In brief

  • Money won in court is paid in five annual instalments of 5%, 10%, 25%, 25% and 35% of the value of the enforceable title, and the years run from the date on which the judgment became enforceable, not from 1 January. On a judgment worth 50,000 lei, the first year brings 2,500 lei, the second 5,000 lei, the third and the fourth 12,500 lei each, and the fifth 17,500 lei. Two years after winning the case the creditor holds 7,500 lei, that is 15% of the sum; the remaining 42,500 lei arrives over the final three years.
  • The order covers a two-year window, 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2026, and that same window hides two different laws and three payment schedules. Judgments that became enforceable in 2025 are paid under Article VIII of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024, those that became enforceable in 2026 under Article XXIII of Law no. 141/2025. The percentages are identical, but the starting point differs by up to 729 days, so two colleagues owed equal sums can finish collecting almost two years apart. The third schedule, fixed to the years 2025 to 2029, covers the salary differences arising from the sectoral reference value of 605.225 lei.
  • No application has to be filed and there is no institution where the beneficiary must turn up with a file. Payment is made of the institution’s own motion, by the body that pays the salary, on nominal payment lists kept separate from the payroll, into the account where the monthly wage lands. Indexation to the inflation rate applies only if the operative part of the judgment expressly provides for it, whereas statutory remuneratory interest, the interest owed for the use of the money, is granted in every case, calculated from the date the judgment became enforceable until each instalment is paid in full.
Act: Order of the interim minister of justice no. 2.149/C/2026 on the procedure for making payment of the sums provided for by court judgments, established in favour of the staff of the Ministry of Justice’s own apparatus and of the staff of the public institutions subordinated to it, which became enforceable in the period 1 January 2025 – 31 December 2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 866 of 16 October 2026, pages 8-9
In force from: 16 October 2026, the date of publication, because Article 7 of the order sets no other date and Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 on legislative drafting rules provides that ministerial orders enter into force on publication unless a later date is set out in their text

A court clerk, a prison officer, a probation counsellor or a trade register officer who has won unpaid salary rights in court does not get the money when the judgment becomes final. They get it over five years, in five unequal instalments, the largest one last. That rule comes from the law, not from the order. What Order of the interim minister of justice no. 2.149/C/2026, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 866 of 16 October 2026, on pages 8 and 9, adds is the internal route of the money: who asks for the funds, from whom, who signs the payment and which account it ends up in.

The circle of people involved is wide, because the order does not concern the ministry alone. „The staff of the Ministry of Justice’s own apparatus and that of the public institutions subordinated to it” also means the National Administration of Penitentiaries with all its prisons, educational centres and detention centres, the National Trade Register Office with its offices in every county, the National Probation Directorate with its territorial services, and the forensic expertise institutes. All of these institutions have lost salary rights cases, and every one of them has employees waiting for money.

The order was signed on 7 October 2026 by state secretary Teodora Stoian, for the interim minister of justice, and appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania nine days later. As a piece of timing it is late at both ends: the window it regulates opened on 1 January 2025, 21 months earlier, and it closes on 31 December 2026, that is 76 days after publication.

What it changes in practice

What falls under the order. Four categories of claims, listed in Article 1(1). The first and most numerous: final judgments granting rights of a salary nature. The second: judgments granting daily allowances, accommodation, food or help with keeping in touch with the family, for taking part in missions outside Romanian territory. The third: judgments granting moratory damages in the form of statutory interest, which is precisely the compensation for the delay caused by an earlier staggered payment. The fourth category rests on an administrative act of the head of the institution rather than on a court judgment, and grants the differences arising from the sectoral reference value of 605.225 lei, the base figure from which salaries in the justice system are calculated.

