In brief
- The plea against the ordinance that set, in 2008, the values from which soldiers’ and police officers’ pay is calculated was rejected as inadmissible, that is, without being examined on the merits. The reason has nothing to do with pay: the author listed 35 articles of the Constitution and 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without showing how the text would breach them. Decision no. 419 of 30 April 2026 was published on 24 September 2026 and is final and generally binding from that date, adopted unanimously.
- The soldier who raised the plea loses, and his case before the Mehedinți County Court goes on with the text untouched. The two sectoral reference values, 193.4694 lei and 197.3387 lei, introduced by Government Ordinance no. 8/2008, remain the basis of calculation that the law uses for military pay, for salaries and for establishing, recalculating and updating State military pensions.
- Rejection as inadmissible does not close the argument on the merits, unlike rejection as unfounded. The Court did not say that the ordinance is constitutional; it said that it had been given nothing it could verify. The same provisions can be challenged again, by anyone with a case pending, if this time the criticism is written out and explained.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 812 of 24 September 2026
In force from: the decision is generally binding from the date of publication, 24 September 2026
The Constitutional Court rejected as inadmissible the plea raised by Florin Claudiu Rolea against Government Ordinance no. 8/2008, the act from which comes the figure still used today to calculate pay in defence, public order and the prison service. It is the third decision in recent weeks to touch the same ordinance, after the one in which the Court showed that police and military pay is still calculated on a value fixed in 2008. The difference is that here the Court never got as far as looking at the ordinance: it stopped short of the merits, because the plea contained no criticism it could verify.
What was challenged was the ordinance as a whole. It added six points, from 11 to 16, to the note to Annex no. 1 to Law no. 138/1999 on the remuneration of military personnel, rules that maintained the pay hierarchy coefficients for the duration of the restructuring of the Romanian Army. Article II then fixed the sectoral reference value at 193.4694 lei from 1 April 2008 and at 197.3387 lei from 1 October 2008, for soldiers as well as for police officers and for civil servants with special status in the prison service. The second value is exactly the first increased by 2%: multiplied by 1.02, the April figure gives 197.3388 lei, and the ordinance printed 197.3387 lei, that is, a tenth of a milligram of a leu lower.
What is at stake is not historical. Point 16 introduced by the same ordinance says that the post pay calculated with those coefficients is the basis of calculation not only for salary rights but also for establishing, recalculating and updating State military pensions. That is the source of the chain of cases reaching the Court almost two decades after the act was adopted.
The ordinance is no longer formally in force. Article II was repealed by Framework Law no. 330/2009 on the uniform remuneration of staff paid from public funds, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 762 of 9 November 2009, and the ordinance as a whole was rejected by Parliament through Law no. 49/2012, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 185 of 22 March 2012. That law has a single article, with a single verb: it is rejected. Between the publication of the ordinance, on 31 January 2008, and its rejection, 1,512 days passed, during which the act was applied and produced entitlements. The Court was nevertheless able to examine it, invoking Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 549 of 3 August 2011, according to which constitutional review also covers provisions whose legal effects continue after they cease to be in force.
The main proceedings are a dispute before the Mehedinți County Court, Second Civil, Administrative and Tax Litigation Division, under number 908/30/2020. The court referred the plea to the Constitutional Court by the interlocutory order of 17 November 2021, and before the Constitutional Court the case was given file number 3.595D/2021. Neither the presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, nor the Government, nor the Ombudsman sent any point of view.
The author’s criticism was, in substance, this: a soldier signs an oath without having been informed about the terms of service, about the duties of the post and about pay, and recording the appointment in the daily unit order does not amount to accepting it, all the more so since the daily order falls within the category of classified information. On top of that construction, the author placed a list: Article 1(3) to (5), Articles 4, 9, 11, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24, 25, Articles 30 to 32, Articles 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51, 52, 53, 57, Article 61(1), Articles 67, 73, 78, 108, 118, 124, 126 and Article 135(2)(f) of the Constitution, plus Articles 7, 8, 13, 19, 20, 23, 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In all, 43 reference provisions and not one paragraph explaining why any of them would have been breached.
What it changes in practice
The decision is final and generally binding from 24 September 2026, the date of publication in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 812. The basis is Article 147(4) of the Constitution, invoked in the operative part alongside Article 146(d): the binding force of the Court’s decisions begins on publication, not on delivery. Between the two moments, 147 days passed.
The first effect is on the case from which it all started. The dispute before the Mehedinți County Court goes on, with the provisions left exactly as they were printed in 2008. The author of the plea can still put forward any defence on the facts, but he can no longer ask for the proceedings to be stayed on this ground.
The second effect is the one that is missing, and it matters more than the first. A rejection as inadmissible says nothing about whether the text is constitutional. The Court wrote neither that the ordinance complies with the Constitution nor that it breaches it; it wrote that the author’s submissions are not enough to trigger a constitutional review. No res judicata therefore arises on the merits, and the same provisions can be challenged tomorrow, in another case, with written reasons.
