47 cases closed at once, but the Constitutional Court shows exactly how to apply for revision

You bought from a former owner the right to receive compensation for a nationalised house, and the state valued the property at 2013 figures rather than today’s. The Constitutional Court has just shown how the case can be reopened. Decision no. 271 of 26 March 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 689 of 20 August 2026, settles at once 47 joined cases referred by courts from all over the country. It is the Court’s second intervention on the same law in a matter of weeks, after it held that the National Commission for Property Compensation may set aside old compensation decisions.

The heart of the dispute is an inequality of calculation. Art. 21 para. (6) of Law no. 165/2013, in the form given to it by Law no. 219/2020, laid down two different notarial valuation grids for one and the same property. If the compensation went to the former owner or to his heirs, the valuation used the notarial grid of the year preceding the issuing of the decision, therefore a figure close to the market. If the compensation went to someone who had bought that right, the valuation used the grid in force on the date Law no. 165/2013 entered into force, that is the 2013 figures.

The Court had already said twice that this difference has no justification. By Decision no. 725 of 7 October 2020 it found that the same property cannot be worth one thing or another depending on who collects the money, and that such a criterion is purely subjective, contrary to art. 16 of the Constitution. The legislature nevertheless took the solution up again in Law no. 219/2020, merely reversing the two limbs, and the Court struck it down once more by Decision no. 189 of 18 March 2021. The 47 cases now decided had been referred to the Court before that decision was published, so they came up for judgment when the question had already been settled.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is the procedural one, and it is the effect that matters in practice. Under art. 29 para. (3) of Law no. 47/1992, provisions already found unconstitutional by an earlier decision cannot form the subject of a plea. That is why the pleas were dismissed not as unfounded, but as having become inadmissible, a formula which does not mean that the party was any less right, but that it had already won the point elsewhere.

The second effect follows from the first. In paragraph 41 the Court states expressly that a dismissal as having become inadmissible may constitute a ground for an application for revision, under art. 509 para. (1) point 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure. That text allows the revision of final judgments which were founded on a provision declared unconstitutional after the judgment became final. The Court cites its own settled case law to that effect, from Decision no. 22 of 21 January 2015 through to Decision no. 684 of 12 December 2023.

The third effect concerns the time limit. Under art. 511 para. (3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, for the ground in art. 509 para. (1) point 11 the application for revision must be made within three months of the date on which the decision of the Constitutional Court is published in the Official Gazette of Romania. The present decision was published on 20 August 2026.

The fourth effect clarifies the law as it stands. The Court points out that the legislative solution criticised is no longer current: the differentiation was removed by Law no. 193/2021, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 681 of 9 July 2021. Today, the valuation of property for which compensation is granted is carried out, for every beneficiary alike, by applying the notarial valuation grid in force for the year preceding the issuing of the decision by the National Commission for Property Compensation.

The fifth effect concerns the second part of the operative provisions. The plea relating to art. 31 para. (3¹) and art. 33 para. (4) of Law no. 165/2013, texts which concern persons certified as Holocaust survivors, was dismissed as inadmissible on two grounds: it was entirely unreasoned and it bore no connection with the subject matter of the disputes, which concerned the valuation of compensation. Here no route to revision opens up.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the law as it stands, this decision changes nothing. The text that created the double standard had been out of force since July 2021, and the decision that removed it from the statute book is Decision no. 189/2021, not this one.

What has changed is the concrete position of the parties in the 47 cases. Until now they were waiting for an answer from the Court, while the civil proceedings in which the plea had been raised had, as a rule, been decided in the meantime on the basis of the old text. From 20 August 2026 those parties hold an act published in the Official Gazette of Romania which they can attach to an application for revision, with a reference to paragraph 41.

A second change is worth noting, mentioned by the Court in passing but with an effect on files still being processed. By Decision no. 43 of 18 February 2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 606 of 27 June 2025, the wording concerning the technical characteristics of the property and its category of use on the date it was taken over, previously contained in the same art. 21 para. (6), was declared unconstitutional. Anyone having a file valued today therefore has two decisions to rely on, not one.

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