In brief

  • The Constitutional Court upheld, unanimously, the objection lodged by the Ombudsman and declared unconstitutional the law that deleted from the Code of Civil Procedure the judge’s duty to record the parties’ arguments in the judgment. The law cannot be promulgated in the form in which it was voted.
  • The text in force is untouched: Article 425(1)(b) still requires the grounds of any civil judgment to set out the object of the claim and the parties’ submissions in brief. For anyone with a case pending, nothing changes.
  • The law that has been struck down deleted five words from a single letter of a single article. Between its rejection in the Senate, on 7 March 2022, and its adoption in the Chamber of Deputies, on 15 October 2025, 1,318 days went by.
Act: Constitutional Court Decision no. 734 of 24 June 2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 753 of 4 September 2026
In force from: 4 September 2026, the date of publication, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution

The law that removed the summary of the parties’ arguments from the reasoning of civil judgments has failed at the Constitutional Court. Decision no. 734 of 24 June 2026, published on 4 September 2026, upholds the objection raised by the Ombudsman and finds that the text voted by the Chamber of Deputies on 15 October 2025 breaches the right to a fair trial. It is the second procedural text stopped at the Court that we have written about in the past week, after the one that removed summoning from the preliminary chamber.

To see what is at stake, one has to say what the article under attack does. Every civil judgment has three parts: the introductory part, the grounds and the operative part. The operative part is the solution, the sentence saying who won and what exactly they won. The grounds are the reasoning, the explanation from which one can see how the judge reached that solution. Article 425(1)(b) of the Code of Civil Procedure lists what the grounds must contain, and one of the items listed there is the summary of what the parties asked for and what they answered.

The law adopted by Parliament had a single article. It rewrote letter b) so that the phrase „the parties’ submissions in brief” would disappear from the list. The rest stayed intact: the object of the claim, the facts established on the basis of the evidence, the factual and legal grounds on which the solution rests, the reasons for which the parties’ claims were allowed and those for which they were rejected. In other words, the judge would still have been obliged to explain why he ruled as he did, but he would no longer have been obliged to write down what each party had argued before he got there.

From the reasons set out in the explanatory memorandum to the law, the aim was to ease the courts’ workload. The Ombudsman argued that a set of grounds from which the parties’ positions are missing becomes abstract, and the reader can no longer check whether the court answered what it was asked. The presidents of the two chambers of Parliament and the Government sent no observations. Amicus curiae briefs were filed asking for the objection to be upheld, and one of the initiators of the law filed a document asking for it to be dismissed.

The Court upheld the objection on a single constitutional ground. It held that removing the parties’ submissions from the grounds „creates an imbalance in the transparency of the act of justice”, with the consequence that Article 21(3) of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a fair trial, is breached. The criticism based on Article 1(5), raised by reference to the way the explanatory memorandum was drafted, was rejected: the Court noted that the explanatory memorandum has no constitutional standing and that, once the law is adopted, its role is reduced to helping with interpretation, invoking here Decision no. 56 of 31 January 2024.

What it changes in practice

The immediate effect is that the law cannot be promulgated. Under Article 147(2) of the Constitution, where a law is declared unconstitutional before promulgation, Parliament is required to re-examine the provisions concerned in order to bring them into line with the decision of the Court. Here the law had a single article, and that single article was declared unconstitutional in its entirety, so there is no part to be repaired separately from the rest.

The decision becomes generally binding from the date of publication, that is, from 4 September 2026, and produces effects only for the future. The Court wrote in the operative part that it is final and generally binding and ordered it to be communicated to the President of Romania, to the presidents of the two chambers and to the prime minister.

For the courts and for litigants, the practical effect is that nothing changes. Civil judgments will go on being drafted according to the text in force today, which requires the grounds to contain the object of the claim and the parties’ submissions in brief. Judges do not have to learn a new form or go through a transition period.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

From the point of view of the applicable law, the honest answer is that nothing has changed. That is precisely the practical information: Article 425(1)(b) stays in the form it had before the vote. What has changed is the fate of a text that had been awaiting promulgation since 25 October 2025 and that can now no longer become law.

The Court reconstructed in the decision the history of this obligation, and there one can see that the idea is not new. The Code of Civil Procedure of 1865 required, in Article 261, that the judgment contain „the object of the claim and the parties’ submissions in abridged form, with an indication of the evidence”. Government Ordinance no. 13/1998 removed the mention and went much further: judges at first instance and on appeal were to draft only the operative part, and the reasoning was written only if the judgment was challenged. The declared aim was, then as now, speed.

The experiment lasted less than three years. The ordinance was repealed on 29 December 2000 by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 290/2000 and definitively rejected by Law no. 787/2001, published on 16 January 2002. The reason, as the Court reproduces it from the explanatory memorandum to the approving law, is that the measure did not achieve its purpose and that in many situations the interests of the parties were harmed. Between the publication of the ordinance, on 30 January 1998, and its repeal, 1,064 days went by.

