Ninety days without a licence stay fixed: no judge can shorten them

The 90 days without a licence, for exceeding the speed limit by more than 50 km/h, remain a figure that no judge can reduce. The Constitutional Court dismissed as unfounded the criticism brought against art. 102 para. (3) letter e) of Government emergency ordinance no. 195/2002 on traffic on public roads, the text which provides for a class IV fine and the suspension of the right to drive for 90 days. The decision is final and generally binding, like the one, published in the same period, in which the Court held that judicial stamp duties remain constitutional.

The case, registered under number 5.763/328/2018, reached the Cluj Tribunal on appeal. A woman driver penalised for an administrative offence had challenged the offence report, had lost before the first instance court and raised the plea of unconstitutionality there. The Court notes that, in her case, the texts apply in the version given by Law no. 130/2019. Her argument did not concern the existence of the penalty, but its rigidity: a fixed period of 90 days, the same for any excess above 50 km/h, would infringe the free access to justice guaranteed by art. 21 of the Constitution, read through art. 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because it leaves no room for proportionality.

The Court split its answer in two. On the merits it examined the penalty and found it constitutional. On the part concerning the administrative reduction of the suspension, from 90 to 30 days, it found that the text had no connection with the proceedings from which the referral came and dismissed the criticism without examining it any further.

The Court said the same thing in a different case as well: by CCR Decision no. 705/2025 it rejected the request that a judge be able to shorten the 90 days, by a majority.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is the confirmation of the fixed duration. The Court repeats the reasoning of Decision no. 344 of 9 July 2024, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 30 of 15 January 2025, and explains why the legislature chose exact figures. For the acts covered by art. 100 para. (3), art. 101 para. (3) and art. 102 para. (3) of the ordinance there is a scale that rises gradually, 30, 60 and 90 days, adapted to the degree of social danger. This is, the Court says, a statutory individualisation of the penalty: not through criteria left to someone’s assessment, but through the direct matching of the duration to the seriousness of the act.

The second effect is the one that matters most in a courtroom. The Court states explicitly that the courts cannot reduce and cannot remove the ancillary penalty when they hear the complaint against the offence report. The only situation in which the suspension disappears is the annulment of the offence report, the document establishing and penalising the administrative offence. In other words, if the offence report stands, the 90 days stand with it.

The third effect is the proportionality test used. The Court takes it from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and applies it on two criteria: the limited duration of the measure in time and its consequences for the person penalised. The reference points cited are the admissibility decision of 28 June 2011 in Ioan Pop v. Romania and the judgment of 28 October 1999 in Escoubet v. Belgium. The conclusion: 30, 60 or 90 days is a reasonable limitation, and once the interval has run out the driver recovers the right to drive.

The fourth effect is a lesson in procedure, not in road traffic. The plea concerning art. 104, the text on the reduction of the suspension, was dismissed as inadmissible for a simple reason: the subject matter of the case was the appeal against the judgment dismissing the complaint against the offence report, not a challenge against a decision refusing a reduction. There was no connection between the pending case and the contested text, and any admission of the plea would have produced no effect on the proceedings. Under art. 29 para. (1) of Law no. 47/1992, that alone was enough.

The fifth effect is more technical, but useful. The contested texts had meanwhile been amended, art. 104 para. (1) and (2) by Government ordinance no. 1/2022, and art. 104 para. (3) by Government emergency ordinance no. 13/2020, without preserving the original legislative solution. The Court examined them nonetheless, in their old wording, relying on Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011: provisions whose legal effects continue to be produced even after they have ceased to be in force are also subject to constitutional review.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the road traffic rules, nothing. This is a decision of dismissal, so art. 102 para. (3) letter e) remains exactly as it was: a class IV fine and 90 days of suspension for exceeding by more than 50 km/h the maximum speed allowed on the road section concerned and for the category to which the vehicle belongs, established with type-approved and metrologically verified devices.

What has changed is the solidity of that rule. The proportionality argument, the one most often used against fixed durations, has now been rejected for the second time, after Decision no. 344/2024. The Court does not merely reject it, it also classifies it: a fixed duration is not an absence of individualisation, it is an individualisation carried out by the legislature instead of the judge. Anyone who wants to raise the criticism again needs a new argument, not a rewording of the same one.

A second change, again in the way the law is read, concerns the relationship between the two routes. The penalty is challenged in court, through a complaint against the offence report. The reduction of the suspension, from 90 to 30 days, is requested through administrative channels, from the head of the traffic police of the county or of the municipality of Bucharest, or from the head of the traffic police within the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police, subject to two cumulative conditions: passing the test on knowledge of the road traffic rules and having obtained the driving licence at least one year before the act. These are separate routes, and the decision shows what happens when they are mixed: a criticism aimed at one of them, raised in proceedings about the other, never gets to be examined.

Bear in mind that the texts on the reduction were amended in 2020 and 2022, so anyone checking them today must read the current version, not the one reproduced in the decision, which is the version the Court held to be applicable in that case.

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