CCR: challenging a traffic fine at the court of the place of the offence was constitutional, but the law has since changed

The obligation to challenge a traffic fine before the district court of the place where you were stopped was constitutional. The Constitutional Court dismissed as unfounded the plea of unconstitutionality raised by Cezar Corneliu Gămulescu in a case pending before the Fetești District Court and found that Article 32 para. (1) of Government Ordinance No. 2/2001 and Article 118 para. (1) of Government Emergency Ordinance No. 195/2002, in their earlier wording, are constitutional. This is an area the Court has been asked to rule on before, having already established that a court cannot shorten the length of a driving licence suspension. Decision No. 489 of 21 October 2025 was published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 609 of 27 July 2026.

At the time the Court was seised, the provisions at issue stated that the complaint against the offence report is to be lodged with the district court in whose judicial district the administrative offence was committed, and respectively with the district court in whose judicial district the offence was established. For a driver from Bucharest stopped in Ialomița, that meant a trial hundreds of kilometres from home.

The author of the plea invoked two articles of the Constitution: Article 16, equality of rights, and Article 21 paras. (1) and (2), free access to justice, read in the light of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial. He argued, among other things, that the rule forces him into additional expense, that it reverses the presumption of innocence and that it departs without justification from the rules of administrative litigation.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is limited, but real. The decision is final and generally binding from publication and applies to the cases still being heard under the old provisions, that is those begun before the amendments of 2022 and 2023. For those, the unconstitutionality argument is closed, and Article 29 para. (3) of Law No. 47/1992 prevents the same plea from being raised again.

The second effect concerns the reasoning and remains valid as a matter of principle. The Court holds that setting jurisdiction according to the place of the offence does not restrict access to justice but gives it substance, because it allows the swift taking of the evidence gathered by the traffic police. The criterion is general and objective, and the Court considers it reasonable precisely because of the specific nature of these administrative offences: people travelling on public roads are in transit, yet they obey the same rules wherever they happen to be.

The third effect is the most useful in practice and defuses the objection about costs. The Court points out that Emergency Ordinance No. 195/2002 is supplemented by Ordinance No. 2/2001, which in turn refers to the Code of Civil Procedure. Article 183 para. (1) of that code allows procedural documents to be filed by post, while Article 200 para. (2) requires the court to notify in writing any shortcomings in the application, with a deadline of no more than 10 days for putting them right. The conclusion of the Court: jurisdiction at the place of the offence does not, in itself, oblige the claimant to travel to every court hearing.

The fourth effect concerns the presumption of innocence. The Court considers it untouched, because the person fined has the same rights and guarantees regardless of where the competent court is located.

The fifth effect is a matter of method and explains why the Court ruled at all. Both provisions had already been amended by the time of the hearing. The Court examined them in their old wording, on the basis of Decision No. 766 of 15 June 2011, according to which provisions whose legal effects continue to be produced after they cease to be in force are also subject to review.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

This is where the most important information for a driver today lies, and it comes from the reasoning of the decision itself: the rule the Court upholds is no longer the one in force.

Article 32 para. (1) of Ordinance No. 2/2001 was amended by Law No. 107/2022, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 391 of 21 April 2022, so as to establish alternative jurisdiction for hearing the complaint against the offence report. Article 118 para. (1) of Emergency Ordinance No. 195/2002 went through an amendment brought by Law No. 152/2019 and then by Law No. 254/2023, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 678 of 24 July 2023, which in the end also provided for alternative jurisdiction.

In practice, the legislature arrived at the very solution sought by the author of the plea, but by legislative means rather than constitutional ones, and without any effect on cases already begun under the old provisions. The Court does not comment on whether the change was opportune, it merely finds that the old version was not unconstitutional.

On the equality complaint, the answer of the Court is that persons penalised under Ordinance No. 15/2002, which governs the road use charge and the toll on the national road network, are not in the same legal situation as those penalised under Ordinance No. 2/2001 and Emergency Ordinance No. 195/2002. These are different types of administrative offences, so different treatment does not breach Article 16 of the Constitution. The principle, set out as early as Plenary Decision No. 1 of 8 February 1994, is that equality means equal treatment for situations that are not different, not identical treatment for every situation.

On the complaint about the departure from administrative litigation, the Court refers to Decision No. 276 of 23 April 2019: determining the competent court is a rule of procedure, and the choice belongs to the legislature, under Article 126 para. (2) of the Constitution.

The decision falls within a settled line of case law. The same provisions have been reviewed before, through Decision No. 246 of 25 April 2024, Decision No. 54 of 30 January 2024, Decision No. 539 of 10 November 2022 and Decision No. 727 of 2 November 2021, all of them dismissals.

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