In brief

  • The Constitutional Court dismissed as unfounded, unanimously, the plea by which the Hidroelectrica Hidrosind union asked it to find unconstitutional the rule that automatically ends the employment contract of a worker who takes an old-age pension with a reduction of the standard retirement age. Article 56(1)(c) of the Labour Code stays in force, unchanged.
  • On the other two texts under attack, Article 106(4) and Article 1302 of Law no. 263/2010, the plea was dismissed as inadmissible. Whether the pension house was entitled to send the employer the pension decision without the worker’s consent remains a question of interpretation for the ordinary courts, not one of constitutionality.
  • The decision was delivered on 26 February 2026 and published on 3 September 2026, 189 days later. From the date of publication it is final and binding on all courts.
Act: Constitutional Court Decision no. 182 of 26 February 2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 747 of 3 September 2026
In force from: 3 September 2026, the date of publication, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, invoked by the Court as the very basis of the decision

An energy sector union asked the Constitutional Court to strike down the rule that automatically ends the employment contract of a person who retires early because he worked in hard conditions. The Court refused. Decision no. 182 of 26 February 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 747 of 3 September 2026, finds that Article 56(1)(c) of the Labour Code is constitutional. In the same sitting of 26 February 2026 the Court also delivered the decision in which it declined to rule on the class specialist allowance for police officers, published three days earlier, on 31 August 2026.

The text at issue has, in its present form, three limbs. The first ends the contract „on the date on which the conditions of standard retirement age and minimum contribution period for retirement are cumulatively met”. The second ends it „on the date of communication of the pension decision in the case of a third degree invalidity pension, a partial early retirement pension, an early retirement pension, or an old-age pension with a reduction of the standard retirement age”. The third concerns first or second degree invalidity. The union attacked the second limb, its final hypothesis: people whose retirement age the law lowers because they worked in special or particularly demanding conditions.

The plea was raised by the Hidroelectrica Hidrosind union of Bucharest in File no. 22.363/3/2021 of the Bucharest Tribunal, Eighth Section for labour disputes and social insurance, in a case challenging a dismissal decision. The Tribunal referred the matter to the Court by its Order of 2 May 2022. The file was registered at the Constitutional Court under number 1.839D/2022 and was heard by a panel of seven judges, presided over by Elena-Simina Tanasescu.

The union’s argument had two arms. The first concerned personal data: the pension house sent the employer the information that the workers had retired, without their consent and without informing them beforehand, and the employer used that information to record the termination of the contracts by operation of law. The union relied on Article 26 of the Constitution, on Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and on the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-201/14. The second arm concerned equality: a person who retires at the standard age has, in certain situations, the option of continuing the employment relationship, whereas a person who leaves earlier, precisely because he worked in hard conditions, does not.

On the discrimination limb, the Court answered by referring to its own case law. In paragraph 30 it restated Decision no. 670 of 15 December 2022, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 321 of 18 April 2023, where it had held that Article 56(1)(c) does not create discrimination on grounds of age. In paragraph 31 it added an argument of its own: the text „does not even treat the two categories of pensioners differently, since it provides for termination of the employment contract by operation of law in the case of both categories”. And in paragraph 32 and the following ones it restated Decision no. 840 of 13 December 2018, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 224 of 22 March 2019: lowering the retirement age is a compensatory measure for those who worked in demanding conditions, and under the second limb the contract does not end automatically but as a result of the insured person’s own choice to open his pension entitlement. A person who claims the pension, the Court says, cannot at the same time claim continuation of the contract, because the two contradict each other.

On the right to work, the Court went further than in its earlier decisions. In paragraphs 39 and 40 it held that the right to work in Article 41 of the Constitution does not oblige the State to allow the public pension to be combined with a salary, because a pension is a social benefit over which the State has a considerable margin of appreciation, and because the contributions paid are not a term deposit and do not give rise to a claim against the State. In paragraph 41, however, it also pointed to the way out: the pension is granted on application, under Article 103(1) of Law no. 263/2010, so nobody is obliged to claim it, and whoever does not claim it does not fall under the ban on combining the two. In the same place, the Court states that the contested text in no way prevents a salary from being combined with a voluntary pension.