How long the money takes. For the first three categories, five years, with 5% in the first year, 10% in the second, 25% in the third, 25% in the fourth and 35% in the fifth. The percentages are identical in both laws the order refers to, but the years are not calendar years: they are counted from the date on which the judgment became enforceable. A judgment that became enforceable on 10 January 2025 has its first instalment due by 9 January 2026 and its last by 9 January 2030. A judgment that became enforceable on 10 December 2026 has its last instalment due by 9 December 2031. For the sectoral reference value differences the schedule is fixed and tied to calendar years, 2025 to 2029, with the same percentages; as at 16 October 2026, 15% of those sums should already have been paid, and 85% remain for 2027, 2028 and 2029.

The 2025 arrears. The rule in Article XVIII of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 52/2025 is carried over into Article 1(4): instalments that fell due and went unpaid in 2025 are paid in 2026. The practical consequence, for anyone holding a 2025 judgment on which the institution has paid nothing, is that 2026 should bring two instalments, 5% in arrears plus 10% current, that is 15% of the title in a single year.

Who pays. The employing institution, out of its own budget, from the expenditure chapter and title under which the obligation falls. The funds do not arrive automatically: the economic departments of the tertiary authorising officers, meaning those of the prisons and of the other units, send the sums upwards, the secondary authorising officers consolidate them and forward them to the Resource Provision Service within the Economic Directorate of the Ministry of Justice, and that service asks the Ministry of Finance for the commitment and budget appropriations for the instalments concerned. There are, in other words, three tiers of consolidation before the money exists in the budget.

How the money arrives. On nominal payment lists other than the payroll, into the account where the beneficiary receives their monthly salary. Anyone who wants a different account tells the institution; anyone who wants cash can ask for it at the unit’s cash desk. Compulsory social contributions are withheld from the sums, under Title V of the Tax Code and, where applicable, Article 31 of Law no. 223/2015 on state military pensions, and they are declared through corrective returns for the periods to which the rights relate. Income tax is withheld and declared in the month of payment, not retroactively. The difference in treatment has a concrete effect: the contributions travel back into the past and may count towards the contribution period, while the tax stays in the present.

What is added to the sum. Statutory remuneratory interest, in every case, calculated from the date the judgment became enforceable until each instalment is paid in full. The rate is not the commercial one: Article 3(3) of Government Ordinance no. 13/2011, to which the order expressly refers, provides that in relations which do not arise from the operation of a for-profit undertaking the statutory interest rate is reduced by 20%, so the creditor receives four fifths of the reference rate of the National Bank of Romania. Statutory penalty interest, which is higher, is granted only where the operative part of the enforceable title provides for it, and it cannot be added to remuneratory interest for the same period.

Indexation to inflation. This is where the treatment splits in two. For court judgments, Article 1(6) states that the sums are indexed to the inflation rate only if the operative part of the judgment expressly so orders, under the conditions and for the period it sets. For the sectoral reference value differences, Article 1(10) provides for indexation with no condition attached, from the date the order or decision of the head of the institution was issued until the date of payment. Two employees of the same prison, one with a 2026 judgment silent on inflation, the other with a decision on the sectoral reference value, are treated in opposite ways in the face of the same risk.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The entitlement does not change and neither does the staggered payment. Both existed before the order, in laws published in 2024 and 2025. What was missing was the internal procedure through which the Ministry of Justice and the institutions under it put the rule into practice, and the law actually called for one: both Article VIII of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024 and Article XXIII of Law no. 141/2025 leave the setting of the payment procedure to the principal authorising officers. Until 16 October 2026, in the justice system that procedure existed for neither of the two windows, even though the first of them had opened on 1 January 2025.

The second change is a matter of form, yet it changes the life of anyone looking for an answer: a single act now covers two years and four types of claim, in place of a collection of legal bases scattered across four different normative acts. An employee who wanted to find out how long their money would take had to open Government Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 107/2024, Law no. 141/2025 and Government Emergency Ordinance no. 52/2025, and then work out unaided which of them applied to them. Now there is a single text, even if it does not reproduce the percentages and refers onwards to the laws.

