In brief

  • The two provisions that leave pay in the Interior Ministry to ministerial orders are left standing. The Constitutional Court unanimously rejected the plea raised by a man litigating before the Brașov Court of Appeal and found that Article 90 of Annex no. VI to Framework Law no. 153/2017 and Article 7(5) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2007 are constitutional in the light of the criticisms put forward. The first provides that the public institutions of defence, public order and national security issue methodological rules approved by order of the principal authorising officer. The second provides that the Minister of Internal Affairs issues orders and instructions.
  • What is actually at stake is the monthly allowance for the academic title of doctor. The author of the plea had asked the court to annul Order of the Minister of Internal Affairs no. S48 of 19 April 2019, including the Methodological Rules for granting that allowance, contained in an annex to another order of the same minister. His argument, set out in paragraphs 5 to 11 of the decision, was that orders of that kind add to the law conditions for granting the allowance that the law does not lay down, and that everything concerning the status of police officers and gendarmes ought to be regulated by organic law rather than by order.
  • The Court answered briefly and moved the discussion to a different courtroom. The pay system is not among the areas reserved to organic law, and the allowance for the title of doctor is a supplementary salary entitlement, not a fundamental right. As for ministerial orders, they cannot be judged by the Constitutional Court, only in administrative litigation. The decision is final and generally binding from 15 September 2026. Being a decision rejecting the plea, it does not open the way to revision of judgments that have already become final.
Act: Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 592 of 11 November 2025 on the plea of unconstitutionality concerning the provisions of Article 90 of Annex no. VI to Framework Law no. 153/2017 on the remuneration of staff paid from public funds and Article 7(5) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2007 on the organisation and operation of the Ministry of the Interior and Administrative Reform
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 778 of 15 September 2026
In force from: 15 September 2026, the date of publication

Anyone working in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and waiting for the money that goes with a doctorate finds the conditions in a ministerial order rather than in the law, and the Constitutional Court has decided that the law is allowed to leave things that way. Decision no. 592 of 11 November 2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 778 of 15 September 2026, rejects as unfounded the criticism levelled at the two provisions on which the whole structure of interior ministry orders on money entitlements rests. It is the second time in two weeks that the Court has upheld a mechanism drawn from the same annex to the pay law, after the decision holding that the rules under which a salary supplement is granted to police officers may stay inside a secret order.

Annex no. VI to Framework Law no. 153/2017 covers the occupational family „Apărare, ordine publică și securitate națională” (Defence, public order and national security), that is military personnel, police officers, gendarmes, firefighters and public servants with special status in the prison system, plus the civilian staff of those institutions. Its final articles are technical and usually pass unnoticed. Article 90 is one of them and consists of a single sentence: „În aplicarea prezentei legi, instituțiile publice de apărare, ordine publică și securitate națională emit norme metodologice, aprobate prin ordin al ordonatorului principal de credite.” (In applying this law, the public institutions of defence, public order and national security shall issue methodological rules, approved by order of the principal authorising officer.) In the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the principal authorising officer is the minister.

The other contested provision comes from the ordinance that organises the ministry. Article 7(5) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2007 provides that, in exercising their statutory powers, the minister issues orders and instructions, which may be normative or individual in character. Together, the two provisions form the basis on which the ministry writes its own rules for applying the pay legislation.

The case that started it all is an action in administrative litigation before the Brașov Court of Appeal, file no. 566/64/2020. The claimant sought the annulment of Order of the Minister of Internal Affairs no. S48 of 19 April 2019 and, with it, of the Methodological Rules for granting the monthly allowance for the academic title of doctor, contained in Annex no. 31 to Order of the Minister of Internal Affairs no. S/7/2018. On 5 April 2021 the court referred the file to the Constitutional Court, which registered it under no. 1.236D/2021.

The author’s arguments, as the decision summarises them, turn on a single idea: an administrative rule cannot regulate what the Constitution reserves to organic law. He relied on Article 1(4) and (5) of the Constitution, on the separation of powers and on compliance with the law, and on Article 73(3)(j), on regulating the status of public servants by organic law. He also said, in paragraph 7, that acts regulating service relationships and salary entitlements ought to be published in the Official Gazette of Romania, „tocmai datorită importanței lor deosebite” (precisely because of their particular importance). Paragraph 8 adds the concrete reproach: through the orders issued on the basis of the contested provisions, conditions are added to the law as regards the granting of the allowance for the title of doctor.

The Brașov Court of Appeal took the view that the provisions are constitutional. The presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, the Government and the Ombudsman submitted no observations. The prosecutor asked for the plea to be rejected, pointing out that whether a ministerial order complies with the law can be reviewed only by the administrative litigation judge, not by the constitutional judge.

