In brief

  • A trade union asked the Constitutional Court whether the 2021 budget law could cancel pay rises already negotiated through an addendum to the collective labour agreement. The Court declined to answer.
  • The objection was dismissed as inadmissible: the issue is one of interpreting and applying the law before the trial court, not one of constitutionality.
  • The rule in Article 48(3) of the 2021 State Budget Law stands: state-owned companies with losses or overdue payments as at 31 December 2020 could not budget for pay rises in 2021.
Act: CCR Decision no. 100/2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 700 of 24 August 2026
Delivered: 5 February 2026

A collective agreement signed before the budget law does not override the budget law, but it is not the Constitutional Court that says so: the answer has to come from the court hearing the case. By Decision no. 100 of 5 February 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 700 of 24 August 2026, the Court dismissed as inadmissible the objection raised by the Bucharest Transport Workers’ Union in a case pending before the Bucharest Tribunal, Eighth Division for labour disputes and social insurance. It is the second decision in the same batch in which the Court draws the line between a question of constitutionality and a question of applying the law, alongside the one on avenues of appeal in public pension disputes.

The contested provision is Article 48(3) of the 2021 State Budget Law No 15/2021, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 236 of 9 March 2021. It provides that economic operators which recorded losses or overdue payments as at 31 December 2020 may not include in their 2021 revenue and expenditure budget any increase in staff costs arising from restoring those costs in full, brought about by pay rises granted or by a larger headcount in 2020.

The facts were textbook. A company in which a local authority is the majority shareholder had signed, before the budget law entered into force, an addendum to the collective labour agreement granting pay rises. The union argued that applying the budget law to that addendum is retroactive and amounts to interference by a public authority in the performance of a collective agreement, prohibited by Article 131(2) of Social Dialogue Law No 62/2011.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is that the provision stands untouched. Article 48(3) of Law No 15/2021 was not declared unconstitutional and continues to produce effects in every dispute in which it applies.

The second effect is a shift of jurisdiction. The Court stated expressly that the points raised concern the interpretation and application of the law as regards the relationship between statute and the collective labour agreement, and that these fall within the exclusive competence of the trial court. In other words, the question stays open, but it is asked somewhere else.

The third effect concerns the limits of constitutional review. Under Article 2(3) of Law No 47/1992, the Court rules only on the constitutionality of the acts referred to it, without being able to amend or supplement the legal provisions under review. A request to establish a broad reading of the text falls outside that competence.

The fourth effect belongs to case law. The Court referred to Decision no. 253 of 27 April 2023, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 708 of 2 August 2023, in which it had already held that interpreting the legal provisions applicable to a specific situation, so that the law is correctly applied in the case at hand, is a matter for the trial court and not for the Constitutional Court.

The fifth effect is practical, for cases already under way. The Bucharest Tribunal can resume the hearing and has to decide for itself whether the addendum produces effects, using the ordinary methods of interpreting legal rules.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Nothing changes in the wording of the law. The 2021 State Budget Law applied only to the financial year for which it was adopted, yet the Court still agreed to examine it, because its legal effects continue after it ceased to be in force, under the rule laid down in Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011.

What does change is the union’s procedural position. Until now it could hope that a ruling of the Court would settle matters in favour of the collective agreement. After the dismissal as inadmissible, the argument is confined to the trial court and to labour law.

The second change concerns the argument about the rank of the law. The union had claimed that an ordinary law, such as the budget law, cannot derogate from an organic law, such as Social Dialogue Law No 62/2011. The Court did not examine that argument on the merits, so it remains available before the trial court, but without the backing of a constitutional ruling.

The third change is one of legislative context. Law No 62/2011 was repealed, after the Court had been seised, by Article 189 of Law No 367/2022 on social dialogue, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.238 of 22 December 2022. The ban on public authorities interfering in the negotiation and performance of collective agreements now sits in the new legal framework.

What does not change is the right to collective bargaining. The decision does not say that a collective agreement can be ignored, only that the question is not for the Constitutional Court to answer.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It makes clear where the dispute belongs, before the trial court rather than the Constitutional Court, which spares future challengers a pointless detour.
  • It unblocks the case stayed before the Bucharest Tribunal, which can now resume hearing the merits.
  • It restates, with reference to the Court’s own case law, that interpreting the law in a specific case is the trial court’s job.
  • It does not narrow the union’s right to raise the same arguments before the labour court.