The third effect concerns anyone who today calculates or disputes military pay, a police officer’s salary or a recalculated military pension. The figures of 193.4694 lei and 197.3387 lei stay where they were, and the mechanism in point 16 of the ordinance, which makes them the basis of calculation for State military pensions, was not touched. Anyone hoping that a decision of the Court will wipe out this benchmark should know that, in this case, nothing of the kind was decided.
The fourth effect can be seen by comparison with what was published on the same day. The Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) of 24 September 2026 also carried Decision no. 589/2025, in a pension recalculation case in which the author had cited no article of the Constitution at all, confining himself to a reference to another decision of the Court, and in which the prosecutor had asked for rejection as inadmissible. There, the Court examined the merits all the same. Anyone preparing a plea should know that the threshold of reasoning is not read identically in every case.
The fifth effect is one of method and is addressed to the lawyers and trade unions that prepare pleas. The Court repeated, with two older decisions in hand, that a plea has three compulsory elements: the contested text, the reference text said to be breached and the reasons for the relationship of contradiction between them. The first two can be determined absolutely, the third cannot be inferred by the Court in the author’s place, because that would mean a review of its own motion, which is not permitted.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
In the text of the laws, nothing has changed. No provision was repealed, rewritten or accompanied by a reservation of interpretation. Before 24 September 2026, Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 was an act rejected by Parliament in 2012, with Article II repealed since 2010, but with effects that carry on through the pensions calculated on its basis. The situation is the same after the decision was published.
What has changed is the state of the Mehedinți case, which had had a question hanging over it since November 2021. The question received an answer, but not the one either party expected: neither the referring court nor the prosecutor had spoken about admissibility. The Mehedinți County Court had considered the plea unfounded, that is, it had looked at the merits and had not found for the author. The representative of the Public Ministry had likewise asked for rejection as unfounded, invoking the Court’s case-law. Inadmissibility came from the Court, of its own motion, on a ground nobody had raised.
The second change, a quieter one, concerns the case-law. The Court again used Decision no. 1.313 of 4 October 2011, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 12 of 6 January 2012, and Decision no. 785 of 16 June 2011, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 646 of 9 September 2011. The first builds the test of the three elements of a plea, the second says plainly that merely listing constitutional or convention provisions is not a genuine criticism of unconstitutionality. Both now have a recent and easily cited case of application, on an act about pay.
What has not changed, although it could have, is the question on the merits itself. Whether a member of the armed forces can be bound by terms of service whose pay content was never communicated to him remains an open question. It was not rejected; it was not read.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It closes a case that had been standing for 1,772 days, that is, 4 years, 10 months and 7 days, from the referral order to the publication of the decision. The Mehedinți dispute can move on.
- It does not block the merits. Being a rejection as inadmissible, it produces no res judicata on the constitutionality of the ordinance, so a well-written criticism can reach the Court again.
- It says concretely what a plea has to contain: the contested text, the reference text and the explanation of the contradiction between them. It is a practical guide for the trade unions and lawyers working on pay cases.
- It reproduces in full the provisions of the ordinance, including those repealed in 2009, so the decision can be used directly in old cases, without reconstructing the form of the act as it stood at the material time.
- It confirms once again that an act no longer in force can be reviewed for as long as its effects continue. For military pensioners litigating over figures from 2008, that door stays open.
What remains a problem
- Four and a half years of waiting for a result that does not touch the merits. Between the referral and the delivery, 1,625 days passed, and the conclusion could have been drawn from reading the referral order.
- The author is left with no answer to his real question, the one about informing a soldier of his pay before he takes the oath. It was put, but it did not enter the analysis.
- Publication came 147 days after delivery. The outcome existed from 30 April 2026, but produced no effects, and the Mehedinți court could not apply it.
- The law provides for no stage at which a plea lacking reasons could be completed. The result is binary: either the case runs for four years and closes without the merits, or the author gives up.
- The figures that still produce effects today come from an ordinance Parliament rejected. The situation is not created by the decision, but the decision leaves it exactly as it was, and a reader caught up in litigation gets no clarification.
Practical advice
- If you raise a plea of unconstitutionality, write out separately, for each article of the Constitution you invoke, how the legal text breaches it. A list of articles, even a 40-item one, is rejected as inadmissible, and the time lost is measured in years, not months.
- Prefer two or three constitutional grounds explained over half a page each, rather than thirty listed on one line. The Court’s test is not quantitative, but it does require that a criticism can reasonably be drawn from the reasons given.
- Check whether the text you are challenging is still in force and, if it is not, write in your application why its effects continue in your case. Without that passage, you risk inadmissibility on another ground.
- If your dispute concerns military pay, a police officer’s salary or a military pension calculated on the 2008 values, keep your arguments on the facts and on the calculation. This decision closes no defence of that kind, because it did not examine the ordinance.
