In brief
- In six types of urgent civil case, the court no longer sets the first hearing date after the file has been assigned, but in the same operation as the assignment. The Ecris system allocates the file to a panel and allocates the first hearing date at the same time, „as close as possible to the day on which the document initiating the proceedings was received”. The cases named expressly are the presidential injunction, the provisional suspension of enforcement, the suspension of an administrative act until the court ruling on the merits delivers its decision, the measure declaring a person undesirable, adoption, and protective measures for vulnerable persons such as curatorship.
- For the person whose case it is, the rule creates no new right and no time limit that can be relied upon. It is a rule on the court’s own internal organisation, written into the courts’ own Rules of Internal Procedure, and it is addressed to the official who carries out the assignment and to the president of the court. The practical effect is real, but indirect: the date of the first hearing comes into being together with the file, instead of waiting for the preparatory steps under Article 107 paragraph (2) of the same Rules. How close that date actually is appears nowhere in figures, and summonses continue to go out under Article 108, which has no time limit of its own either.
- The list stays open at the end, and the person who completes it is each court president. After the six cases it names, the text adds „other urgent cases established by the president of the court”, with no criterion and no obligation to publish the list. The upshot is that the same urgent application may receive a hearing date on day one at one district court and follow the ordinary route at another.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 870 of 19 October 2026, page 16
Who it concerns: district courts, tribunals, specialised tribunals and courts of appeal, through the official designated to assign cases randomly, through the adjudicating panels and through the court presidents; indirectly, the parties to the urgent civil cases listed, both at first instance and on appeal
Takes effect: 19 October 2026, the date of publication. Article II of the decision provides only for publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I and does not postpone application to a later date, so there is nothing to wait for once the text is out
Anyone who applies for a presidential injunction, the Romanian procedure for interim relief, is really applying for time. The application goes to the district court because a measure is needed now, not at the end of a trial: so that access to the house is not cut off, so that a child does not leave the country, so that a building is not pulled down before the question of title is settled. What happens after filing has never concerned the applicant directly, because it is registry work: the file is recorded, assigned at random to a panel, sent on to that panel, and somewhere along the way the date of the first hearing comes into being. Decision no. 1.961/2026 of the Section for Judges of the Superior Council of Magistracy, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 870 of 19 October 2026, changes one single thing on that route, and changes it for a short list of cases.
The act is one of the smallest interventions imaginable: two articles, a single indent of normative text and one new paragraph. The Rules of Internal Procedure of the Courts of Law, approved by Decision no. 3.243/2022 of the Section for Judges of the Superior Council of Magistracy and published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1254 and no. 1254 bis of 27 December 2022, gain a paragraph (3) in Article 107. The rest of the Rules is untouched, including the articles before and after the one supplemented.
Article 107 has so far had two paragraphs and described a simple chain. Paragraph (1) provides that files containing statements of claim „are sent to the person designated to assign cases randomly, with a view to allocation among panels”. Paragraph (2) provides that files assigned at random are sent „without delay” to the panel concerned, „for the steps preparatory to setting the first hearing date to be carried out”, and adds that, depending on the number and complexity of the cases, the governing board may set a different deadline for checking the applications. The order is therefore assignment, checking, hearing date. The first hearing date appears at the end of the sequence.
The new paragraph takes the hearing date out of the end of the sequence and moves it to the beginning, but only in civil matters and only for the urgent cases it lists: the presidential injunction, the provisional suspension of enforcement, the suspension of an administrative act until the court ruling on the merits delivers its decision, the measure declaring a person undesirable, adoption, protective measures for vulnerable persons such as curatorship, plus „other urgent cases established by the president of the court”. In those cases, the text reads, „the random assignment of the case by the Ecris system shall be carried out together with the allocation of the first hearing date, as close as possible to the day on which the document initiating the proceedings was received”. Ecris is the IT system in which Romanian courts record and track their files, so the allocation becomes an operation of the software, triggered by the same keystroke that assigns the case, rather than a step someone takes after reading the file.
On 20 October 2026 the Constitutional Court confirmed that the courts’ internal rules may set the composition of the judicial panel.
What it changes in practice
In the cases listed, the date of the first hearing exists from the day of assignment. Up to and including 18 October 2026, the file went to the panel for the preparatory steps, and the hearing date was set after them. From 19 October 2026, in the six categories of case the date is allocated at the same moment as the assignment. For a party who has filed an application for provisional suspension of enforcement, the difference is that the hearing date may be there when the file is checked, rather than only after the panel has worked through its verifications.
The rule gives no figure and no binding deadline. The standard is „as close as possible to the day on which the document initiating the proceedings was received”. There is no number of days, no maximum threshold, no consequence provided for where the date allocated turns out to be far off. Nothing in the decision turns that wording into a procedural right of the party: the Rules of Internal Procedure organise the court’s work, they do not give the party a new application to make or any ground of challenge.