On the personal data limb, the Court did not go to the merits. In paragraph 45 it found that Article 1302 of Law no. 263/2010 „makes no reference” to whether the pension house may or may not send the employer the pension decision, so the criticism in fact targets the way the text is applied, not the text itself. In paragraph 46 it said the same about Article 106(4): that provision requires the decision to be communicated to the pensioner, an unavoidable and favourable procedure, and asking the Court to establish whether communication to the employer is also prohibited would mean the constitutional court substituting itself for the judiciary. Both were dismissed as inadmissible.

One detail that matters for anyone reading the decision in 2026: Law no. 263/2010 no longer exists. It was repealed by Article 168(1)(a) of Law no. 360/2023 on the public pension system, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1089 of 4 December 2023, with effect from 1 September 2024. The Court nonetheless examined the two texts, invoking in paragraph 28 Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011: provisions whose legal effects continue to be produced after they cease to be in force are also subject to review.

What it changes in practice

The first consequence is that the law stays exactly as it was. A decision dismissing a plea repeals nothing and suspends nothing. Article 56(1)(c) of the Labour Code continues to apply in the form given by Law no. 93/2019, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 354 of 8 May 2019, and the individual employment contract of a worker who obtains an old-age pension with a reduction of the standard age ends by operation of law on the date the pension decision is communicated.

The second consequence concerns the actual case. The decision is sent to the Bucharest Tribunal, Eighth Section for labour disputes and social insurance, which can resume hearing the challenge against the dismissal decision. The plea having been dismissed, the court will apply the texts as they stand.

The third consequence is the one that matters for any employee in the same position. From 3 September 2026 there is a third decision of the Court on the same text, after those of 2018 and 2022, all to the same effect. An action arguing that termination by operation of law on retirement at a reduced age is itself unconstitutional starts with practically no chance. What remains possible is to challenge the specific way the employer recorded the termination: the date of communication, the proof of communication, compliance with the procedure.

The fourth consequence concerns employers. The procedure in Article 56(2) of the Labour Code applies without reservation: the termination by operation of law is recorded in writing, by a decision of the employer, within 5 working days of the event, and is communicated to the worker within another 5 working days. Nobody can any longer argue that the basis for that finding is unconstitutional.

The fifth consequence is that the personal data problem stays open, but has moved. In paragraph 45 the Court set out explicitly what should have been placed on the file for it to be able to examine the judicial interpretation of the texts: either a decision of the High Court of Cassation and Justice unifying case law, or judgments proving a settled judicial practice. Anyone who wants to resume the fight now knows what is missing.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the text of the Labour Code, nothing. This is the part most often misunderstood when the Constitutional Court makes the headlines. A plea that is dismissed leaves the law untouched and obliges Parliament to do nothing.

What has changed is the density of the case law. In December 2018, when the Court delivered Decision no. 840, there was a single precedent on termination by operation of law upon retirement. In December 2022 Decision no. 670 was added. Now there are three, and the third covers exactly the situation of retirement at a reduced age, that is, the case in which the argument of equivalence with other employees looked strongest, because the reduction of the age is a benefit granted precisely for hard work.

What has changed, on the other hand, is the whole legal framework around the case, and the decision does not reflect it. Between the referral order of 2 May 2022 and the delivery on 26 February 2026, two major amendments intervened. Law no. 76 of 4 April 2022, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 333 of 5 April 2022, added to Law no. 263/2010 an Article 106(5) requiring the pension house to send the employer a notice that a pension decision has been issued. Then Law no. 360/2023 replaced the pension law in its entirety from 1 September 2024, and Article 93(7) of the new law keeps and extends that obligation. In other words, the question from which the whole case started, whether the pension house was allowed to tell the employer that the worker had retired, today has an answer written into the law. The decision does not mention it. The application of the correction index reached the Court again in September 2026, this time for the case where the index differs from one year of retirement to another.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It closes a case that had been waiting for almost four and a half years. From the referral order of 2 May 2022 to the delivery, 1,396 days passed. The trial court can now move on.
  • It confirms that nobody is obliged to claim the pension. Paragraph 41 says plainly, referring to Article 103(1) of Law no. 263/2010, that the pension is granted on application. Anyone who wants to keep working can postpone the application, and the contract does not end.
  • It clarifies that voluntary pensions are unaffected. The same paragraph 41 states that the contested text does not prohibit, either expressly or by implication, combining a salary with a Pillar III pension.
  • It points to the procedural route that remains. Paragraph 45 says exactly what should have been placed on the file for the constitutional court to be able to review the judicial interpretation of the texts. That is useful guidance, not a closed door.
  • Unanimity, with no separate opinions. The seven judges on the panel all voted the same way, which makes a change of case law in the coming years unlikely.

