Without Romanian documents you cannot prove your citizenship in court either, and the Constitutional Court says it is for Parliament

A man who says he was born a Romanian citizen cannot ask a court to declare it, because the law provides for no such action, and the Constitutional Court is not allowed to invent one. That is the conclusion of Decision no. 356 of 16 April 2026, published on 28 September 2026. It is not the first time the constitutional court has looked at Romanian Citizenship Law no. 21/1991 and left it untouched: on 27 August 2026 two decisions had appeared on other articles of the same law, by which the withdrawal of citizenship was left with a single remedy, and children abroad with no way out. The formula the Court repeats is the same: citizenship is, by its nature, a matter of State.

The plea was raised by Mihai Dinu Dimăncescu in proceedings before the Bucharest County Court, Fourth Civil Division, whose object was an action for a declaration that he is a Romanian citizen. The court referred the matter to the Court by Civil Judgment no. 2.898 of 18 December 2019, delivered in case no. 6.064/3/2019**, and at the Constitutional Court the file received the number 280D/2020.

On the date the plea was formulated, Article 22(1) of Law no. 21/1991 read as follows: „Dovada cetățeniei române se face cu cartea de identitate sau, după caz, cu buletinul de identitate, cu pașaportul, cu titlul de călătorie fără mențiunea «identitate incertă», cu certificatul prevăzut la art. 20 alin. (6) sau cu documentele prevăzute la art. 23.” Citizenship is proved, that is, with the identity card or, as the case may be, with the older identity booklet, with the passport, with a travel document that does not bear the mention of uncertain identity, with the certificate provided for in one article of the law or with the documents provided for in another. The certificate is the one issued under Article 20(6) after the oath has been taken, at the end of the procedure for granting or reacquiring citizenship. The documents in Article 23 are the proofs of citizenship which diplomatic missions and consular posts issue, on request, to Romanians abroad.

The author’s problem, as the decision itself describes it at paragraph 7, is that he falls into none of these options and cannot reach any of them either. He has no identity card, because issuing one requires up-to-date civil status documents. He can obtain civil status documents only by transcription, which is impossible as long as he holds no proof of citizenship. He has neither passport nor travel document, because those in turn call either for identity documents or for civil status documents. He does not have the certificate under Article 20(6), because he is not in the position of reacquiring citizenship, and the document under Article 23 presupposes that Romanian identity or travel documents already exist, even expired ones. The author calls the situation a „cerc vicios”, a vicious circle, and the Court takes up his word in the text without contesting it.

Why does reacquisition not help him, although it looks like the simplest way out? Because it has a different legal nature and a different starting point. Reacquisition presupposes proof that citizenship was previously lost, which is not the case here, and it produces effects only for the future, from the date the oath is taken. Anyone who considers himself a citizen from birth and goes through reacquisition ends up, in practice, acknowledging a loss he disputes, and he also loses the possibility of having passed citizenship on to his children by descent for the past. In support of that distinction the author invoked the grounds of Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 356 of 24 April 2012, also given on Law no. 21/1991.

On the merits, three criticisms were made. The first, the breach of free access to justice under Article 21 of the Constitution, through the limitation of the means of proof. The second, the breach of Article 5 of the Constitution, read together with the European Convention on Nationality, ratified by Law no. 396/2002, whose Articles 10-13 require States to provide procedures for keeping citizenship and for issuing a certificate of citizenship, reasoned in writing, open to a remedy and at reasonable cost. The third, the impairment of Article 148 of the Constitution, because denying national citizenship entails denying citizenship of the Union as well, with the rights that flow from it.

The representative of the Public Ministry asked for the plea to be dismissed as inadmissible, with a short argument: the law says expressly what citizenship is proved with, and if proof cannot be made in that way, there is the procedure governed by Articles 13-19 of the same law. What the author is asking for is a second, judicial procedure which the law does not provide for, so the Court is being asked to act as a positive legislator.

At the hearing, the author’s lawyer lodged one more request: that the Court of Justice of the European Union be seised with a question for a preliminary ruling on the compatibility of a national rule that allows citizenship to be proved only with pre-existing documents, unavailable to persons who emigrated or were born before the year 1949. The Court joined the request to the merits and dismissed it as unfounded, explaining, by reference to the judgments of the Court of Justice of 6 October 1982 in Case 283/81, CILFIT, and of 9 September 2015 in Case C-160/14, Ferreira da Silva e Brito, that a reference for a preliminary ruling is justified only if the interpretation of Union law is indispensable for settling the plea. Here, the Court says, the question concerned the author’s particular situation and the merits of the case, not a problem of interpreting Union law.

The answer on the merits fits into two paragraphs, 32 and 33. Upholding the plea in the sense requested would have meant supplementing the text, which names the documents of proof, with any means of evidence used in an action for a declaration of Romanian citizenship, an action that is not regulated in Law no. 21/1991. Yet Article 2(3) of Law no. 47/1992 lays down that the constitutional court rules only on the constitutionality of the acts with which it has been seised, without being able to amend or supplement the provisions under review. Beyond that limit, the Court invokes the specific character of the institution of citizenship, which is, it says, exclusively a matter of State, and the role of Parliament as the sole legislative authority of the country, under Article 61(1) of the Constitution. The conclusion: the decision belongs to the legislator. The plea was dismissed as inadmissible, unanimously.