Whoever decides what else counts as urgent outside the list is the president of the court, with no written criterion. The closing clause of the paragraph confers that power without requiring a criterion, a form, a deadline or publication of the list. No other provision of the decision obliges the president to draw one up at all, so one court may stay with the six categories named while another adds, say, applications for special guardianship or division-of-property cases where the home is in dispute.
The file and the panel continue to be settled by lot. The random character of the assignment is untouched and no list of panels reserved for urgent cases appears anywhere. The allocation of the hearing date is added to the existing operation, it does not replace it, so nobody picks the panel that will hear the presidential injunction.
Criminal matters stay outside the rule. The paragraph opens with „In civil matters”, and Article 107 of the Rules contains no clause extending its provisions to criminal cases. By comparison, Article 106, on applications by the same party sent to the first panel seised, has a final paragraph stating expressly that it applies „correspondingly in criminal matters as well”. Article 107 has nothing of the kind.
Summoning for the first hearing continues to follow the old rules. Article 108 paragraph (3) of the Rules leaves the issuing of summonses for the first hearing to the court clerk or to a clerk designated by the president of the court, while paragraph (1) of the same article places preparation of the case with the presiding judge of the panel or one of its judges. Neither of those two provisions is touched by the amendment and neither is given a deadline. A hearing date allocated early does not, in itself, make the summonses go out any faster.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The number of paragraphs in Article 107. Up to and including 18 October 2026 the article had two paragraphs; from 19 October 2026 it has three. Paragraphs (1) and (2) remain worded exactly as they were, word for word.
The moment the first hearing date is allocated, in urgent cases. The old text said nowhere when the first hearing date is allocated; it said only what happens before it is set, namely the preparatory steps under paragraph (2). The new text fixes that moment for a list of cases and ties it to the day the document initiating the proceedings was received, not to the completion of the verifications.
The role of the Ecris system, named for the first time in this article. Paragraphs (1) and (2) speak of people and of panels: „the person designated to assign cases randomly”, „the panel concerned”, „the governing board”. Paragraph (3) assigns the operation to the software, „the Ecris system”. That is a change of language with practical consequences: an operation carried out by software cannot be put off for lack of time, but neither can it be adapted case by case.
The pace of changes to the Rules. The 2022 Rules were published 1,392 days ago, on 27 December 2022. Their consolidated versions bear the dates 12 July 2023, 26 November 2024, 24 June 2025, 15 September 2026 and 19 October 2026, which makes this the fifth intervention in under four years and the second in 2026, 34 days after the previous one.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- In a presidential injunction or a provisional suspension of enforcement, the hearing date no longer depends on when the panel gets to the file, but is created together with the assignment.
- The rule applies on appeal as well, not only at first instance, so an appeal or a second appeal in such a case does not lose the advantage gained before the first court.
- The operation is carried out by software, not by a person, so it cannot be put off because the registry is overloaded that day.
- The random character of the assignment is untouched: no dedicated panels are created and nobody picks the judge who will decide the urgent case.
- The list also covers cases whose urgency is not obvious to an outside observer, such as adoption and protective measures for vulnerable persons.
What remains a problem
- „As close as possible to the day on which the document initiating the proceedings was received” is not a figure. Without a maximum number of days, the rule can neither be verified nor relied upon.
- The party gets nothing to use: no application, no challenge, no duty owed by the court. If the date allocated is far off, the Rules provide for no consequence.
- The open list at the end of the paragraph leaves each court president a decision with no criterion and no duty to publish it, so the same application may be treated differently at two neighbouring courts.
- The preparatory steps under paragraph (2) and the governing board’s power to extend the checking of applications remain unchanged and do not sit comfortably with a date that has already been allocated.
- Nothing links the date allocated to the dispatch of the summonses: if the summons does not arrive in time, the first hearing is adjourned and the days gained are lost.
Practical advice
- If you file one of the applications listed, check your file on the court’s portal in the days immediately after filing: from 19 October 2026 the hearing date may already be there, before a judge has read the file.
- State plainly in your initial application what makes the matter urgent and what happens if the measure is delayed. The new text does not require this, but whether a case falls within the list of urgent cases is decided by the subject matter declared in the application.
- Do not build any strategy on the words „as close as possible”. It is not a mandatory time limit, it carries no figure, and the court owes you no explanation if the date allocated is several weeks away.
- If your application is urgent but does not fall within the six categories named, ask at the court registry whether the president has established any further urgent cases. The decision provides no procedure through which a party may request inclusion, so there is neither a standard form nor a deadline for a reply.
- Check the summons separately, not just the hearing date. A date allocated early does not mean the summoning procedure started early, and a summons not duly served adjourns the hearing.
- If you have an urgent criminal case, the rule does not concern you: the paragraph applies in civil matters only.
Frequently asked questions
Does anything change for me if I have a case in court?
Which cases are on the urgent list?
Can I ask to be put on the list of urgent cases?
Can the date allocated by Ecris be moved?
Does it apply on appeal as well?
Does it apply in criminal files too?