The third difference is one the order inherits rather than creates: instalments that fell due in 2025 and went unpaid have moved into 2026. For the subordinated institutions that means double pressure on the 2026 budget, and for the creditor a partial compensation, because money lost in one year comes back in the next, yet without the final deadline of the staggered payment moving a single day closer.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The beneficiary files no application and fills in no form. Payment starts inside the employing institution, on the basis of the enforceable title, and the only initiative open to them is to ask for a different account or for cash.
  • Statutory remuneratory interest is unconditional and runs until each instalment is paid in full, not until it falls due. If the institution is late, the period of delay enters the interest calculation.
  • The route of the funds is written out from the bottom up, with a named person responsible at every tier, including the structure inside the ministry that asks the Ministry of Finance for the money. A creditor who wants to ask where the payment stalled has the whole chain in front of them for the first time.
  • The money lands in the account where salaries are normally paid, so it calls for no banking formality, and the cash option at the unit’s cash desk stays open for anyone who prefers it.
  • Social contributions are declared through corrective returns for the periods to which the rights relate, not in the month of payment, which places the contributions correctly in the past where the salary should have been paid.

What remains a problem

  • The staggered payment pushes the weight to the end. On 50,000 lei, if prices rise by 5% a year, an assumption used here for the calculation and not a forecast, the five instalments are worth around 41,700 lei when they are received, measured in the purchasing power of the first year, so roughly 8,300 lei less, that is 16.6%. Remuneratory interest covers part of the loss, not all of it, because it is capped at four fifths of the reference rate of the National Bank of Romania.
  • Indexation to inflation depends on what the judge wrote in the operative part. Two judgments identical on the substance, delivered in the same month, can be treated differently purely because one mentions indexation and the other does not.
  • Payment is conditional, through Article 2(2), on approved budget funds being available, while enforcement is suspended by operation of law under the staggering laws. For that whole interval the creditor is left without leverage: they cannot enforce and they have no way of compelling the institution to ask for the money.
  • The order provides for no information to the beneficiary. Nobody is obliged to tell them the instalment schedule, the amount of each instalment or the interest calculated, so a person finds out what they are owed only when they see the sum in their account.
  • For someone who has moved to another institution inside the system, or who has retired, the text does not say clearly which institution pays, because Article 3 and Article 4 use different criteria.

