In brief

  • The bonus of up to 25% for access to state secret classified information remains available only to military personnel, police officers, prison police officers and civilian staff in defence, public order and national security.
  • The Constitutional Court dismissed, by unanimous vote, the request of judges and of the legal specialist staff assimilated to them to receive the same bonus, holding that they are not in the same situation as the current beneficiaries.
  • The Court’s central argument is surprising: it is precisely the statutory guarantee of access to state secrets enjoyed by magistrates that takes them out of the category of those who receive the bonus.
Act: CCR Decision no. 33/2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 570 of 10 July 2026
Pronounced: 20 January 2026

Judges do not receive the bonus of up to 25% granted to military personnel and police officers who work with state secret classified information, and the Constitutional Court says this is not discrimination. Decision no. 33 of 20 January 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 570 of 10 July 2026, dismisses the plea as unfounded and finds that Article 151(1) of Annex no. VI to Framework Law no. 153/2017 on the remuneration of staff paid from public funds is constitutional. This is the second time this summer that the Court has ruled on the salary rights of magistrates, after the one in which the challenge concerning the management allowance was dismissed as inadmissible.

The text under discussion was introduced into Annex no. VI to the remuneration law by the sole article of Law no. 157/2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 662 of 27 July 2020. It provides that military personnel, police officers, prison police officers and civilian staff in the defence, public order and national security system who hold a position with access to classified information in the state secret class receive a bonus on the basic salary or on the function pay of up to 25%, under the conditions established by order of the principal authorising officer.

The pleas were raised in four case files, from the Teleorman Tribunal, the Dâmbovița Tribunal and the Sălaj Tribunal, in disputes concerning salary rights. The Court joined them and heard them together. The authors argued that judges and the legal specialist staff assimilated to judges and prosecutors work with state secret documents in the same way, are remunerated under the same framework law and that, consequently, their exclusion from the bonus is discrimination on the ground of social category.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is that the text remains in force, in its current form. The decision is one of dismissal, so it produces no legislative change and creates no obligation of correlation for Parliament. The bonus continues to be granted to exactly the categories listed in the law.

The second effect is felt in the courts. The four proceedings in which the plea was raised, plus any other dispute stayed or founded on the same argument, lose their main basis. The decision is final and generally binding and is communicated to the three tribunals that referred the matter to the Court.

The third effect concerns the argument used, which goes beyond the specific case. The Court repeated that bonuses, premiums and other incentives granted through normative acts are supplementary salary rights, not fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and that their establishment, reduction or discontinuation falls within the exclusive competence of the legislature. The only constitutional limit the Court recognises is that the measure must apply equally to all categories of staff in an identical situation.

The fourth effect concerns the criticism relating to legislative drafting. One of the authors argued that the explanatory memorandum of Law no. 157/2020 does not objectively justify the different treatment. The Court replied that an extrinsic defect of unconstitutionality cannot arise from the way in which the initiator reasoned the proposal, because the object of review is the law as adopted, not the intentions set out in the explanatory memorandum.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In law, nothing. The decision confirms a line already established by Decision no. 196 of 8 April 2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 830 of 9 September 2025, which the Court cites three times, at paragraphs 29, 31 and 32 of that decision. The Court states expressly that no new elements have arisen capable of changing the case-law.

What has become clearer is the reasoning. The authors of the plea relied on Article 7(4) of Law no. 182/2002 on the protection of classified information, which guarantees access to state and service secrets, under points a) to h), for the President of Romania, the prime minister, ministers, deputies, senators, judges, prosecutors and assistant magistrates of the High Court of Cassation and Justice. Their argument was that, if the law guarantees them access, they are in the same situation as the beneficiaries of the bonus.

The Court turned the argument around. The beneficiaries of the bonus do not appear in that exhaustive list, so they are not in the same category as magistrates. Judges, prosecutors and assistant magistrates have access to state secrets by operation of the law, without the clearance procedures laid down in Article 7(1) to (3) and in Article 28 of the same law, and the Court holds that their grading allowance is established taking into account this aspect of their duties, the obligation of confidentiality being therefore already compensated in financial terms.

The object of the review was also clarified. The Sălaj Tribunal had referred to the Court Article 15 of Chapter II of Annex no. VI, not Article 151. Invoking Article 62 of Law no. 24/2000 on legislative drafting rules, according to which amending and supplementing provisions are incorporated into the basic act and become identified with it, the Court held that the object of the plea, for all four case files, is Article 151(1).

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It closes, by unanimous vote, a series of disputes that were being repeated before tribunals in different counties on the same argument.
  • It sets out explicitly the applicable criterion: bonuses may be differentiated by category of staff, provided that the measure reaches equally the categories in an identical situation.
  • It confirms that the explanatory memorandum of a law cannot itself be a ground of unconstitutionality, which removes a speculative avenue of challenge.
  • It makes the object of the review uniform for all four referrals, even though one of them had indicated a different article.