The Court’s reasoning occupies seven paragraphs, from 19 to 25, and works on two levels. First: the contested provisions do not concern service appraisal, as the author claims, but only the power of certain administrative bodies to issue implementing acts. The appraisal of police officers is regulated by a different act, Law no. 360/2002 on the Status of Police Officers, which devotes Articles 26 to 266 to it. And the allowance for the title of doctor is, as the Court held in 2009 and in 2013, a supplementary salary entitlement that does not belong to the sphere of fundamental rights. The second level, in paragraph 24: what is in fact being criticised is the lawfulness of ministerial orders, and that falls outside the Court’s jurisdiction, because Article 29(1) of Law no. 47/1992 confines it to laws and ordinances.

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 force only for the future, so the effects run from 15 September 2026.

Both provisions remain in force, untouched. The first of them, Article 90 of Annex no. VI to Framework Law no. 153/2017, has never been amended since the law was published in 2017. Article 7(5) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2007 is also in force, in the form given to it by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 18/2012, applicable from 18 May 2012. This decision has changed nothing in the wording of the law.

For someone with a pending action against an order of the Minister of Internal Affairs, the practical effect is that one argument disappears. They can no longer claim that the legal provision on which the order rests is unconstitutional, because the question has been answered with generally binding force. What remains are the arguments about the unlawfulness of the order, precisely the ones the Court sends to the administrative litigation court in paragraph 24.

That route has a feature worth knowing about. A normative ministerial order cannot be challenged through a plea of illegality: Article 4(4) of Administrative Litigation Law no. 554/2004 states plainly that normative administrative acts cannot form the object of a plea of illegality and that they are reviewed in an action for annulment. The compensation is that, under Article 11(4) of the same law, a normative administrative act considered unlawful may be challenged at any time, with no time limit.

What the decision does not produce matters just as much. A decision rejecting a plea does not open the way to revision. Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure allows revision only where the Constitutional Court „s-a pronunțat asupra excepției invocate în acea cauză, declarând neconstituțională prevederea care a făcut obiectul acelei excepții” (has ruled on the plea raised in that case, declaring unconstitutional the provision that was the object of that plea), and Article 453(1)(f) of the Code of Criminal Procedure likewise requires the provision to have been declared unconstitutional. The three-month period from publication that Article 511(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure sets for this ground of revision therefore does not even begin to run here. Anyone who has definitively lost a case on this basis has nothing to reopen.

Nor did the file that generated the referral stand still in the meantime. Law no. 47/1992 does not provide for proceedings to be stayed while constitutional review is under way, and 1,989 days went by between the referral order of 5 April 2021 and publication of the decision, that is more than five years and five months. It is highly likely that the Brașov case ended long before the Court’s answer became binding.

Finally, a fresh plea on the same provisions is not formally prohibited. Article 29(3) of Law no. 47/1992 blocks only provisions already found to be unconstitutional, and these are not. In practice, though, without new material the Court maintains its solution, as it has done in other series of files on public sector pay.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Nothing has changed in the wording of the law. What has changed is what anyone can now say about it in court.

The Court’s position is not new. It rests on two lines of case law cited in the decision itself. The first: the allowance for the title of doctor is a supplementary salary entitlement, not a fundamental right, established by Decision no. 1.520 of 17 November 2009 and Decision no. 329 of 25 June 2013. The second: the pay system, whatever the occupational category, is not among the areas that Article 73(3) of the Constitution reserves to organic law, established by Decision no. 645 of 29 November 2005 and Decision no. 627 of 22 September 2020. On the substance, the 2025 decision adds no new reasoning; it applies a twenty-year-old line to a new provision.

What has changed, on the other hand, is the very entitlement the man went to court over. Article 14(1) of Framework Law no. 153/2017 ties the allowance for the academic title of doctor to half the guaranteed national gross minimum basic salary and makes it conditional on the person working in the field of their title and on the job description containing objective and measurable duties. Since 2026, however, by way of derogation, Article LIV of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 7/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 146 of 25 February 2026, fixes the allowance at 500 lei gross a month, and Article LVII of the same ordinance provides that the monthly salary income of those concerned is reduced accordingly. Anyone reopening the discussion about this money today is discussing a fixed sum, not a percentage.

The way the starting date for payment is established has changed too. By Decision no. 118/2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 464 of 20 May 2025, the High Court of Cassation and Justice held that the employer is under a duty to amend job descriptions wherever the nature of the work makes it possible to identify objective duties, and that the allowance is due to the employee from the date the job description is amended. It is a ruling binding on all courts and it moves the first practical step from the claim for money to the request to amend the job description.