What remains a problem

  • The central question stays unanswered. In paragraphs 10 and 11 the union showed that no rule obliged anyone to send the employer the pension decision, even though the contract ends precisely „on the date of communication of the decision”. The Court does not answer this criticism about the quality of the law, even though Article 1(5) of the Constitution appears in paragraph 29 among the provisions relied on.
  • Publication took 189 days. The two decisions on which it rests were published 99 and 124 days after delivery respectively. Throughout that period, courts hearing identical cases had the outcome but not the reasoning.
  • The statement in paragraph 31 is questionable. The Court says the text „does not even treat the two categories differently”, yet the very first limb of point (c) contains an option to continue the contract, and that option is available only in the standard age scenario.
  • It rules on a legal framework that no longer exists. The two texts declared inadmissible belong to a law repealed on 1 September 2024, one year and almost six months before the decision was delivered. The decision does not say what happens to the same problem under Law no. 360/2023.

Practical advice

  1. If you want to keep working, do not file the pension application. The Court says in paragraph 41 that the pension is granted on application and that nobody is obliged to make one. As long as there is no application, there is no pension decision, so there is no ground for termination by operation of law under this scenario. It is the only real lever the decision confirms.
  2. Remember that the date that counts is the date the pension decision is communicated, not the date it is issued. The gap can be several days, and it determines your last day of salary, the calculation of untaken leave and the deadline for challenging the employer’s decision.
  3. Ask the employer for the written decision recording the termination by operation of law. Article 56(2) of the Labour Code requires it to be issued within 5 working days of the event and communicated to you within another 5 working days. Without that document you have nothing to challenge and no way of checking the date the employer used.
  4. Challenge the interpretation, not the constitutionality. After this decision, a case built on the unconstitutionality of Article 56(1)(c) has no object left. What remains useful are criticisms on the facts: who communicated, what was communicated, on what date, with what proof.
  5. If you retired after 1 September 2024, read the new law, not the one in the decision. Law no. 360/2023 applies, where Article 93(6) requires the decision to be communicated to the holder within 10 days of issue, and Article 93(7) requires the pension house to send the employer a notice containing the name, the personal identification number, the type of decision and the date of issue.
  6. For the personal data side, the right address is the supervisory authority. A complaint about how the data were transmitted or used goes to the National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing, in parallel with the employment dispute. The Constitutional Court said explicitly that it is not the body that settles such matters.
  7. Check whether you actually fall within the reduced age scenario. The rule discussed here concerns the old-age pension with a reduction of the standard age. The pension at the standard age, the early retirement pension and the partial early retirement pension each have their own scenario in the same text, with different effects on the moment of termination.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly did the Constitutional Court decide?
It dismissed as unfounded the plea concerning Article 56(1)(c) of the Labour Code and found that the text is constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised. It dismissed as inadmissible the plea concerning Article 106(4) and Article 1302 of Law no. 263/2010. The vote was unanimous.
Who does the decision affect?
Employees who obtain an old-age pension with a reduction of the standard age, that is, those who worked in special or particularly demanding conditions and whose retirement age the law lowers. Their employment contract ends by operation of law on the date the pension decision is communicated, and that rule has now been confirmed.
Can I still work after I retire early?
Not with the same employer, on the same contract, because that contract ends by operation of law. A new contract with another employer, or even with the same one, is a matter for the rules on combining a pension with a salary in the pension law, not for the text discussed here. The Court did point out, though, that as long as you do not file the pension application, the existing contract does not end on this ground.
Why do I not have the right to continue my contract, as others do?
That was precisely the union’s criticism. The Court answered that lowering the age is a compensatory benefit for work in hard conditions and that, in this scenario, the contract does not end automatically but because the employee himself asked for his pension entitlement to be opened. Continuing the contract would, in the Court’s logic, contradict the very intention expressed in the application.
Is it lawful for the pension house to tell my employer that I have retired?
Today, yes, and there is an express basis for it: Article 93(7) of Law no. 360/2023 requires the territorial pension house to send the employer a notice containing the name, the personal identification number, the type of pension decision and the date of issue. Under the old law, the basis was introduced by Law no. 76/2022. The Court did not examine those texts, because they were not referred to it.
Why was the personal data part dismissed as inadmissible?
Because, in the Court’s view, the union was not attacking the content of the texts but the way pension houses and employers apply them. Interpreting and applying the law is for the ordinary courts. The Court stated in paragraph 45 that it could have examined the judicial interpretation only if it had been shown a decision of the High Court unifying case law or a settled judicial practice.
Are the texts of Law no. 263/2010 still in force?
No. Law no. 263/2010 was repealed by Article 168(1)(a) of Law no. 360/2023, with effect from 1 September 2024. The Court nonetheless examined the two articles, because their legal effects continue to be produced in disputes started earlier, under Decision no. 766/2011.
Is Article 56(1)(c) of the Labour Code still in force?
Yes. The text applies in the form given by Law no. 93/2019, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 354 of 8 May 2019, the same form the Court reproduces in paragraph 27. Being a decision that dismisses the plea, it could not have removed the text from the statute book.
From what date does the decision produce effects?
From 3 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution. Not from 26 February 2026, the date of delivery. The difference matters for arguments filed in the case between those two dates.
What happens now with the case at the Bucharest Tribunal?
The decision is sent to the Eighth Section for labour disputes and social insurance of the Bucharest Tribunal, which can resume hearing the challenge against the dismissal decision in File no. 22.363/3/2021. The plea having been dismissed, the court will apply the texts as they now stand.
What does it mean that the decision is „final and generally binding”?
That it cannot be appealed and that it binds all courts, authorities and persons, not only the parties to the case in which the plea was raised. In practice, no judge can any longer declare Article 56(1)(c) unconstitutional on the same grounds.

