In brief
- The Constitutional Court dismissed, at the same hearing and in the same field, two pleas raised by trade unions on behalf of police officers. No statutory text changes, and the decisions bring nobody any extra money.
- The outcomes are different, however, and the difference matters. Decision no. 594/2025 was dismissed as unfounded, meaning that the merits were examined and the rules were confirmed. Decision no. 593/2025 was dismissed as inadmissible, meaning that the merits were never reached at all.
- Both were delivered on 11 November 2025 and published on 9 September 2026, 302 days later. Only from publication do they become generally binding, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 767 of 9 September 2026
In force from: 9 September 2026, the date of publication
Two police officers from Dolj asked a court to stop their pay being calculated from a value fixed in October 2008. The Court reached the same conclusion in a more recent case too, described in Constitutional Court Decision no. 420/2026. The Constitutional Court told them that the value has no constitutional problem whatsoever. Decision no. 594 of 11 November 2025 was published on 9 September 2026 in Official Gazette of Romania no. 767 and dismisses, as unfounded, the plea raised by the „Diamantul” Police Officers’ Trade Union of Romania on behalf of its members Aurelian Oliver Taslică and Marius Gabriel Petrache. It is the second decision on Framework Law no. 153/2017 published within three days: on 7 September 2026 came the one holding that bonuses do not fall under the principle of „equal pay for equal work”.
In the same issue of the Gazette, on the preceding pages, sits Decision no. 593 of 11 November 2025. The same day, the same panel, the same assistant magistrate, the same prosecutor at the hearing, the same field: the way Framework Law no. 153/2017 is applied in stages to staff paid from public funds. The author is a different union, the National Trade Union of Police Officers and Contract Staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which raised the plea on behalf of its member Victor-Ion Barote and others, before the Constanța Tribunal. The outcome, though, is a different one: dismissed as inadmissible.
The two words are not synonyms, and this article exists in good part to explain the difference between them. In short: in Decision no. 594/2025 the Court read the criticisms, weighed them and said that the law holds. In Decision no. 593/2025 it never got that far, because what was asked of it did not fall within its jurisdiction.
To see what is at stake, the two attacked texts have to be opened.
Article II of Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 has three paragraphs and fixes a single figure, but a figure from which everything else is derived. Paragraph (1) provides that, from 1 April 2008, the sectoral reference value used to calculate the position pay and rank pay of military personnel, the salaries of police officers and the salaries of public servants with a special statute in the prison system is 193.4694 lei. Paragraph (2) raises it, from 1 October 2008, to 197.3387 lei. Paragraph (3) says that the result is rounded up to the whole leu, in favour of the staff. The gap between the two values is 3.8693 lei, that is a rise of exactly 2%. From 1 October 2008 to the date the decision was published, 17 years and 11 months went by.
Article 38(2) and (3) of Framework Law no. 153/2017 is the staging mechanism, that is the text saying that the pay law does not apply all at once. Paragraph (2)(a) provides that, from 1 July 2017 until 31 December 2017, basic salaries, position pay, grading allowances and all the bonuses, allowances, compensation and premiums forming part of the gross monthly salary are kept at the level granted for June 2017, on condition that the staff hold the same position and work in the same conditions. Letters b), c) and d) take out of the rule the staff covered by Article 11, office holders and food entitlements. Paragraph (3) opens, from 1 January 2018, the series of increases: 25% above the December 2017 level for everyone, followed by eleven exceptions, from doctors and nurses to teaching staff, school inspectors and staff in health units under contract with the insurance funds.
Not a single letter of paragraph (3) mentions police officers, military personnel or prison staff. That is where both pleas start out from, only they take different roads.
On police pay too, the Court ruled on the highest level actually paid: by CCR Decision no. 730/2025 it dismissed the Coast Guard plea.
What it changes in practice
The first consequence is the simplest: nothing changes. The operative part of Decision no. 594/2025 finds that Article II of Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 and Article 38(2)(a) of Framework Law no. 153/2017 „are constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised”. The texts stand, and salaries go on being calculated in the same way.