After the return to the old form, the obligation passed into the new code as Article 419(1)(b) and became Article 425 after the republication of 2012. From 2000 until today it has not been interrupted again.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The party who loses a case can read in the judgment what exactly it argued and can check whether the court answered that point. Without the summary of the submissions, it would have had to place the judgment and the case file side by side to find out.
  • The court of appeal or of cassation sees from the judgment under challenge what the procedural framework was and can check whether the first court stayed within the limits of the case brought before it.
  • The grounds are covered by res judicata, under Article 430(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure. Keeping the submissions there helps to establish, in a future dispute, what has already been judged.
  • The judgment can also be relied on against third parties, under Article 435(2). A third party who wants to prove the contrary needs to know what was claimed and what was argued in defence, and he has no access to the file.
  • The decision was taken unanimously and with no separate or concurring opinions, which means the solution does not depend on a fragile majority and is hard to reopen with the same arguments.

What remains a problem

  • The problem the law started from does not go away. The volume of judgments to be drafted stays the same, and the decision does not propose, and could not have proposed, an alternative way of easing the workload.
  • The Court settled the case on Article 21(3) and did not rule on the other grounds invoked by the Ombudsman, Article 24 on the right of defence and Article 129 on the means of challenge. A Parliament that wanted to rewrite the text does not learn from the decision where it is still allowed to tread.
  • The law did not say in what way the courts’ workload would be eased, nor was it accompanied by any estimate of the time saved. The decision contains no figure about the real drafting effort that this part of a judgment takes.
  • The case was pending before the Court from 24 October 2025 until 24 June 2026, with seven hearing dates, and the reasoning was published only after a further 72 days.
  • The text that has been preserved does not say how detailed the summary has to be. The requirement remains as vague as before, and the practice of the courts varies.

Practical advice

  1. If you have a civil case pending, do nothing. The rule on drafting judgments stays the one that applied before the vote of October 2025.
  2. When you receive the judgment, read first the part of the grounds that summarises what you asked for. If the summary does not look like your claim, you have a signal there that the court may have judged something other than what you asked.
  3. Errors in that summary are corrected on a separate and much simpler route than an appeal. Article 442(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure allows the correction of errors and omissions concerning the parties’ submissions, of the court’s own motion or on request.
  4. If the court reserved judgment, your submissions may appear in the record of the hearing, which becomes an integral part of the judgment. Ask for that record as well, not only for the judgment.
  5. When you draft the grounds of appeal, compare the summary of the submissions with the court’s answer. An argument correctly summarised but answered nowhere in the reasoning is exactly the kind of defect that the higher court can establish.
  6. Do not confuse the absence of a point-by-point answer with the absence of reasoning. The Court recalls that a judge is not required to answer each argument separately, but must answer the main submissions.
  7. If you are following a case in which you are not a party but the judgment can be relied on against you, the submissions recorded in the judgment are your main source. The file is not accessible to you.

Frequently asked questions

What does „the parties’ submissions in brief” mean?
It is the summary of what each party asked for and answered. The Court describes it at length: for the claimant, the claims, the factual and legal grounds, the evidence and the main arguments; for the defendant, the position on the action, the defences on the merits, the procedural objections and any counterclaim; for interveners, whom they support and why they intervened.
What did the law declared unconstitutional seek to change?
One single thing. It rewrote Article 425(1)(b) without the phrase „the parties’ submissions in brief”. All the other elements of the grounds stayed in the text, including the duty to set out the factual and legal reasons and the reasons for which the claims were allowed or rejected.
Does anything change for cases already under way?
No. The law never got as far as promulgation and produced no effect at all. Judgments are drafted according to the text in force, the one that requires the parties’ submissions in brief.
Why did the law fall?
The Court held that removing the submissions from the grounds creates an imbalance in the transparency of the act of justice and breaches the right to a fair trial, guaranteed by Article 21(3) of the Constitution and by Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The substantive argument is that the structure of a judgment must be symmetrical, so that the road from what was claimed, through what was proved and argued, to the solution can be seen.
What case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is cited?
The Court invokes the judgment of 19 April 1993 in Kraska v. Switzerland and the judgment of 15 October 2009 in Micallef v. Malta, for the idea that it is not enough for justice to be done, it must also be seen to be done. It further cites the judgment of 7 March 2006 in Donadzé v. Georgia, for the duty to answer the main submissions, the judgment of 17 January 2008 in Ryakib Biryoukov v. Russia, on the situation where only the operative part is read out, and the judgment of 9 December 1994 in Ruiz Torija v. Spain, for the idea that the extent of the reasoning varies with the nature of the judgment.
Was the decision taken unanimously? Are there separate opinions?
Yes, unanimously, as the operative part of the decision itself states. The panel had eight judges, chaired by Elena-Simina Tănăsescu. In the text published in the Official Gazette of Romania there is no separate opinion and no concurring opinion.
What happens now to the law?
It cannot be promulgated. Parliament has the constitutional duty to re-examine the provisions declared unconstitutional and to bring them into line with the decision. Since the law had a single article and that article fell in its entirety, bringing it into line means in practice giving up the amendment.
Why did the Court reject the criticism concerning the explanatory memorandum?
Because the explanatory memorandum has no constitutional standing. The Court noted, referring to Decision no. 56 of 31 January 2024, that the explanatory memorandum is a document required in the adoption procedure, but that, once the law is adopted, its role is reduced to helping with the understanding of the text. It remains a tool of interpretation, not a criterion of constitutionality in itself.
What do I do if my judgment does not correctly reproduce what I argued?
Ask for the judgment to be corrected. Article 442(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure expressly covers errors and omissions concerning the parties’ submissions and allows them to be corrected of the court’s own motion or at the party’s request, without the need for a challenge.
How long did this law take?
The proposal was rejected by the Senate on 7 March 2022 and sent to the Chamber of Deputies on 14 March 2022. The Chamber of Deputies adopted it on 15 October 2025, as the decision-making chamber. The Ombudsman referred the matter to the Court on 24 October 2025, the decision was delivered on 24 June 2026 and published on 4 September 2026. From the rejection in the Senate to the publication of the decision, 1,642 days went by, that is, four and a half years.