The third thing that has changed concerns professional appraisal, the very matter the author invoked. Since 22 July 2016, when Law no. 152/2016 entered into force, the Status of Police Officers has contained Articles 26 to 266, which govern service appraisal: who appraises, what period is appraised, what ratings exist and how the result is challenged. This is the argument the Court uses in paragraph 21 to say that the contested provisions do not concern appraisal.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The decision says plainly where each question belongs. The constitutionality of the law is argued before the Constitutional Court, the lawfulness of a ministerial order in administrative litigation. Anyone who picks the right courtroom no longer loses five years down a closed road.
  • It confirms unanimously a line the Court has held since 2005: public sector pay is not an area reserved to organic law. Predictability has a value of its own, even for the losing party.
  • It shows, in paragraph 21, that the service appraisal of police officers is regulated in detail in the organic law itself, through Articles 26 to 266 of Law no. 360/2002. The reproach that the status of police officers had been left entirely to the minister does not hold up on this point.
  • The reasoning is short and can be read without legal training. Paragraphs 22 to 24 say in a few sentences what was asked for, why it cannot be done and where it can.
  • The provisions remain unchanged, so the methodological pay rules issued in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and in the other institutions of defence and public order do not lose their legal basis. No regulatory gap opens up that would affect payments.

What remains a problem

  • The substantive complaint goes unanswered. The man was saying that he cannot read the rules under which the money is or is not paid to him, because the orders that set them never reach the Official Gazette of Romania. The Court does not settle that; it sends him to administrative litigation, where the problem of access to the text of the order is exactly the same.
  • The decision reached its addressees 308 days after it was delivered. Throughout that time the solution existed but produced no effects, and the courts judged without it.
  • Paragraph 17 reproduces the contested provision in a form that has not been in force since 18 May 2012, with „ministrul administrației și internelor” (the Minister of Administration and the Interior) instead of „ministrul afacerilor interne” (the Minister of Internal Affairs), and does not say that it is quoting an earlier version.
  • Paragraphs 17 and 20 identify the act under review as „Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 30/2017”, which is an entirely different act from the one in the title of the decision.
  • The Court answers the criticism based on Article 73(3)(j) of the Constitution by saying that pay is not an area for organic law, but the author was talking about the status of public servants, not about pay as such. The link between the two is made in two sentences, in paragraphs 22 and 23, without being developed.
  • The delegation in Article 90 covers all institutions of defence, public order and national security, not only the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Yet the decision discusses exclusively orders of the interior minister, so it says nothing about the limits of the delegation in the army, in the prison system or in the intelligence services.

Practical advice

  1. If you have pending proceedings claiming the allowance for the title of doctor or another money entitlement regulated by an order of the Minister of Internal Affairs, stop relying on the constitutional argument. It has been closed since 15 September 2026, with generally binding force. Move the discussion to the unlawfulness of the order, that is to the fact that it adds to the law conditions the law does not lay down.
  2. Challenge the order by the right route. Being a normative administrative act, it cannot be challenged through a plea of illegality: Article 4(4) of Law no. 554/2004 expressly forbids it and points to the action for annulment. The good news is that, under Article 11(4) of the same law, such an act may be challenged at any time, with no limitation period.
  3. Do not ask for revision of a case definitively lost. Both Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure and Article 453(1)(f) of the Code of Criminal Procedure open revision only where the Court has declared the provision unconstitutional. Here it did exactly the opposite. An application for revision will be dismissed and you will pay the costs.
  4. Check what sum you are claiming before you pay a lawyer. In 2026 the allowance for the academic title of doctor is 500 lei gross a month, by way of derogation from the percentage rule in Article 14(1) of Framework Law no. 153/2017. The derogation is in Article LIV of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 7/2026.
  5. Start with the job description, not with the money. The law makes the allowance conditional on the job description containing objective and measurable duties showing how the title is put to additional use. The High Court held, in Decision no. 118/2025, that the employer is under a duty to amend the job description wherever the nature of the work allows it, and that payment is due from the date of the amendment. A written request to amend the job description effectively fixes the date from which the money starts running.
  6. Ask your unit in writing to communicate the methodological rules applicable to the entitlement you are claiming. Even if the order is not published in the Official Gazette of Romania, the criteria by which you are assessed concern you directly. A written reply, whatever it says, is useful later in court.
  7. If your complaint concerns service appraisal rather than pay, the legal basis is not Article 90 of Annex no. VI. It is Law no. 360/2002, Articles 26 to 266, which govern the procedure and the challenge against the rating, while the methodology is approved by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs, under Article 266.
  8. Read paragraph 24 of the decision before anything else. It is the only place where the Court says directly what can be done next and before whom.
  9. If you are preparing a fresh action, do not raise the same plea on the same provisions hoping for a different outcome. It is not formally prohibited, but without arguments that have not already been examined you will get the same answer, with the usual delay.