Editorial analysis

The outcome is predictable and, on the discrimination limb, well built. The Court invents nothing: it takes over Decision no. 840 of 13 December 2018 and Decision no. 670 of 15 December 2022, adds in paragraphs 39 and 40 an argument of its own, a fairly harsh one, about the State’s margin over social benefits, and closes the case unanimously. The problem is not what it says, but what it forgets to check and how long it took to say it.

Start with the calendar, because the figures are verifiable. Between delivery, 26 February 2026, and publication, 3 September 2026, 189 days passed. The two decisions on which this outcome rests entirely took 99 days and 124 days respectively from delivery to publication. Same court, same field, an interval almost twice as long. Counted from the referral order of 2 May 2022, that comes to 1,585 days until publication, four years and four months in which a rule that decides whether a person still has a job carried a question mark. The comparison that stings most is with the neighbouring decision: Decision no. 183/2026, delivered in the same sitting of 26 February 2026, was published on 31 August 2026, three days earlier. So it was not the sitting that was delayed, but the drafting of this particular judgment.

The second observation does not show up when you read the decision from beginning to end, and it is, in our view, the most serious. The union built its whole case on the premise that no rule allowed the pension house to send the employer the pension decision. At the time of the dismissals, in 2021, the premise was correct. Except that Law no. 76 of 4 April 2022, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 333 of 5 April 2022, inserted into Law no. 263/2010 an Article 106(5) which says exactly the opposite: „the issuing territorial pension house shall send the employer a notice concerning the issue of the pension decision”. The text entered into force on 8 April 2022, 24 days before the Bucharest Tribunal referred the matter to the Court. The union attacked paragraph (4) of Article 106, the Court examined paragraph (4), and paragraph (5), the only text that contained the answer, appears nowhere in the 47 paragraphs of the decision. The result is that, in 2026, the constitutional court declares inadmissible, as a „mere question of interpretation”, a problem that the legislature had expressly settled four years earlier, in the very article under discussion.