Editorial analysis

The figures here say more than the reasoning. The Chamber of Deputies adopted the law on 15 October 2025 and the Court struck it down on 24 June 2026, that is, 252 days later. The reasoning appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania only on 4 September 2026, 72 days after delivery, so from the vote to the full text of the decision 324 days went by. In Parliament, the road was even longer: 1,318 days between the rejection in the Senate, on 7 March 2022, and the adoption in the Chamber of Deputies, on 15 October 2025. All of this for a single article that deleted five words from one letter of one provision.

There is a consequence in the decision that does not leap out on a linear reading, because it emerges from combining two paragraphs placed far apart. In paragraphs 40 and 41, the Court shows that the introductory part of the judgment takes over the elements of the record of the sitting provided for in Article 233(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure, and among those elements is again „the brief presentation of the parties’ submissions”. Where the court reserves judgment, the same mentions are found in the record of the hearing, which becomes an integral part of the judgment. It follows that the law that has been struck down would not have removed the parties’ submissions from the judgment, but would have moved them exclusively into its descriptive part. What was lost was something else, namely their place in the grounds, the only part of a judgment covered by res judicata under Article 430(2). The Court does not spell out this reasoning, although all the pieces of it are in the text.

The second observation concerns the precedent that the Court reconstructs and that Parliament appears not to have consulted. Government Ordinance no. 13/1998 tried exactly the same idea, in a far more radical form, again invoking speed. It was published on 30 January 1998, repealed on 29 December 2000 and rejected by law on 16 January 2002. It lasted 1,064 days and was abandoned with the express reasoning that it had not produced the promised speed, but had harmed the interests of the parties. In 2025, Parliament voted a milder variant of the same solution, without any assessment of the earlier experiment in the file. The presidents of the two chambers and the Government sent no observations, and the only document filed in defence of the law came from one of its initiators.

One gap is left open by the decision. The Ombudsman invoked four constitutional grounds, and the Court answered on two: it rejected the criticism based on Article 1(5) and upheld the one based on Article 21(3). About Article 24, the right of defence, and about Article 129, the use of the means of challenge, the decision says nothing. The solution is complete, since a single well-founded ground is enough, but a legislature that wanted to return to the subject has no way of finding out whether a rewritten form would pass the other two filters.

What should be changed

  • A statutory deadline for drafting the reasoning of the Court’s decisions. Between delivery and publication, 72 days went by, an interval in which the law was formally blocked but the decision was not yet binding and Parliament could not begin the re-examination. A fixed deadline would close this interval of uncertainty.
  • A mandatory opinion of the Superior Council of Magistracy and of the High Court of Cassation and Justice on any amendment to the procedural codes. Here, the institutions that apply the text day in and day out appeared nowhere in the parliamentary procedure, and the Court ended up quoting from the internal rules of the courts in order to reconstruct the practice.
  • The Court should rule on all the grounds invoked, not only on the first sufficient one. The practical effect would be that Parliament would know whether it has room for manoeuvre for a new form or whether the idea is definitively closed.
  • Measures to ease the courts’ workload should come with an estimate of the time saved. Neither the law nor the file contains any figure about how much of the effort of drafting a judgment goes into the summary of the submissions. Without that figure, the debate about speed is conducted on hunches, exactly as in 1998.
  • The legislative file should automatically display the time elapsed between stages. The 1,318 days the proposal spent in the decision-making chamber are nowhere visible in a readable form, although they are the piece of information that best explains why an amendment of five words came to be settled only after four and a half years.

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. 753 of 4 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 118 KB the act starts on page 2

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