What remains a problem

  • The statement that the allowance of magistrates is established taking into account the obligation of confidentiality is not accompanied, in the decision, by any reference to the provision of the remuneration law that would do so.
  • The bonus remains fixed at “up to 25%”, and the actual percentage is set by order of the principal authorising officer, so the difference between categories is decided administratively, not by law.
  • 171 days passed between pronouncement and publication, during which the courts that had stayed proceedings waited.
  • The decision answers a criticism of discrimination, but says nothing about any other categories that work with classified information without receiving the bonus.

Practical advice

  1. If you have proceedings in which you claimed the bonus of up to 25% on the ground of discrimination compared with military personnel, check whether the court stayed the case pending this decision. From publication, the ground for the stay disappears.
  2. Do not confuse the two bonuses. The 15% confidentiality bonus, discussed by the High Court in Decision no. 46 of 15 December 2008 and invoked by the authors of the plea, is different from the bonus of up to 25% under Article 151.
  3. If you are among the beneficiaries of the text, the specific percentage cannot be read from the law. It is set by order of the principal authorising officer, so ask for the order applicable to your institution.
  4. For any new challenge to this text, the argument of discrimination compared with magistrates is now covered by a decision of dismissal. A new criticism must bring an element the Court has not analysed.
  5. If you are interested in the full reasoning, read Decision no. 196 of 8 April 2025 first. The present decision takes it over and confirms it, without adding new substantive considerations.

Frequently asked questions

Who receives the bonus of up to 25%?
Military personnel, police officers, prison police officers and civilian staff in the defence, public order and national security system who hold a position with access to classified information in the state secret class.
Why do judges not receive it as well?
The Court held that magistrates and the beneficiaries of the bonus are not in an identical situation. Magistrates have access to classified information guaranteed by law, without the clearance procedures, and their grading allowance is established, according to the Court, taking into account this aspect of their duties.
Does the decision change the law?
No. It is a decision of dismissal, so the text remains unchanged and no obligation to amend it arises for Parliament.
How much is the bonus in concrete terms?
The law says “up to 25%”. The actual percentage is set by order of the principal authorising officer of each institution.
Was the decision taken by majority or unanimously?
By unanimous vote, according to paragraph 33 of the decision. There are no separate opinions.
What does it mean that the decision is final and generally binding?
That it cannot be challenged and that it is binding on everyone from the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, not only on the parties in the four case files.
What happened to the case file in which Article 15 was challenged, not Article 151?
The Court held that the object of the plea, for all four joined case files, is Article 151(1), invoking Article 62 of Law no. 24/2000, according to which supplementing provisions are incorporated into the basic act.

Editorial analysis

The most interesting thing about this decision is not the outcome, predictable after Decision no. 196 of 8 April 2025, but the way the Court uses the authors’ own argument against them. The judges said: the law guarantees us access to state secrets, so we are in the same situation as those who receive the bonus. The Court replied: precisely because the law guarantees it to you and not to them, you are not in the same situation. The list in Article 7(4) of Law no. 182/2002, invoked as proof of similarity, becomes in the Court’s reasoning the proof of difference. It is an inversion that is logically sound and, at the same time, uncomfortable: it follows from it that a right recognised without a procedure is worth less, in pay terms, than one obtained through a procedure.

The second observation concerns a statement the decision makes without supporting it. The Court holds that the grading allowance of magistrates is established taking into account their access to classified information, so the obligation of confidentiality would already be compensated in financial terms. This is the decisive argument of the whole construction, because it explains why the absence of the bonus leaves no gap. Except that the decision indicates no article, no annex and no element of calculation in Framework Law no. 153/2017 that would show where exactly, within the allowance, that compensation lies. The statement is taken over from Decision no. 196/2025, where it also appears without a source.

The third observation concerns the architecture of the contested text. The law sets a ceiling, not an amount: “up to 25%”, “under the conditions established by order of the principal authorising officer”. The Court analyses the difference in treatment as one decided by the legislature, but the real size of the difference is not decided by the legislature. It is decided, institution by institution, by an administrative act that never reaches constitutional review. A bonus of 5% and one of 25% produce, in relation to a category that receives nothing, inequalities of different orders of magnitude, and about that the decision has nothing to say.

Finally, a detail of timing. The decision was pronounced on 20 January 2026 and published on 10 July 2026, 171 days apart. Decision no. 196/2025, on which it relies, took 154 days between pronouncement and publication. In a series of disputes stayed while waiting for the Court, these intervals add up.

What should be changed

  • The statement about confidentiality being compensated within the allowance of magistrates should be supported by a text. Being the argument that underpins the entire outcome, it would gain if it referred to the specific element of the remuneration law that delivers that compensation.
  • The legislature should say why it chose exactly these categories. The Court held correctly that the explanatory memorandum cannot be a ground of unconstitutionality, but that does not remove the practical problem: the criterion separating the beneficiaries from everyone else cannot be reconstructed from the text of Law no. 157/2020.
  • The 25% ceiling should be accompanied by statutory criteria for setting the actual percentage. Left entirely to the order of the principal authorising officer, the amount may differ from one institution to another for the same factual situation.
  • The time limit for publishing the Court’s decisions would deserve an express cap. As long as a decision of dismissal holds up stayed proceedings, the nearly six months between pronouncement and publication are a cost borne by litigants.

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. 570 of 10 July 2026 8 pages PDF, 81 KB the act starts on page 5

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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.