The second has to do with the calendar. Under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, Constitutional Court decisions are published in the Official Gazette of Romania and are generally binding from the date of publication, with effect only for the future. That date is 9 September 2026. Between delivery, on 11 November 2025, and publication, 302 days went by in which the decision existed but produced no effects for anyone outside the case.
The third concerns the two sets of proceedings that started it all. Decision no. 594/2025 is served on the Dolj Tribunal, Section for administrative and tax litigation, where case no. 1.315/63/2020 is pending. Decision no. 593/2025 is served on the Constanța Tribunal, Section for administrative and tax litigation, where case no. 4.228/118/2019 is pending. The courts can now proceed, and neither of them can any longer set aside the attacked texts on grounds of unconstitutionality.
The fourth consequence is felt by any union member thinking of taking the same road again. Article 29(3) of Law no. 47/1992 bars a plea only against provisions already found to be unconstitutional, so a dismissal does not formally block a fresh referral. In practice, however, paragraph 24 of Decision no. 594/2025 shows why such an attempt stands no chance: „since no new elements have arisen capable of changing that case law”, the earlier solution keeps its validity. Without a new and genuine element, the answer will be the same.
The fifth concerns the area where the fight does remain open. The Court ruled „in relation to the criticisms raised”, a formula that appears word for word in the operative part. What was not relied on was not examined, and what was not examined was not settled.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
As against the state of the law, nothing. As against what a police officer knew about their chances before the Constitutional Court, quite a lot, because the two decisions place side by side, in the same issue of the Gazette, two ways of losing.
What the union in Decision no. 593/2025 argued. That the staged application in Article 38(2) and (3) creates an unfavourable situation for certain categories of public sector staff, to whom the position salary and the bonuses due are not applied even though their coefficients are lower, while they are applied to others. It relied on Article 16(1) of the Constitution, on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the latter two without pointing to any particular provision.
Why it never reached the merits. The Court read the application and saw what it actually was: a request to supplement the list of exceptions in Article 38, so as to include public servants with a special statute from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Yet under Article 2(3) of Law no. 47/1992 the Court rules only on the constitutionality of the acts referred to it, „fără a putea modifica sau completa prevederile supuse controlului”, without being able to amend or supplement the provisions under review. Adding a category to a list is exactly what it cannot do. That is how inadmissibility is reached: not because the argument is weak, but because it is not an argument about constitutionality, it is a request for legislation addressed to the wrong institution.
It is not the first time. Paragraph 12 of Decision no. 593/2025 lists four earlier decisions, all on the same texts and all with the same author: Decision no. 294 of 17 May 2022, Decision no. 429 of 29 September 2022, Decision no. 581 of 22 November 2022 and Decision no. 102 of 16 March 2023. All four inadmissible. This is the fifth.
What the union in Decision no. 594/2025 argued. Something else, and that is where the whole difference comes from. It did not ask for a category to be added, but attacked two things the Court can genuinely weigh. First: Article II of Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 is said to regulate the pay of police officers, a matter belonging to the statute of public servants and therefore to organic law, which could not be regulated by a simple ordinance. Second: Article 38(2)(a) of Framework Law no. 153/2017 is said to operate as a referring rule that gives continuing effect to the ranking coefficients and the reference value in Annex no. 1 to Government Ordinance no. 38/2003, a repealed act, in breach of legal certainty.
What the Court answered, point by point. On the jurisdiction criticism: the statute of a police officer, that is the creation, performance and termination of the service relationship, is regulated by Law no. 360/2002, while Ordinance no. 8/2008 merely set the sectoral reference value. Pay, whatever the professional category, does not appear among the fields listed strictly and exhaustively in Article 73(3) of the Constitution, where organic law is required. On the criticism founded on Article 115(6): that text concerns the limits of emergency ordinances, while Ordinance no. 8/2008 is a simple ordinance, so relying on it is beside the point in this case. On the continuing-effect criticism: the 2017 provisions do not refer to repealed acts and do not put them back in force, and the situation differs from the one analysed in Decision no. 654 of 17 October 2017. On discrimination: the rule keeping pay at its existing level covers all categories of staff paid from public funds, without distinction.
One detail worth remembering: at the hearing, the representative of the Public Ministry had asked for the criticism concerning Article 38(2)(a) to be dismissed as inadmissible, taking the view that it was a matter of applying and interpreting the law. The Court did not follow those submissions, examined the merits and only then dismissed the plea, as unfounded. The line between the two outcomes is therefore not obvious even to specialists.
