You cannot seek revision of a civil judgment for a breach of European law: the Constitutional Court refuses to extend the administrative litigation ground

If you have definitively lost a civil case and believe the court misapplied European law, revision is not available to you. The Constitutional Court dismissed as inadmissible the plea of unconstitutionality raised by Adriana-Mihaela State in a case before the Maramureș Tribunal, First Civil Division, which sought to supplement the list of grounds for revision in Article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The reason for the dismissal is the same one the Court has used in other recent cases, among them the one in which the Constitutional Court held that it cannot add new categories to the compensation law for victims of communist persecution. Decision No 110 of 5 February 2026 was published in Official Gazette of Romania No 613 of 27 July 2026.

The criticism started from a real difference between two procedures. Administrative Litigation Law No 554/2004 provides a special ground for revision for final judgments delivered in breach of the principle of the primacy of European Union law. The Code of Civil Procedure has no equivalent ground, and the list in Article 509 is exhaustive.

The author of the plea argued that this difference creates a serious inequity, because citizens involved in civil proceedings do not enjoy the same guarantees as those in administrative litigation. She invoked equality before the law, free access to justice and the primacy of European Union law over domestic legislation.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is a practical one. The list of eleven grounds for revision in Article 509(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure remains unchanged and exhaustive. A breach of European Union law is not among them, and an application for revision based on that ground in a civil case is bound to be dismissed. The grounds that do exist include a decision of the Constitutional Court delivered after the judgment became final, a mechanism that reopened, for example, the cases lost over pre-2006 urban planning derogations.

The second effect concerns the type of solution. The dismissal is one of inadmissibility, not of an unfounded plea. The Court did not say that the text is constitutional, but that it had not been seised of a genuine constitutional issue. In practice, the discussion stays open for anyone who would frame the criticism differently, but no one can rely on a confirmation of the text.

The third effect is a limit of jurisdiction, stated very plainly. In the Court’s words, constitutional review cannot be turned into an instrument for harmonising legislation or into a means of substituting the Constitutional Court for the legislature. The fact that a ground for revision is specific to a particular procedure does not amount to a breach of the Constitution.

The fourth effect comes from European law and removes the substantive argument. The Court of Justice of the European Union has already held, in Case C-69/14 Târșia v the Romanian State, judgment of 6 October 2015, that Union law does not preclude a rule under which the revision of a final civil judgment incompatible with Union law is unavailable, even where it is available for judgments delivered in administrative actions.

The fifth effect is a lesson in legal technique. The Court recalls that a plea of unconstitutionality must contain three elements: the contested text, the reference text in the Constitution and the reasoning that shows the conflict between them. Merely listing constitutional or convention provisions is not a genuine criticism.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In law, nothing changes. Article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure remains in its current form, and the difference between civil procedure and administrative litigation is maintained. What is clarified is that this difference cannot be removed by way of constitutional review.

The path of the case file is worth noting, because it shows a successful challenge against a refusal to refer. The Maramureș Tribunal had rejected the request to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court, on the ground that the plea did not target the content of a rule in force but a legislative omission. The Cluj Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and referred the matter to the Constitutional Court after all. So the refusal of the first-instance court can be challenged, even if in the end the outcome confirmed the initial assessment.

A notable procedural detail: the Cluj Court of Appeal, contrary to Article 29(4) of Law No 47/1992, did not state its opinion on the plea. Neither the presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, nor the Government, nor the Ombudsman submitted their views. The Court therefore ruled solely on the basis of the referral order, the report of the judge-rapporteur and the submissions of the public prosecutor.

On the substance of the argument, the Court criticises a defect that is common in practice: invoking European Union law and convention law cumulatively and without distinction. These are two normative systems with distinct legal natures, their own mechanisms of application and different conditions of precedence, and mixing them dilutes the rigour of the argument and prevents the real subject of the criticism from being identified.

For the standard of reasoning, the Court refers to Decision No 1313 of 4 October 2011 and to Decision No 785 of 16 June 2011. The reason is a substantive one: if the constitutional court were to examine a plea reasoned in elliptical terms, it would substitute itself for its author in formulating the criticisms, which would amount to a review of its own motion, and that is inadmissible.

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