Frequently asked questions

What did the Constitutional Court decide, in short?
It rejected the plea as unfounded and found that Article 90 of Annex no. VI to Framework Law no. 153/2017 and Article 7(5) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2007 are constitutional in the light of the criticisms put forward. The decision was taken unanimously, by a panel of eight judges.
Is it still worth going to court over the doctorate money?
It is, but on a different basis. What has closed is the route by which the legal provisions allowing the ministry to write methodological rules could be struck down. What stays open is a challenge to the order itself, in administrative litigation, on the ground that it adds to the law. The Court says so itself, in paragraph 24: the lawfulness of a ministerial order is checked by that route.
Can I ask for revision of a case I lost, now that the decision has been published?
No. Revision on the ground of unconstitutionality works only where the Court has declared the provision unconstitutional, under Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure and Article 453(1)(f) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. A decision rejecting the plea confirms the provision, so it opens nothing.
From when does the decision take effect?
From 15 September 2026, the date of publication in Official Gazette of Romania no. 778. Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties the binding force to the date of publication and states that decisions have force only for the future.
How much is the allowance for the academic title of doctor worth today?
In 2026, 500 lei gross a month, by way of derogation from Article 14(1) of Framework Law no. 153/2017, which otherwise ties it to half the guaranteed gross minimum salary. The derogation is contained in Article LIV of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 7/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 146 of 25 February 2026. It is granted only if the work is carried out in the field of the title and if the job description contains objective and measurable duties to that effect.
Who is covered by the provisions upheld by the Court?
Article 90 of Annex no. VI covers all staff of the public institutions of defence, public order and national security: military personnel, police officers, gendarmes, firefighters, public servants with special status in the prison system and the civilian staff of those institutions. As for Article 7(5) of the organisational ordinance, it concerns the Ministry of Internal Affairs alone.
Why did publication take so long?
The decision was delivered on 11 November 2025 and published on 15 September 2026, that is 308 days apart. The law sets no maximum period between delivery and publication, and throughout that interval the decision produces no effects, because its binding force runs from publication.
What is the difference between „rejected as unfounded” and „rejected as inadmissible”?
Unfounded means the substance was judged: the Court examined the criticism and found the provisions to be in conformity with the Constitution. Inadmissible means the substance was never reached, because the referral failed to meet a condition of form or of object. Here the substance was judged.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Paragraphs 17 and 20 identify the act under review as „Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 30/2017”, instead of no. 30/2007. The mistake appears twice, in the two paragraphs that matter most: paragraph 17 is the one that fixes the object of the plea and reproduces the contested provision, and paragraph 20 is the one in which the Court analyses it. In paragraph 17 itself, twelve lines higher up, the same act is cited correctly, with the number 30/2007 and the publication reference, Official Gazette of Romania no. 309 of 9 May 2007, and the title of the decision and the operative part in paragraph 25 also say 30/2007. The wrong reference leads nowhere: Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2017, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 263 of 13 April 2017, amends and supplements Law no. 152/1998 establishing the National Housing Agency, has articles numbered I to III and contains no Article 7 and no paragraph (5). Since the grounds of a decision of the Court are binding in the same way as the operative part, anyone citing paragraph 20 takes over the wrong identification of the act under review.

Editorial analysis

The outcome is correct and it was predictable. The Constitutional Court cannot strike down a ministerial order, and the two contested provisions say nothing about the conditions under which the allowance for the title of doctor is granted; they say only who is allowed to write implementing rules. The man’s problem was not in the law but in the order, and that is where he was sent. What disappoints is not the outcome but the journey.

The first observation concerns time, and not only because it took long. The decision was delivered on 11 November 2025 and appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania on 15 September 2026, 308 days later. In the same sitting, on 11 November 2025, the Court also delivered Decision no. 594, again on the pay of police officers and military personnel, which was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 767 of 9 September 2026, that is 302 days later. Two decisions from the same sitting, with consecutive numbers, reached the reader six days apart, and the one with the lower number came out last. The comparison that says everything, however, is with Decision no. 183/2026, on a provision from the same Annex no. VI: delivered on 26 February 2026, three and a half months later, published on 31 August 2026 after 186 days, so two weeks earlier. The order in which decisions become binding bears no relation to the order in which they were taken.