An unexpected admission appears in paragraph 15, where the Court takes up its own case law and finds that, although after 2010 the legislature had set out to build a single, transparent and predictable pay system, „în fapt drepturile salariale s-au calculat pornind de la cuantumul stabilit potrivit legislației anterioare”, in fact pay entitlements have been calculated starting from the amount set under the earlier legislation, and that the calculation „se face pornind de la cuantumul stabilit potrivit legislației anterioare anului 2010”, is made starting from the amount set under the legislation predating 2010. The finding is the Court’s own, not the unions’, and it confirms the very factual premise of the claimants. Only that being unsatisfactory is not the same as being unconstitutional.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The two decisions close an uncertainty that had lasted since 2019 and 2020: the courts in Constanța and Craiova can now go on hearing the pay cases without waiting any longer for the Court’s answer.
- The Court answers with reasons, not with formulas. Every criticism in Decision no. 594/2025 gets a paragraph of its own, from the competence of a simple ordinance through to Article 47 of the Constitution on a decent standard of living.
- It is confirmed in black and white that Article II of Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 can be reviewed even though it was repealed in 2009, because its legal effects continue. The basis is Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011.
- Decision no. 593/2025 shows, indirectly, where the limit lies: a request to supplement the law has no place before the Constitutional Court. Anyone who wants to win there has to attack the rule, not its absence.
- Both decisions were taken unanimously, with no dissenting or concurring opinions. No ambiguity of interpretation is left for the trial courts.
What remains a problem
- The wait. The Constanța Tribunal referred the matter on 13 April 2021, the Dolj Tribunal on 22 April 2021. Until delivery, 1,673 and 1,664 days went by respectively, that is four years and seven months. Until publication, another 302.
- The Constanța file bears a 2019 number, the Craiova one a 2020 number. Someone who started proceedings in 2019 finds out only in 2026 that their constitutional question will not even be examined.
- The inadmissibility in Decision no. 593/2025 leaves the substantive question exactly where it was. It was not said that the staging is constitutional, only that it cannot be discussed in the form in which it was put.
- The same union has received the same answer five times, on the same texts, between 2022 and 2025. Nothing in the procedure stops it reaching a sixth, after another four years of waiting.
- The reference value of 197.3387 lei, fixed for 1 October 2008, remains the point from which the whole chain of calculation rises. The Court acknowledges the mechanism, but says it is not its job to change it.
Practical advice
- If you have pending pay proceedings in which one of these pleas was raised, put the published decision on the file. From 9 September 2026 it is generally binding, and the trial court can no longer ignore it.
- When you draft a plea of unconstitutionality, first check whether you are asking for a text to be removed or for one to be added. Only the first can be examined. Decision no. 593/2025 is the clean example of the second.
- Do not confuse „inadmissible” with „unfounded” when you read an operative part. The first says nothing about the constitutionality of the text, the second confirms it. The word appears immediately after „dismisses” and decides everything that follows.
- Before taking the road to the Court again on the same texts, look for the earlier decisions on the same question. The paragraph listing the precedents, 12 in Decision no. 593/2025 and 14 in Decision no. 594/2025, tells you in two lines whether it is still worth it.
- For trade unions: if the grievance is that a category is missing from a list, the right address is Parliament or the Government, through a legislative initiative, not the Constitutional Court. Five consecutive decisions of inadmissibility say the same thing.
- If you are interested in the actual figure behind your salary, ask the finance department for the sectoral reference value used in the calculation and for the rounding method. Article II(3) of Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 requires rounding up to the whole leu in favour of the staff, and that can be checked on the payslip.
Frequently asked questions
Will my salary go up after these decisions?
What does it mean that the plea was dismissed „as unfounded”?
And what does „as inadmissible” mean?
Why was an ordinance repealed in 2009 examined at all?
What exactly does Article II of Government Ordinance no. 8/2008 provide?
What does Article 38(2) and (3) of Framework Law no. 153/2017 provide?
Can I attack the same texts before the Constitutional Court again?
Who raised the two pleas?