What remains a problem

  • The substantive question, whether the budget law can strip an addendum signed earlier of its effects, is left without a single answer nationwide.
  • The argument on the relationship between an ordinary law and an organic one was not examined, although it concerns the hierarchy of legal acts, a typically constitutional matter.
  • Employees are left with an uncertainty that has run since 2021, and the outcome may differ from one court to another.
  • The decision is published five years after the objection was raised, a period in which the contested law had already produced all its effects.

Practical advice

  1. If you have a case on this subject, move your arguments onto labour law ground. The Court has said the issue is one of interpreting and applying the law, so the trial court can settle it.
  2. Do not raise an objection of unconstitutionality that asks for a particular reading of the text. The Court dismisses as inadmissible any request that in fact seeks a broad interpretation.
  3. Check whether the company you work for had losses or overdue payments as at 31 December 2020. That is the condition which triggered the ban in Article 48(3).
  4. If you invoke interference by a public authority in the collective agreement, use the provision in force today. Law No 62/2011 was repealed by Law No 367/2022 on social dialogue.
  5. Keep the addendum and proof of the date on which it was concluded. The moment of signing, set against the date the budget law entered into force, is the heart of the argument.
  6. Bear in mind that a budget law produces effects after the end of the year for which it was adopted, as long as the legal relationships created under it continue.

Frequently asked questions

What does the contested provision say?
Article 48(3) of the 2021 State Budget Law No 15/2021 provides that economic operators which recorded losses or overdue payments as at 31 December 2020 may not include in their 2021 revenue and expenditure budget any increase in staff costs brought about by pay rises or by a larger headcount in 2020.
Why was the objection dismissed as inadmissible?
Because, in the Court’s view, the criticisms in fact concern the interpretation and application of the law, more precisely the relationship between statute and the collective labour agreement, matters that fall within the exclusive competence of the trial court.
Does this mean the union lost the case?
No. The decision does not settle the labour dispute, it only finds that the question is not for the Constitutional Court. The case continues before the Bucharest Tribunal.
Why did the Court examine a budget law that is no longer in force?
Because, under Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, provisions whose legal effects continue after they cease to be in force are also open to constitutional review, and this text applied in the pending case.
What happens to the ban on interference in collective agreements?
The rule sat in Article 131(2) of Social Dialogue Law No 62/2011, repealed by Article 189 of Law No 367/2022 on social dialogue. The ban remains part of the legal framework for social dialogue, in its current form.
Can the Court establish a particular interpretation of a provision?
No. Under Article 2(3) of Law No 47/1992, the Court rules only on the constitutionality of the acts referred to it, without being able to amend or supplement the legal provisions under review.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Paragraph 15: the text reproduced cannot be read on its own. The Court announces that the contested provisions „au următorul cuprins”, read as follows, and then quotes in full Article 48(3) of Law No 15/2021. The first words of the quotation, however, are „Operatorii economici prevăzuți la alin. (1)”, the economic operators referred to in paragraph (1), and paragraph (1) appears nowhere in the decision. Anyone opening Official Gazette of Romania no. 700 at pages 10 to 12 has nothing from which to learn which category of economic operators the ban applies to, although that is the only rule under review. In a decision that carefully reproduces six items of case law, with number, date and page, what is missing is precisely the definition of the addressee of the text being analysed.
  • Paragraphs 4, 12 and 13: the referral was made by judgment, although the rule the Court itself quotes calls for an interlocutory ruling. Paragraph 4 shows that the trial court referred the matter to the Court „prin Sentința civilă nr. 5.385 din 12 iulie 2021”, by civil judgment no. 5.385 of 12 July 2021. Paragraph 12 quotes Article 29(4) of Law No 47/1992, under which „sesizarea Curții Constituționale se dispune de către instanța în fața căreia s-a ridicat excepția de neconstituționalitate, printr-o încheiere”, the referral to the Constitutional Court is ordered by the court before which the objection of unconstitutionality was raised, by an interlocutory ruling. The Court reproaches the trial court with one thing only, that it ordered the referral in the grounds and not in the operative part, and passes over entirely the fact that the instrument used is not the one the law provides for. Paragraph 13 then declares the referral lawful, without the second irregularity having been so much as mentioned.
  • Paragraph 15 announces a review that the operative part does not carry out. The text says that „Curtea urmează să exercite controlul de constituționalitate asupra acestor dispoziții legale”, the Court will go on to review the constitutionality of those legal provisions. Paragraph 22 and the operative part, however, dismiss the objection as inadmissible, that is, carry out no review of the text at all. The two statements contradict each other inside the same decision, and it is the first that stays with the hurried reader, because it comes immediately before the rule is quoted.