A procedural detail explains why the Court examined a text that was no longer in force. Between the referral and the hearing, Article 22(1) was rewritten twice, by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 100/2024 and by Law no. 14/2025. Under Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, the Court rules on the version that produces effects in the case pending before the referring court, even if the law has changed in the meantime. That is why the object of the decision is the version preceding the amendment made by the 2024 ordinance, and its title says so explicitly.

The text in force on 28 September 2026 is, however, a different one, and anyone lodging a file after 28 September 2026 has to look at it, not at the one examined: „Dovada cetățeniei române se face cu actele de identitate prevăzute la art. 12 alin. (3) din Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 97/2005 privind evidența, domiciliul, reședința și actele de identitate ale cetățenilor români, republicată, cu modificările și completările ulterioare, cu pașaportul românesc, cu titlul de călătorie fără mențiunea «identitate incertă», cu certificatul provizoriu de cetățenie și cu documentele prevăzute la art. 23, aflate în termen de valabilitate, precum și cu cardul de cetățenie română prevăzut la art. 20 alin. (8) și cu certificatul de cetățenie.” Citizenship is now proved, that is, with the identity documents provided for in the ordinance on the records, domicile, residence and identity documents of Romanian citizens, with the Romanian passport, with a travel document that does not bear the mention of uncertain identity, with the provisional citizenship certificate and with the documents provided for in the citizenship law, all of them within their period of validity, as well as with the Romanian citizenship card and with the citizenship certificate. The identity documents referred to are, under Article 12(3) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 97/2005, the identity card, the simple identity card, the electronic identity card, the provisional identity card and the identity booklet.

What it changes in practice

The decision takes no word out of the law and adds none. Article 22(1) stays in its present form, and the old form stays applicable to the proceedings judged under it. The direct legal effect of a dismissal as inadmissible is that the question raised receives no constitutional answer, neither one way nor the other.

For a pending case, the difference between the two kinds of dismissal changes completely what the lawyer can still do. „Unfounded” means that the constitutional court weighed the argument, found it wrong and confirmed the text, so the constitutional route closes, but the trial judge goes on applying the law as before. „Inadmissible” means that the constitutional court did not enter the discussion. Usually that leaves the ground free before the trial judge, as a question of interpreting the law. Not here, and it is worth saying plainly: the reason for inadmissibility is that the rule asked for simply does not exist in the law, and a judge can create it no more than the Court can. So, in this case, dismissal as inadmissible opens no door before the trial court.

The second effect is one of precedent. The reasoning restates that the institution of citizenship is exclusively a matter of State and that the right to establish how citizenship is proved belongs to the legislator. The formula will be cited in the next cases on the same law, as it was in the decisions published on 27 August 2026.

The third effect concerns European law, and it is the only one that leaves something open. The Constitutional Court refused the reference for a preliminary ruling because Union law was not applicable in its review of constitutionality. That refusal does not prevent the trial judge from putting a question himself to the Court of Justice of the European Union, under Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, if he considers that the interpretation of Union law is necessary for him to decide the case.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Through this decision, nothing. What has changed, between the raising of the plea and the publication of the answer, is the criticised text itself, twice over, and that is the part a hurried reader can get exactly backwards.

The version examined, the one from 2015, listed five possibilities: the identity card or the identity booklet, the passport, the travel document with no mention of uncertain identity, the certificate under Article 20(6) and the documents under Article 23. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 100/2024, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 740 of 29 July 2024, rewrote the article, and its provisions on the Romanian citizenship card entered into force on 1 September 2024, under Article XVI(2) of the ordinance. Law no. 14/2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 218 of 12 March 2025, took the article up again in the form that applies on the date of publication of the decision as well.

The list has grown longer. Besides the identity card and the identity booklet, the text now refers to all the identity documents in Government Emergency Ordinance no. 97/2005, and therefore to the electronic identity card and the provisional identity card as well. The passport is expressly called „românesc”, Romanian. Three documents have appeared that did not exist in the old version: the provisional citizenship certificate, the Romanian citizenship card and the citizenship certificate. Citizenship certificates issued before the ordinance produce, under Article XVII(3) of it, the same legal effects as the new card.

But a restriction has appeared that did not exist before: the phrase „aflate în termen de valabilitate”, within their period of validity. The old text nowhere required the document to be valid on the date the proof is made. For somebody with an identity booklet in a drawer that expired twenty years ago, the difference is not theoretical.

What has not changed is the kind of rule it is. Both before and now, Article 22(1) is a list of documents. Neither the 2024 version nor the 2025 one added a judicial route for establishing citizenship, and neither provided for what happens to somebody who holds none of the documents listed. In other words, the vicious circle described at paragraph 7 of the decision is exactly as closed on 28 September 2026 as it was on 18 December 2019.

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