Law allowing 969 bears to be culled stands: Constitutional Court rejects the President’s challenge

The law allowing 969 brown bears to be culled in 2026 is constitutional. The Constitutional Court of Romania rejected as unfounded the objection of unconstitutionality lodged by the President of Romania against the law amending Government Emergency Ordinance No. 81/2021, through Decision No. 733 of 24 June 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 630 of 30 July 2026. This is the second time this summer that the Court has upheld a contested environmental law, after it ruled that the law on hydropower plants in protected natural areas is constitutional.

The stakes are among the most contested of recent years. The brown bear is a strictly protected species under Directive 92/43/EEC, known as the Habitats Directive, and Romania is home to the largest population in the European Union. Those who initiated the law argued that the number of animals had passed the threshold of 4,000, which specialists consider optimal, and that incidents and damage had multiplied. Environmental organisations and the President argued that the state had not demonstrated that gentler alternatives had been exhausted.

The law was adopted by the Senate, as the first chamber notified, on 18 March 2026, and by the Chamber of Deputies, as the decision-making chamber, on 22 April 2026. It was sent for promulgation on 4 May, and the President referred the matter to the Court on 21 May, within the 20 day deadline laid down by Article 77 paragraph (1) of the Constitution. Amicus curiae briefs were also filed in the case.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is that promulgation is unblocked. A rejected objection means the President is obliged to promulgate the law, which then enters the normal circuit of publication and application. The Court’s decision is final and generally binding from the date of publication.

The second effect is the figure itself. For 2026, 859 animals are approved as the national prevention level and 110 animals as the intervention level. The prevention quota is distributed by county and by hunting ground in accordance with Annex No. 5, replaced by the annex to the new law.

The third effect concerns who may shoot and how. Animals in the prevention quota may be culled until 31 December 2026 by hunters, coordinated by the specialist technical staff employed by the hunting ground manager, using the hunting methods permitted by Law No. 407/2006. Animals in the intervention quota may be culled, also until 31 December 2026, only by the manager’s specialist technical staff and only by stalking and by waiting at a hide.

The fourth effect is a set of selection rules designed to balance ages and sexes and to protect dominant animals. On hunting grounds with a prevention level of two or three animals, at least one animal whose pelt does not exceed 400 C.I.C. points must be culled. On those with a level of four or five animals, at least two. If these conditions are not met, the pelt and the skull are handed over to the territorial structure of the National Forestry Guard and become private property of the state.

The fifth effect concerns the time horizon. The rules in Articles 3^1 to 3^5 apply accordingly in 2027 as well. From 2028, the number of animals and the distribution by county and hunting ground will no longer be set by law, but by order of the head of the central public authority responsible for hunting, by 15 May each year, on the basis of the study analysing genetic samples.

The sixth effect is one of precedent. The Court accepted that the Habitats Directive can serve as a benchmark in constitutional review, through Article 148 of the Constitution, read together with the right to a healthy environment in Article 35 and the state’s duty to protect the environment under Article 135 paragraph (2) letter e). It considered, however, that the law passes the test.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Government Emergency Ordinance No. 81/2021, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 732 of 26 July 2021 and approved with amendments by Law No. 197/2022, had already established the mechanism of the two levels, prevention and intervention. The law now upheld updates the figures for 2026 and, more importantly, adds limits that previously did not appear in the text.

The clearest is the ban on culling females accompanied by cubs under 2 years of age. It is a basic conservation rule that was missing from the letter of the law and was left to practice.

The second new limit prohibits culling the prevention quota on territories where hunting is banned under Law No. 407/2006. The President criticised precisely this point, arguing that if the annex still includes hunting grounds that contain prohibited areas, then the figure of 859 is wrongly founded. The Court replied that the text is sufficiently clear, because it is read together with Article 17 paragraph (2^2) of Law No. 407/2006, according to which hunting management plans must be correlated with the plans for protected areas.

The third change concerns the regime of trophies. Where the selection conditions are not met, the pelt and the skull no longer stay with the manager but pass into the private property of the state, and the manager no longer pays the fee laid down for skulls. It is a financial penalty that discourages the culling of large animals, those with trophy value.

The fourth change is the shift, from 2028, from law to ministerial order. This is exactly what the judges who signed the dissenting opinion object to: if from 2028 the distribution is made administratively, on the basis of a genetic study, then setting the quotas by law for 2026 and 2027 looks, in their view, like a technical and administrative operation dressed up in the form of a law.

The dissenting opinion goes further. It argues that the law does not pass the test of the absence of a satisfactory alternative, required cumulatively by Article 16 of the Habitats Directive. Those who initiated the law invoked electric fences, bear proof containers and public information campaigns, saying these do not offset overpopulation, but, the opinion states, neither the legislature nor the constitutional judge had concrete data or impact studies to support that conclusion. The explanatory memorandum reviews the incidents that occurred, but it does not assess the effect of the alternative measures.

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