CCR upholds public-sector pay caps: the 10% rise in 2023 and 5% in 2024 stay constitutional

Capping the pay increases of public-sector employees in 2023 and 2024 is constitutional. The Constitutional Court dismissed as unfounded the plea of unconstitutionality raised by the Botoșani Education Trade Union League on behalf of a number of its members and found that Government Emergency Ordinance No. 168/2022, Government Emergency Ordinance No. 115/2023 and Government Emergency Ordinance No. 128/2023 are constitutional, both as regards the specific provisions criticised and in their entirety. This is the second time in recent months that the Court has upheld an austerity measure contained in the same December 2022 ordinance, after it had already held that postponing the increase of the pension point is constitutional. Decision No. 57 of 22 January 2026 was published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 613 of 27 July 2026.

What is at stake is one of the oldest disputes between the education trade unions and the state. Article 12(2) of Framework Law No. 153/2017 provides that, starting with 2023, base salaries are to be calculated by multiplying the coefficients in the annexes by the guaranteed national minimum gross salary. Applying that mechanism would have meant appreciably higher salaries for many teaching positions than those actually paid. The Government derogated from it through successive emergency ordinances, one for each budget year, and teachers went to court to claim the difference.

The Court’s file brought together an unusual number of cases. The plea was raised in roughly 60 cases before the Botoșani Tribunal, First Civil Division, and the Court joined them all to File No. 2185D/2024, the first one registered. The Public Prosecutor’s Office asked for the plea to be dismissed as unfounded, the Government argued that it was inadmissible, the Botoșani Tribunal considered the provisions constitutional, and the presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament and the Ombudsman submitted no point of view.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is procedural and immediate. The decision is final and generally binding from the date of publication, so the courts hearing the roughly 60 cases in Botoșani, like any other proceedings with a similar object anywhere in the country, are bound by the Court’s conclusion. The argument that the caps are unconstitutional can no longer be raised, and Article 29(3) of Law No. 47/1992 prevents the same plea from being brought again.

The second effect concerns the amounts. What stands, as compliant with the Constitution, is the 10% increase in the gross amount of base salaries for 2023, calculated by reference to the December 2022 level and capped at the nominal value laid down for 2022 in the annexes to Framework Law No. 153/2017, as well as the rule under which newly hired or promoted staff, for whom no similar position is in payment, receive the salary set for 2022, to which the seniority increment is added.

The third effect concerns 2024 and the separate treatment of education. The Court upheld both the general increase of 5% over December 2023 and the exception applied to education staff, whose base salaries rose by 20% on average, in two instalments, from 1 January and from 1 June 2024, with those salaries to be set directly by the annex to Government Emergency Ordinance No. 128/2023 as of 1 January 2024.

The fourth effect is one of principle and goes beyond the case at hand. The Court expressly held that Framework Law No. 153/2017 is indeed the source of legitimate expectations in matters of pay for staff paid from public funds, but that the Government has the constitutional right and duty to intervene in the state’s pay policy when unforeseeable and insurmountable situations arise. In other words, a schedule of increases contained in a framework law is not a guarantee that ties the hands of the delegated legislator.

The fifth effect is one of legal technique, useful in future litigation. Although the three provisions had ceased to apply before the courts referred the matter to it, the Court ruled on them in the form that continues to produce effects in cases already under way, on the basis of Decision No. 766 of 15 June 2011. A rule that is no longer in force can therefore be reviewed for constitutionality for as long as the outcome of pending proceedings depends on it.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In law, nothing changes: the Court confirms the existing state of affairs, it does not alter it. What changes is the procedural position of the claimants, who lose the only argument capable of setting aside the provisions that limited their pay increases.

The union’s central argument rested on two older decisions upholding pleas. By Decision No. 1221 of 12 November 2008, the Court had found Government Emergency Ordinance No. 136/2008 unconstitutional, and by Decision No. 842 of 2 June 2009 it had found Government Emergency Ordinance No. 151/2008 partly unconstitutional. Both ordinances had cut the pay increases for education established by Government Ordinance No. 15/2008 and approved by Parliament through Law No. 221/2008. The Court held at the time that the Government cannot adopt emergency ordinances merely in order to counter a legislative policy measure that Parliament had just taken.

The distinction the Court now draws is one of context, not of content. In 2008, the Government stepped in during the same year and very shortly after Parliament had approved the increases, thereby countering a legislative will that had just been expressed. In 2022 and 2023, the limiting measures were set annually by the Government through its own successive normative acts, continuing Government Emergency Ordinance No. 226/2020 and Government Emergency Ordinance No. 130/2021, whose justifications the Court had already examined in Decision No. 388 of 17 September 2024.

The justifications drawn from the explanatory memoranda are quantifiable. Without the measures in Government Emergency Ordinance No. 168/2022, among them the reduction of pay increases, the general consolidated budget deficit would have reached 10.3% of gross domestic product, with a risk of tighter financing conditions for the state, at a time when the Recommendation of the Council of the European Union of 3 April 2020 had called on Romania to correct its excessive deficit rigorously. The Court considered that these circumstances are objective in nature and amount to extraordinary situations within the meaning of Article 115(4) of the Constitution.

The criticisms based on the right to property were rejected on the strength of a distinction drawn from the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights: the right to actually receive the salary due for work already performed is one thing, the right to keep receiving, in the future, a salary of a given amount is another. The Court relied on the judgments in Vilho Eskelinen and Others v. Finland, Kechko v. Ukraine, Wieczorek v. Poland and Aizpurua Ortiz and Others v. Spain, according to which states enjoy a wide margin of appreciation in setting the amounts paid to their own employees.

Finally, the criticism based on Article 53 of the Constitution, concerning the restriction of the exercise of certain rights, was set aside for a technical reason: that provision refers to restrictions imposed by law in the strict sense, that is, by an act of Parliament. The pay cap in education had a direct sequel: the 2018 ban on bonuses and gift vouchers for public employees was likewise upheld by the CCR. Emergency ordinances are governed by Article 115(6), and the Court found that this had not been breached either, since the criticisms concerning the right to property were unfounded.

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