From what date do the decisions take effect?
What did the Government and Parliament say in these cases?
Editorial analysis
The decisions are properly built and, which happens rarely, genuinely useful when placed side by side. The only pair of figures in the act, 193.4694 lei plus 2%, gives 197.338788 lei, which would round to 197.3388, whereas the ordinance writes 197.3387, that is one hundredth of a ban less, truncated instead of rounded. The difference disappears anyway when paragraph (3) is applied, since it rounds the result up to the whole leu in favour of the staff, so it affects nobody’s entitlement and has no place in a list of errors. The references hold up as well: Article 73(3)(j) of the Constitution does concern the statute of public servants, Article 115(6) does concern emergency ordinances only, and Article 2(3) of Law no. 47/1992 says exactly what is attributed to it.
The same two 2008 values came before the Court once more, and the merits were never reached: the plea was rejected as inadmissible, because its author listed 35 articles of the Constitution without showing how the ordinance breaches them.
The first observation that is not visible on a straight read through the decision concerns the principle on which the union in the Craiova case relied. Paragraph 7 invokes the principle of „equal pay for equal work”. In the Romanian Constitution that formula appears only once, in Article 41(4), and it reads: „La munca egală, femeile au salariu egal cu bărbații”, for equal work, women have equal pay with men. It is a guarantee of equality between the sexes, not one between professional categories. The Court answered on Article 41 by speaking of the legislature’s margin of appreciation in pay matters, which is correct in itself, but without saying that the text relied on does not contain the principle in the form in which it was invoked. Anyone who wants to argue equality between categories has to work on Article 16, not on Article 41.
The second observation concerns the closing formula. The operative part says that the texts are constitutional „in relation to the criticisms raised”. The union relied on Article 73(3)(j), that is the statute of public servants. It did not rely on letter p) of the same paragraph, which reserves to organic law „the general regime of labour relations, trade unions, employers’ associations and social protection”. The Court answered that pay is not among the fields listed strictly and exhaustively in Article 73(3), a wording that covers the whole paragraph. The conclusion stays the same, but the difference between answering on one letter and answering on a whole paragraph matters to anyone thinking of taking the case up again.
The last observation is arithmetical and says something about the system, not about the Court. Between referral and delivery, 1,664 days went by in Decision no. 594/2025 and 1,673 in Decision no. 593/2025. Between delivery and publication, another 302. Added up, 1,966 and 1,975 days, that is more than five years and five months from the day a tribunal sent the question to the day the answer became binding on everyone. And in Decision no. 593/2025 the end of the road is the finding that the question could not be put in that form, something visible from the first page of the application and something the Court had already told the same union four times before.
What should be changed
- A statutory deadline for publishing the Court’s decisions, counted from delivery. Thirty days would be enough. Effect: the 302-day interval in which a decision exists and is final but produces no general effects disappears, and parties in other proceedings can rely on it.
- A filter for repeat pleas, at the moment of referral. Where the same author attacks the same texts on the same grounds, and the Court has already answered several times, the referring court should be able to reject the request by reasoned interlocutory judgment, subject to appeal, as it already does in the situations covered by Article 29(5) of Law no. 47/1992. Effect: a fifth identical answer no longer costs four years and seven months of waiting.
- A clean-up of Article 38 of Framework Law no. 153/2017, removing the spent paragraphs. Paragraph (2) concerns the second half of 2017, paragraph (3) concerns 2018. Nine years on, they are still being attacked before the Constitutional Court. Effect: an employee could read in a single text what actually applies to them, instead of reconstructing a chain of annual acts.
- Express reasons whenever the Court departs from the Public Ministry’s submissions on admissibility. In Decision no. 594/2025, the prosecutor asked for inadmissibility on Article 38(2)(a), and the Court examined the merits without saying why. Effect: the line between a constitutional criticism and a request for interpretation becomes predictable for whoever drafts the next plea.
- A note, alongside the operative part, of the full composition of the panel and of the reason for any absence. Both decisions carry eight judges’ names, from a Court which, under Article 142(2) of the Constitution, has nine. Effect: the reader no longer has to count in order to find out who ruled.
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. 767 of 9 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 118 KB the act starts on page 11
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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.