The second observation comes from putting paragraph 4 together with paragraph 24 and with the Administrative Litigation Law. In paragraph 24 the Court says that what is in fact being criticised is the lawfulness of ministerial orders and that this can be reviewed only through administrative litigation. Yet paragraph 4 shows that this is exactly where the file was: an action for annulment of Order no. S48/2019 before the Brașov Court of Appeal, administrative and tax litigation division. The man had not picked the wrong courtroom; he had added one request too many. And that request could not have helped him, because Article 4(4) of Law no. 554/2004 expressly excludes normative acts from the scope of the plea of illegality and points them to the action for annulment, that is to what he had already filed. The five years and five months spent at the Constitutional Court changed nothing in his case.

The third observation concerns the Court’s strongest argument, the one in paragraph 21, and what it leaves out. The Court answers the complaint that the status of police officers had been left to the minister by pointing out that service appraisal is regulated „în mod amănunțit” (in detail) in Articles 26 to 266 of Law no. 360/2002, that is in an organic law. The argument is a good one, but it stops one article too soon: Article 266 of the same law provides that „Metodologia privind evaluarea de serviciu a polițiștilor se aprobă prin ordin al ministrului afacerilor interne” (the methodology on the service appraisal of police officers is approved by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs). In other words, the very organic law invoked as proof that the matter has not been left to the administration does exactly what the author complained about. The legal distinction exists and is real, since the criteria and the ratings are in the law and only the methodology is in the order, but the decision does not explain it, and the reader who opens the Status of Police Officers at the end of the cross-reference finds there precisely the delegation they have been told does not matter.

The fourth observation concerns the form of the text the Court judged. Paragraph 17 reproduces Article 7(5) as follows: „În exercitarea atribuțiilor legale, ministrul administrației și internelor emite ordine și instrucțiuni, care pot avea caracter normativ sau individual.” (In exercising their statutory powers, the Minister of Administration and the Interior issues orders and instructions, which may be normative or individual in character.) In the consolidated version published by the Justice Ministry’s Legislative Portal, the same rule says „ministrul afacerilor interne”, following the amendment made to Article 7 by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 18/2012, applicable from 18 May 2012; in the same place, the title of the ordinance has become „privind organizarea și funcționarea Ministerului Afacerilor Interne”, even though the decision cites it, including in its own title, under the 2007 name. None of this changes the outcome, because the article and the paragraph are the same and are in force, but Article 29(1) of Law no. 47/1992 ties the Court’s jurisdiction to provisions that are in force, and a decision that reproduces a version abandoned fourteen years ago, without saying so, leaves the reader comparing two different texts without knowing which one was judged.

Finally, a point of precision in the decision’s most quoted sentence. Paragraph 24 starts correctly, saying that what is being criticised concerns „legalitatea unor acte administrative” (the lawfulness of administrative acts), but ends by stating that „constituționalitatea unui astfel de act normativ” (the constitutionality of such a normative act) can be verified only through administrative litigation. Administrative litigation verifies the lawfulness of an act, not its constitutionality. The distinction looks like a textbook one, yet it was the very point at stake in the case, and the paragraph that explains it uses the two terms as though they were one.

What should be changed

  • A statutory maximum period between the delivery of a Constitutional Court decision and its publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. Effect: the outcome would become binding while the case that generated it is still pending. Here, 308 days passed between delivery and publication, and 1,989 days between the referral by the court and publication, that is more than five years, during which the Brașov proceedings carried on without the answer they had asked for.
  • Publication in the Official Gazette of Romania of at least the criteria for granting money entitlements contained in the methodological rules issued under Article 90 of Annex no. VI. Effect: a person who has to meet a condition could read it before claiming their entitlement, and litigation of this kind would start with an argument about the facts rather than about access to the text.
  • Supplementing Article 90 of Annex no. VI with the limits of the delegation: what the methodological rules may lay down and what is closed to them. Effect: the administrative litigation court would have a statutory benchmark when checking whether an order adds to the law, instead of deducing the limits from general principles. The current text is a single sentence and says nothing about the content of the rules.
  • Stating, in the Court’s decisions, the version and the date of the text reproduced where the act has been amended between the facts of the case and the judgment. Effect: a reader comparing the decision with the law in force would know which version was examined, instead of finding two different wordings of the same rule, as happened here with Article 7(5).
  • Correcting, through an erratum published in the Official Gazette of Romania, the reference to „Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 30/2017” in paragraphs 17 and 20. Effect: the grounds of the decision, binding in the same way as the operative part, would identify the act under review by the same number throughout, and anyone citing them would no longer carry over a reference to an act about housing.

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. 778 of 15 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 115 KB the act starts on page 2

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