Practical advice

  1. Look in your own judgment for the date on which it became enforceable, not the date it was delivered and not the date it was served. The five years are counted from that date, and the 35% instalment comes in the last of them.
  2. Reread the operative part and see whether indexation to the inflation rate appears there. If it does, the institution has to apply it; if it does not, Article 1(6) of the order rules indexation out, and the only compensation left is remuneratory interest.
  3. Check whether the operative part provides for penalty interest. It is higher than remuneratory interest, but the two cannot be added for the same period, so one of them applies in the calculation, not both.
  4. Ask the institution’s economic department in writing for the instalment schedule and the method used to calculate the interest. The order does not oblige the institution to send it unprompted, but neither does it declare it confidential.
  5. If you hold a 2025 judgment and received nothing in 2025, check whether two instalments were paid to you in 2026, 5% in arrears and 10% current. The shift of the unpaid instalments into 2026 is provided for in Article 1(4).
  6. If you have retired or moved to another institution in the system, ask early which institution pays you and keep the answer in writing. The order points to different criteria in two places, and a written answer will hold until there is a clarification.
  7. If you want the money in an account other than your salary account, say so before the month in which the payment is made. A change after the nominal payment list has been drawn up delays the transfer.
  8. Set the tax share aside if you receive a large instalment. Income tax is withheld in the month of payment, so an instalment of 25% or 35% is taxed in the year it arrives, not in the years to which the rights relate.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to file an application in order to receive the money?
No. Payment is made by the employing institution, on the basis of the enforceable title, on nominal payment lists kept separate from the payroll. There is no filing deadline and no institution where you have to turn up with a file. The only things you might need to communicate are the account you want the money in, if it is not your salary account, and the choice of cash at the unit’s cash desk.
How long will the whole sum take?
Five years from the date on which the judgment became enforceable, where a court judgment is involved. The first year brings 5% of the value of the title, the second 10%, the third and the fourth 25% each, the fifth 35%. For the differences arising from the sectoral reference value of 605.225 lei the staggering is tied to calendar years, from 2025 to 2029, with the same percentages.
If my judgment became enforceable in 2025, does a different regime apply than if it had become enforceable in 2026?
The legal basis is different, the outcome is almost the same. For 2025, Article VIII(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024 applies, for 2026 Article XXIII(1) of Law no. 141/2025. The percentages and the number of instalments are identical in both. What differs is the moment from which the years are counted, and therefore the actual due dates.
Do I also get interest for the delay?
Yes, statutory remuneratory interest is granted in every case, from the date the judgment became enforceable until each instalment is paid in full. The rate is the reference rate of the National Bank of Romania reduced by 20%, because the relation does not arise from the operation of a for-profit undertaking. Statutory penalty interest, which is higher, is granted only where the operative part of the judgment provides for it, and it cannot be added to remuneratory interest for the same period.
Will my sum be indexed to inflation?
Only if the operative part of the court judgment expressly provides for it. That is what Article 1(6) of the order says, and the staggering laws it refers to contain no indexation rule of their own, so the source of any indexation is the judgment, not the law. The exception is the category of sectoral reference value differences: there, indexation is compulsory and automatic, from the date the order or decision of the head of the institution was issued until payment.
What happens if the institution has no money in the budget when the instalment falls due?
The order states, in Article 2(2), that payments are made exclusively within the limits of the budget funds approved for that purpose. In parallel, the staggering laws suspend enforcement by operation of law for the duration of the staggered payment. In practice the creditor cannot send a bailiff after the institution during that interval, and the only consequence the law provides for failure to observe the staggering is a disciplinary offence on the part of the person at fault.
What is withheld from the instalment?
Compulsory social contributions, under Title V of the Tax Code and, for staff with a military pension, under Article 31 of Law no. 223/2015, plus income tax under Title IV of the Tax Code. The contributions are declared through corrective returns for the periods to which the rights relate, while the tax is declared in the month of payment.
Who pays me if I have moved to another institution in the system in the meantime, or retired?
The text does not give a single answer. Article 4(1) says that payment is made by the employing institution, while Article 3(4) says, for some of the categories, that payment is made by the authorising officer within whose structure the creditor carried out their activity. For anyone who has changed jobs, the two lead to different institutions. Until there is a clarification, ask both institutions for their position in writing.
Does the order apply to prison staff as well?
Yes. The National Administration of Penitentiaries and the units under it are public institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Justice, so their staff fall within the scope. The same goes for the staff of the National Trade Register Office, of the National Probation Directorate and of the forensic expertise institutes.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Article 3(4) leaves out of the allocation rule the very category for which the order was issued. The text says „în situația menționată la art. 1 alin. (2) și (3)”, so it covers judgments that became enforceable in 2025 and the sectoral reference value differences, but it mentions neither Article 1(5), the judgments that became enforceable in 2026, nor Article 1(4), the unpaid instalments shifted into 2026. For those, the order does not say which authorising officer makes the payment.
  • Article 3(4) and Article 4(1) point to different payers for the same claim. Article 4(1) designates „instituția angajatoare”, the employing institution, for all the titles covered by Article 1, while Article 3(4) designates the authorising officer „în cadrul căruia creditorul și-a desfășurat activitatea”, within whose structure the creditor carried out their activity. For an employee transferred between two units subordinated to the Ministry of Justice, or for a pensioner, the two criteria do not lead to the same institution, and identifying the debtor decides both where the person goes and whose budget the money comes out of.
  • Article 2(2) and Article 1(2) and (5) lead to different conclusions about when an instalment falls due. Article 1 makes the instalment owed by operation of law, in the year that corresponds to it under Article VIII(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024 or Article XXIII(1) of Law no. 141/2025, while Article 2(2) says that payments are made „exclusiv în limita și în condițiile existenței fondurilor bugetare aprobate cu această destinație”, exclusively within the limits and subject to the existence of budget funds approved for that purpose. A reader acting in good faith may conclude either that the instalment is owed on the due date set by the law, or that it is owed only if the budget allows, and the difference between the two readings decides whether non-payment is a breach of the obligation or a consequence the procedure permits.