- Do not read the rejection as a confirmation that the text is constitutional. The formula in the operative part is „rejects the plea as inadmissible”, not „finds that the provisions are constitutional”. The difference matters if you are preparing a fresh plea on the same text.
- When you receive the court’s referral order, read it as the document that will reach the Constitutional Court. It has to set out the parties’ points of view and the court’s own opinion, and what is not written there will not be added later.
Frequently asked questions
What did the Constitutional Court decide, in short?
What is the difference between „inadmissible” and „unfounded”?
Can the same ordinance be challenged again?
Does anything change for military pay or for military pensions?
How can an act Parliament rejected in 2012 be reviewed?
From what day does the decision produce effects?
How long did the procedure take?
Who raised the plea, and in what kind of proceedings?
Editorial analysis
The first observation does not show when reading the decision, because it calls for opening the law on the organisation of the Court. Article 29(1) of Law no. 47/1992 allows a plea only against a law or ordinance „in force”. Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 was not in force at any moment of this procedure: Article II had been repealed in 2009, and the ordinance had been rejected by Law no. 49/2012. The Court’s jurisdiction rests here entirely on Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, which extended review to effects that carry on. The solution is reasonable and, for military pensioners, it is the only one that keeps the door open. What remains is that, 5,531 days after that decision was published, that is, more than fifteen years, the text of the law is unchanged, and anyone reading Article 29(1) without the case-law in hand understands exactly the opposite.
The second observation explains why the case reached the Court all the same and why it stayed there for four and a half years. Article 29(5) of the same law obliges the referring court to reject the request for referral where the plea runs counter to paragraphs (1), (2) or (3), that is, where the text is not in force, has no bearing on the case or has already been declared unconstitutional. The absence of reasons is not on that list; it comes from Article 10(2), which requires referrals to be made in writing and with reasons. The Mehedinți County Court was therefore under no legal duty to check the reasoning and sent the case on, considering the plea unfounded. The filter that would have saved 1,625 days does not exist in the law, and the Court had to apply it itself, at the end of the procedure.
The third observation is a measurement. The author invoked 43 reference provisions: 35 articles of the Constitution and 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, plus the European Convention on Human Rights, mentioned generically. Across five paragraphs of reasoning there is not one sentence linking a particular article to a particular provision of the ordinance. The ratio between the number of grounds and the number of arguments is, here, 43 to nil, and that is the only reason the case closed. It is worth saying the other way round as well: neither the prosecutor nor the referring court spotted the problem, both asking for rejection as unfounded. Inadmissibility was raised of its own motion by the Court, which in other cases refuses to act of its own motion precisely.
The fourth observation concerns the figures left behind. The two sectoral reference values are not chosen at random: 197.3387 lei is 193.4694 lei plus exactly 2%, and the exact product, 197.3388 lei, was brought down by 0.0001 lei in print. The rounding changes no sum owed to anyone and is not a defect. It does say something about the nature of the act: a 2% increase over six months, decided by the Government under an enabling law, Law no. 373/2007, therefore without prior parliamentary debate, and rejected by Parliament only four years later. In the meantime, point 16 of the same ordinance tied the establishment, recalculation and updating of State military pensions to those values. An act Parliament refused thus goes on producing, 18 years later, the figure from which pensions are calculated.
What should be changed
- The requirement to give reasons should be added to the list in Article 29(5) of Law no. 47/1992. The referring court would then check, just as it already checks the bearing on the case, whether the plea explains the relationship of contradiction. A case like this one would close within a few weeks, at Mehedinți, not after 1,625 days, at the Court.
- The law should provide a period in which the reasons can be completed before a rejection on this ground. Today the result is binary, and the author of a plea with a real problem but poorly written loses four years and is left with the same question. A 15-day period for completion would make inadmissibility the exception rather than the rule.
- The rule from Decision no. 766/2011 should be written into Article 29(1). A sentence saying that provisions whose legal effects continue after they cease to be in force are also subject to review would spare every litigant the search for a 2011 decision in order to understand the text of a law from 1992.
- The interval between delivery and publication should be capped by an express rule. Here there were 147 days in which the outcome existed but produced no effects. A period written into Law no. 47/1992 would make the moment at which stayed cases can move on predictable.
- Decisions of inadmissibility for absence of reasons should state expressly that the merits remain open. An unassisted reader takes a „rejection” to mean that the text was validated. A closing sentence stating that constitutionality was not examined would prevent people from giving up on the basis of a misreading.
- The sectoral reference values used in recalculating military pensions should be taken over into an act in force. As long as the figure used for the calculation sits in an ordinance Parliament rejected in 2012, every dispute has to reconstruct why an act that does not exist still produces effects, and the courts reach different outcomes in identical situations.
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. 812 of 24 September 2026, pages 2-4 16 pages PDF, 153 KB the act starts on page 2
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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.