The third observation emerges from comparing the two pension laws and shows which way the very thing the union complained about actually went. Article 1302 of Law no. 263/2010, introduced by Law no. 177/2018, based the processing of data on the „express and unequivocal” consent given by filing the application. Its successor, Article 164 of Law no. 360/2023, drops consent altogether: the person „is informed” about the processing, and the legal basis becomes the controller’s legal obligation and the public interest task. In parallel, Article 93(6) of the new law doubles the deadline for communicating the decision to the holder, from 5 to 10 days, and Article 93(7) adds to the notice sent to the employer an element that Article 106(5) did not contain: the personal identification number. In short, while the case sat on the docket, the transmission of data to the employer was confirmed by law, its basis shifted from consent to legal obligation, and it gained one more identifier. The decision says not a word about any of this.

The fourth observation concerns a passage that, read carefully, does not hold up. In paragraph 31, the Court states that Article 56(1)(c) „does not even treat the two categories of pensioners differently”. Yet the very first limb of the same point provides, „exceptionally”, that a female employee may opt in writing to continue the contract until the age of 65, and Article 56(3) prohibits the employer from restricting that right. Article 56(4), in turn, allows a worker to be kept in post for a maximum of 3 years beyond the standard age, with the employer’s agreement. Both options are tied to the moment the standard age conditions are met, so neither is available to a person who leaves earlier at a reduced age. The difference in treatment that the Court denies does exist, written into the same article. It may be justifiable, as indeed the Court argues in the rest of the decision, but it cannot be denied.

Finally, an observation about textual hygiene. In paragraph 27 the Court reproduces point (c) in full, including the third degree invalidity pension scenario. That scenario was declared unconstitutional by Decision no. 759 of 23 November 2017, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 108 of 5 February 2018, and Parliament rewrote the text in 2019 while keeping it. The operative part now finds that „the provisions of Article 56(1)(c)” are constitutional, without any distinction, saved only by the formula „in relation to the criticisms raised”. A hurried reader may come away with the impression that the whole of point (c) passed the test, which is not the case.

What should be changed

  • Tie the termination by operation of law to the notice received by the employer, not to a „communication” with no stated addressee. The practical effect: the date of termination would be verifiable from a document that exists in the personnel file, instead of being inferred from a communication made to the employee, which the employer never sees. The very ambiguity that produced this dispute would disappear.
  • Align the two deadlines that do not fit together. The pension house has 10 days from issue to inform the employer, under Article 93(6) and (7) of Law no. 360/2023, while the employer has 5 working days from the event to record the termination, under Article 56(2) of the Labour Code. The practical effect: an employer can be legally late over a fact he learned about after his own deadline had already started running. His deadline should run from receipt of the notice.
  • Extend the option in Article 56(4) of the Labour Code to retirement at a reduced age as well. The practical effect: someone who worked in particularly demanding conditions could choose, with the employer’s agreement, between leaving and staying, exactly like any other employee who reaches the standard age. The inequality criticism that produced this case would disappear too, at no budgetary cost, because payment of the pension remains subject to the rules on combining it with a salary.
  • Clean out of Article 56(1)(c) the scenario declared unconstitutional in 2017. The practical effect: the published text would say what is actually in force. Today, an employer who opens the Labour Code finds there a rule the Court has struck down twice, and the risk of applying it is his own.
  • A maximum deadline between delivery and publication for decisions on pleas of unconstitutionality. The practical effect: courts hearing identical disputes would no longer work for 189 days with an outcome known from the press release and reasoning they cannot read. A limit of 60 days would be generous enough for drafting and tight enough to matter.
  • A compulsory check, at the drafting stage, of the status of the texts forming the object of the plea and of those relied on in the reasoning. The practical effect: a decision would no longer declare inadmissible, as a question of interpretation, a matter the legislature settled during the proceedings. A two sentence note in the reasoning would have turned this decision from one that sidesteps the question into one that closes it.

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. 747 of 3 September 2026 8 pages PDF, 85 KB the act starts on page 2

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