When does it apply from?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 870, page 16, Article I, the new paragraph (3), read against Article 107 paragraph (2) of the Rules, which is left unchanged. The two paragraphs describe working orders that cannot both hold on the same file at the same time. Paragraph (2) sends the assigned file to the panel „for the steps preparatory to setting the first hearing date to be carried out”, thereby placing the setting of the date after the verifications, and lets the governing board set a different deadline for checking the applications, that is, even stretch that interval. Paragraph (3) allocates the date in the same operation as the assignment, therefore before the verifications. The decision does not say that paragraph (2) is disapplied in urgent cases, does not say what becomes of a date already allocated if the check shows that the application needs completing, and does not say whether an interval extended by the governing board may run past the date allocated. A panel acting in good faith can reach two different conclusions: either the preparatory steps are compressed so as to fit before the date allocated, or the date allocated by Ecris is merely provisional and the panel may move it after the verifications. On the first reading, a party with an incomplete application gets a hearing anyway; on the second, that party loses the date and returns to the ordinary route.
Editorial analysis
The decision solves a real problem with the smallest possible text. In an urgent case, the interval hardest to explain to a party is the one between filing the application and the appearance of a hearing date, because nothing visible happens from the outside during that interval and no time limit runs that the party could follow. Moving the allocation into the same operation as the assignment takes that interval out of the picture, and the fact that the operation is carried out by Ecris, not by a person, makes it hard to put off. For a presidential injunction or a provisional suspension of enforcement, where a delay of two weeks can empty the application of its purpose, the gain is real.
Where it falls short, though, is exactly where it matters to the person whose case it is. The new paragraph names six categories of case and gives no criterion for a seventh, which it leaves to the president of each court. Nor does it require that the list be published. The predictable result is that, from that same day, 19 October 2026, Romania will operate as many parallel lists of urgent cases as it has courts, each of them opaque to anyone who does not walk into the registry and ask. Rules aimed at speed produce, through their own closing clause, a geographical inequality of treatment that nobody can invoke, because nothing obliges anyone to remove it.
The second shortcut shows up only if you read the new paragraph alongside Article 108, which the decision does not touch. The date is allocated on the day of assignment, but the summonses for the first hearing go out, under Article 108 paragraph (3), through the court clerk, after the panel has taken the preparatory measures provided for in paragraph (1), and the Rules set no deadline for either of those operations. The result is a jumble of asymmetrical time limits: the hearing date is tied to the day the application was received, while preparation of the case is tied to nothing. A first hearing set at seven days, with a summons sent out on the sixth, will be adjourned, and the adjournment leads straight back to the delay the act set out to remove.
The third point shows up only against the Rules’ own pace of change. The 2022 text reached 1,392 days old on the date of this amendment and has passed through five consolidated versions, two of them in 2026, 34 days apart. This amendment, however, stops at Article 107, even though Article 108 is the practical end of the chain that starts there. When an institution repairs a chain link by link, months apart, the links stay mismatched, and it is the party who discovers the mismatch, at the first hearing adjourned because service was not completed.
What should be changed
- Put a figure in place of the wording „as close as possible to the day on which the document initiating the proceedings was received”. A threshold, say no more than 10 days from registration, would turn an intention into a measurable obligation and would give the court’s management an indicator it can track in Ecris. Without a figure, the rule is satisfied just as well by a date five days out as by one five weeks out.
- Require the president of the court to publish the list of urgent cases he or she adds, on the court’s portal. A single sentence in the paragraph, with a publication deadline and an updating duty, would move the list out of the registry and make it predictable, for anyone filing an application, whether they come under the new rule. Without publication, the power stays real but invisible.
- State expressly how paragraph (3) relates to paragraph (2). One sentence showing whether the date allocated by Ecris may be moved after the application has been checked, and on what conditions, would close the inconsistency set out above before the first panels start giving different answers. For now, each court will build its own practice and the party has no way of finding out in advance.
- Supplement Article 108 with a deadline for issuing summonses in the cases on the new list. If the hearing date is tied to the day the application was received, preparation of the case should be tied to the hearing date. Otherwise the days gained under Article 107 are spent under Article 108, and the first hearing is adjourned because service was not completed.
- Replace „precum” with wording that says plainly whether the list is closed. As drafted, the Romanian „unor cauze urgente, precum”, that is „urgent cases, such as”, suggests examples, while the closing clause on other cases established by the president suggests a closed list that only he or she may extend. Changing that one word would settle whether an urgent case that is neither named nor added by the president falls under the rule.
- Extend the rule to criminal matters as well, or say why not. Article 106 of the same Rules has, in its last paragraph, a clause applying it „correspondingly in criminal matters as well”. Article 107 has none, and urgent measures in criminal cases are no less urgent. A sentence of extension, or reasons given in the preamble, would move the difference out of the realm of things left unsaid.
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. 870 of 19 October 2026, page 16 16 pages PDF, 113 KB the act starts on page 16
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