Editorial analysis

The real problem behind the case file is not a constitutional one, and on that the Court is right. A trade union had signed an addendum to the collective agreement for 2019 to 2021, granting pay rises, and then came Law No 15/2021, published on 9 March 2021, which barred state owned companies with losses or overdue payments as at 31 December 2020 from budgeting for those increases. Who pays the difference, or whether anyone pays it at all, is a question of labour law and of how the relationship between statute and contract is to be read. The Court could have said so in three paragraphs. It needed twenty three of them, and five years.

The interval is the part hardest to defend. The objection was raised in an application for an interim order, that is, in the procedure designed by the Code of Civil Procedure precisely for urgent cases, where the measure is granted provisionally and quickly. The referral to the Court is dated 12 July 2021, the ruling 5 February 2026, the publication 24 August 2026. The 2021 budget law had exhausted its budgetary effects years before the file came up for hearing. The interim proceedings stayed suspended throughout, for a question that the Court found, in the end, was not its own.

The second thing the act shows is that the Court preferred inadmissibility to an explanation. The party raising the objection had put forward an argument that is not one of interpretation but one of the rank of legal rules: an ordinary law, the budget law, is said to have derogated from Article 131(2) of Law No 62/2011, an organic law. Paragraph 17 turns that argument too into a matter „de interpretare și aplicare a legii”, of interpreting and applying the law, in a single sentence, without saying why the relationship between an ordinary law and an organic one should be anything other than a question of constitutionality. The argument is thus left unresolved by anyone: the Court says it is not for it, and the trial court cannot declare a law unconstitutional.

One last element is worth noting, because it says something about how the chain works. The rule the whole discussion turned on, Article 131(2) of Law No 62/2011, had been repealed by Article 189 of Law No 367/2022 back in December 2022, more than three years before the ruling. The Court mentions this in a parenthesis, without saying which provision of the new law corresponds to it. The Bucharest Tribunal now resumes the hearing with a reference in the file to a repealed rule and with no indication of where that rule is to be found today.

What should be changed

  • Reproducing the text referred to, not only the one contested. Where the rule under review defines its addressee by pointing to another paragraph, as here to paragraph (1) of Article 48, that paragraph ought to be quoted alongside it. It costs three lines and turns the decision from a document that has to be read with Law No 15/2021 open beside it into one that stands on its own.
  • An admissibility filter applied on the way in, not after five years. The ground for dismissal, that what is sought is an interpretation of the law and not a review of constitutionality, was visible from the reasons given for the objection, reproduced in paragraphs 5 to 8. If objections of this kind were sifted at the report stage, cases on the merits would no longer sit stayed for years on end waiting for a predictable answer.
  • Separate treatment of the argument on the rank of legal rules. The claim that an ordinary law derogates from an organic one has either to be examined on the merits or to be dismissed with reasons of its own. Bundled into inadmissibility together with the complaints about application, it remains an argument that no court in Romania has the power to settle.
  • Naming the rule in force where the contested one has been repealed. Paragraph 17 notes the repeal of Law No 62/2011 by Law No 367/2022 and stops there. A reference to the corresponding article of the new law would save a search for every court that will cite this decision.
  • A stay of proceedings that does not work the same way in interim proceedings as in an ordinary trial. An urgent procedure loses its point if it comes to a halt for five years. A rule allowing the court to rule provisionally and to return to the matter after the decision of the Constitutional Court would preserve both the constitutional review and the purpose of interim relief.
  • Publication of the decision closer to the day it is delivered. More than six months passed between 5 February and 24 August 2026, a time in which the solution was final but produced no effects, because Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties those effects to publication. An express deadline, of the order of 30 days, would close a window in which stayed cases stay stayed for nothing.

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. 700 of 24 August 2026 16 pages PDF, 114 KB the act starts on page 10

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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.