Editorial analysis

The order solves a real problem, and it solves it soberly: until 16 October 2026, in a system with tens of thousands of employees and a run of lost salary rights cases, there was no text saying who asks the Ministry of Finance for the money and who signs the nominal payment list. The chain set out in Article 3, from the economic department of a single prison up to the Resource Provision Service within the ministry’s Economic Directorate, is exactly what was missing.

The problem is the timing. The regulated window opened on 1 January 2025 and closes on 31 December 2026, and the procedure appears 21 months after it opened and 76 days before it closes. Throughout that whole interval, creditors holding 2025 judgments already had their first instalment due, and some of them their second as well. When the internal procedure turns up after the due dates have passed, the unpaid instalments do not disappear, they move: Article 1(4) pushes them into 2026, where they pile up on top of the current instalment. Anyone who received nothing in 2025 should receive a combined 15% of the title in 2026, and the institution has to carry in one year an expense sized for two. The final deadline of the staggered payment, on the other hand, does not move a single day closer.

The hardest thing to justify remains the treatment of inflation, and it only becomes visible when two paragraphs are set side by side. Paragraph (10) of Article 1 indexes the sectoral reference value differences of 605.225 lei automatically and as of right, while paragraph (6) indexes court judgments only if the judge wrote it into the operative part. The risk is identical in both cases, since the money is spread over five years either way, yet the answer is the opposite. On 50,000 lei and a 5% annual rise in prices, used here as a calculation assumption, the five instalments are worth around 41,700 lei when they are received, measured in the purchasing power of the first year, that is 8,300 lei less, and remuneratory interest does not bridge the gap, being capped by Article 3(3) of Government Ordinance no. 13/2011 at four fifths of the reference rate of the National Bank of Romania. The loss is not created by the order, but the order chooses to leave it where it found it.

The second imbalance lies between the deadlines the order imposes and the ones it does not. It pins down with precision who sends what at each administrative tier, yet it attaches no date and no duration to any of it: the departments „transmit”, the service „centralises”, the ministry „requests”, with not a single number of days. For the beneficiary, by contrast, everything runs like clockwork: five years, five percentages, interest calculated by the day. The administration gives itself elastic deadlines and leaves the creditor with exact ones.

What should be changed

  • Extending Article 3(4) to all the categories covered by Article 1. A cross-reference that also took in paragraphs (4) and (5) would close the „who pays” question for judgments that became enforceable in 2026, which is the newest and most numerous category in the order.
  • A single criterion for identifying the paying institution. Either the employing institution at the date of payment, or the one where the creditor worked during the period for which the rights were granted, written down in one place only. A transferred employee or a pensioner would no longer depend on which of the two articles the economic department happens to read first.
  • Internal deadlines in days at each tier of the chain in Article 3. A number of days from receipt of the request to forwarding it upwards, at all three tiers, would make any delay verifiable and would turn the disciplinary offence provided for by the staggering laws from a principle into a consequence that can actually be applied.
  • An obligation to tell the beneficiary the schedule and the calculation. One written notice a year, with the value of the title, the instalment due, the date on which the judgment became enforceable, the interest calculated and the balance outstanding. It costs one page per creditor and removes from the system the most frequent cause of dispute, which is not knowing the amount.
  • A clarification of how Article 2(2) relates to the due dates set by law. A text stating plainly that the absence of funds neither extinguishes nor postpones the obligation but triggers a request for supplementary funding would rule out the reading under which an instalment is owed only if the budget allows.

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. 866 of 16 October 2026, pages 8-9 16 pages PDF, 122 KB the act starts on page 8

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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.