2022?
It was granted under Article 38(4) of Framework Law no. 153/2017, through annual rises equal to a quarter of the difference between the salary the law set for 2022 and the salary paid in December 2018. It was not paid as a separate percentage on top of the salary; it was built into the final target that was reached step by step.
Why was Decision no. 794/2016, relied on by the union, not applied?
Because it concerns a different text and a different problem. Decision no. 794 of 15 December 2016, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.029 of 21 December 2016, dealt with Article 31(12) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 57/2015 and set out which elements go into the maximum level of basic salary used for levelling up. Decision no. 82/2018 does not discuss the maximum level, but the timetable on which a new entitlement introduced by Framework Law no. 153/2017 is granted.
From when does the decision take effect?
From 14 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. Article 147(4) of the Constitution provides that decisions of the Court are published in the Official Gazette of Romania and that, from the date of publication, they are generally binding and have effect only for the future.
Does the decision reopen cases already lost?
No. Revision on grounds of unconstitutionality, governed by Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure, works only where the Court declares the contested text unconstitutional. Where the objection is rejected, that route does not open.
How many cases grew out of the same complaint?
At least twelve, all bearing 2020 numbers from the same series. Five were settled by Decision no. 175 of 21 March 2024, six by Decision no. 40 of 30 January 2025, and the twelfth, from the Argeș Tribunal, by the present decision.

Editorial analysis

The outcome is right and it was predictable. The gap the union complains about is real, but it does not come from note 2 or from the way the High Court read it. It comes from the fact that a unified pay law was applied in stages over six years, in a system where thousands of people had already secured, through the courts, entitlements their colleagues did not have. A decision of the Constitutional Court cannot repair that. What a constitutional court can do is say whether the statutory text itself creates the difference, and here it genuinely does not: Article 38 applies to everyone in the same way.

The first observation concerns time. Between the ruling on 9 December 2025 and publication on 14 September 2026, 279 days went by. The two sister decisions in the same family came out far more quickly: Decision no. 175/2024 in 125 days from the ruling, Decision no. 40/2025 in 139. Even Decision no. 794/2016, on which the whole dispute rests, reached the Official Gazette of Romania six days after it was delivered. The interval matters legally, not just administratively: Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties binding force to the date of publication, so during the nine months in which the decision existed but was not published, the judge in Argeș had nothing to apply. And since Law no. 47/1992 does not stay proceedings while constitutional review is under way, the case that generated the referral may well have finished before the answer became binding. Counting from the referral order of 26 March 2021 to publication, 1,998 days passed.

The second observation concerns the real size of the case, which the decision does not reveal. The case numbers tell the story: 4.145, 4.146, 4.149, 4.151, 4.153, 4.155, 4.160, 4.161, 4.162, 4.165, 4.166 and 4.169, all from 2020 and all with the same court code, filed before twelve tribunals from Argeș to Vrancea. The same union, the same text, the same argument, split into twelve sets of proceedings and dealt with by the Court in three instalments over five years. The Court joined five cases in 2024 and six in 2025, using Article 53(5) of Law no. 47/1992, but the twelfth was left out and waited another year and a half to receive exactly the same answer, in eight lines of reasoning.

The third observation is about what the decision does not say. The clear explanation of the difference between Decision no. 794/2016 and Decision no. 82/2018 appears nowhere in paragraphs 17 and 18. The Court refers to Decision no. 175/2024, which refers to Decisions no. 618/2021 and no. 519/2022, and those had not examined note 2 in the supreme court’s interpretation but Article 38. The nearest place where the distinction is put in plain words, namely that Decision no. 794/2016 concerns setting the maximum level at which levelling up takes place rather than the timetable of a new entitlement, is the prosecutor’s submission recorded in Decision no. 175/2024. A good argument, filed where nobody will look for it. Paragraph 14 adds a little more fog: it reproduces note 2 with the 2017 ministry names, although the text in force since 31 March 2018 calls the same four ministries something else, and the decision does not state that it is quoting the original version.

What should be changed

  • A statutory maximum period between the delivery of a decision of the Court and its publication. Sixty days would be enough and would remove the situation in which a ruling exists but produces no effect while the courts decide without it. In this case the difference would have been more than seven months.
  • Mandatory joinder, on receipt of the referrals, of identical objections raised by the same party against the same text. The mechanism already exists in Article 53(5) of Law no. 47/1992 and was used twice in this series. Applied from the start, the twelve cases would have produced one decision instead of three and would have saved five years of waiting.
  • Reasoning by reference should be accompanied by a restatement of the decisive ground. A paragraph explaining why the decision relied on by the applicant does not apply would have cost ten lines and would have spared the reader the trouble of opening four acts published in different years. The decision is addressed to the civil servant looking for their rights, not only to the lawyer.
  • Quotations of the contested text should state the version and the date. Where an act has been amended between the time of the facts and the time of the hearing, the decision ought to say which version it is reproducing. Otherwise a reader comparing it with the law in force finds different names in the same text and cannot tell which version counts.
  • Parliament should settle expressly what happens to new salary entitlements arising during the staging period. Twelve sets of proceedings brought by a single union, one ruling of the High Court and five decisions of the Constitutional Court on the same subject show that Article 38 of Framework Law no. 153/2017 was not clear enough about what becomes of an entitlement introduced by the very law that is being phased in. An interpretative provision would have cost less than six years of litigation.

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. 776 of 14 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 99 KB the act starts on page 2

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