In brief
- The Constitutional Court dismissed the plea as unfounded, unanimously. The provision under which, throughout 2018, no public institution in Romania handed out gift vouchers, bonuses, the meal allowance or the holiday allowance remains constitutional, and so does the emergency ordinance as a whole.
- Those concerned are staff paid from public funds who still have cases pending over 2018 entitlements, and the institutions that the Court of Accounts held liable for such payments. For everyone else, the decision changes no amount currently in payment.
- The ground for the dismissal: bonuses and vouchers are not fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution but supplementary pay entitlements, which the legislature may vary, suspend or withdraw; and pay is not among the areas reserved to organic law, so the Government was entitled to legislate by emergency ordinance.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 768 of 10 September 2026
In force from: 10 September 2026, the date of publication
The year in which nobody in the public sector received a bonus, a gift voucher, a meal allowance or a holiday allowance has finally passed the constitutional test, eight years late. The Constitutional Court dismissed the plea raised by the town of Viseu de Sus, in Maramures county, against Article 9(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance No 90/2017, the provision that stopped those entitlements for the whole of 2018. The decision continues a settled line of case law, the same line that supported the dismissal of the plea concerning the freeze on public sector pay in 2021 and 2022: entitlements that sit on top of basic salary may be stopped by law when the State tightens its spending.
The phrase „fiscal and budgetary measure” sounds technical, but it covers something simple. The State has two levers it can move within a single year: how much it collects, the fiscal side, and how much it spends, the budgetary side. The ordinance of December 2017 acted on the second one, a few days before the 2018 budget went into debate, and its preamble says plainly why: failure to adopt the measures would have added to the general consolidated budget deficit an extra 5.14% of gross domestic product in 2018, and the deficit would have exceeded the 3% threshold laid down by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Stopping bonuses and vouchers was one of the savings that went into that calculation.
The contested provision stated that, in 2018, public institutions and authorities, whatever their system of financing and subordination, including the activities financed entirely from own revenue set up alongside them, „shall not grant their staff gift vouchers, bonuses or the meal allowance and the holiday allowance provided for by Framework Law No 153/2017”. The definition of the institutions covered is borrowed from two places, Article 2(1)(30) of Law No 500/2002 on public finances and Article 2(1)(39) of Law No 273/2006 on local public finances, which in practice takes in the whole public sector: ministries, agencies, town halls, hospitals, schools, theatres, no matter whether the money comes from the State budget, from a local budget or from the institution’s own revenue.
The plea grew out of a concrete dispute. The town of Viseu de Sus, acting through its mayor, was in litigation with the Court of Accounts over excellence bonuses, the entitlement that Article 26(1) of Framework Law No 153/2017 allows authorising officers to award monthly to staff who contributed directly to outstanding results, up to 5% of the basic salary costs in the establishment plan. The case, opened in 2020, had reached the appeal stage before the Cluj Court of Appeal, which referred the matter to the Constitutional Court by civil interlocutory judgment of 19 April 2021.
The town put forward two criticisms, both of them formal rather than substantive. First, that pay is an area reserved to organic law under Article 73(1) and (3)(o) and (p) of the Constitution, so the Government could not intervene there by emergency ordinance. Second, that there was no extraordinary situation of the kind Article 115(4) of the Constitution requires for any emergency ordinance, since the explanatory memorandum spoke of a positive effect on the State budget, whereas the local budget is distinct from it, local authorities being free, under Article 11 of Framework Law No 153/2017, to decide on the pay of their own staff.
The Court answered both and rejected both. Increments, bonuses and other incentives are, in its settled case law, supplementary pay entitlements rather than fundamental rights, and the legislature may differentiate, amend, suspend or even withdraw them. The pay system, whatever the professional category, is not among the areas listed strictly and exhaustively in Article 73(3) of the Constitution, so it is not a matter for organic law. As to urgency, the Court repeated the reasoning of Decision no. 230 of 2 June 2020, which had already tested the same ordinance, and found that the preamble gives an objective and convincing account of both the extraordinary situation and the urgency. The operative part is short: the provisions of Article 9(1), and the ordinance as a whole, are constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised. The decision is final and generally binding.
What it changes in practice
The decision takes effect from the date of publication, 10 September 2026, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, which states that decisions of the Court are generally binding from publication and have effect only for the future. Being a decision of dismissal, it amends no rule and opens no route to recovery: Article 9(1) stands exactly as it was written in 2017 and as it was applied in 2018.
The most direct effect shows up in the case that produced it. The appeal before the Cluj Court of Appeal goes on with the provision intact, so the defence built on its unconstitutionality collapses. One point deserves spelling out here, because many people miss it: since 2010, when Law No 177/2010 removed the automatic stay of proceedings, raising a plea of unconstitutionality no longer halts the trial. The court could therefore have ruled on the appeal without waiting for the Constitutional Court’s answer, and if it did wait, it waited four years and eight months.
For the other cases on the same provision, the decision closes a door. A decision upholding the plea would have allowed final judgments to be reopened in the cases in which the plea had been raised, under Article 509(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure. A decision of dismissal allows none of that. Pay entitlements are also subject to a three-year limitation period running from the date on which the right of action arose, under Article 268(1)(c) of the Labour Code, so 2018 has long been closed for anyone who does not already have proceedings under way.
For the public institutions that did grant those entitlements in 2018 and were then held liable by the Court of Accounts, the decision confirms the basis of that audit. The ban was valid, so the payment was made without legal basis, and the Court did not accept local autonomy as an argument strong enough to lift local budgets out of the reach of the ordinance.
The most important effect, however, is the indirect one, and it concerns the current year. The reasoning in this decision, namely that bonuses and value vouchers are supplementary pay entitlements that may be suspended by law, applies in identical terms to the provisions in force today. In 2026, Article XIX(1) and (3) of Law No 141/2025 forbids public institutions to grant value vouchers, with the exception of nursery vouchers, and to grant bonuses, premiums or other entitlements of a similar nature. The meal allowance of 347 lei a month and the holiday voucher of 800 lei are granted in 2026, but only to staff whose monthly net salary does not exceed 6,000 lei. Anyone minded to challenge those provisions starts, after 10 September 2026, from a losing position.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until 10 September 2026, Article 9(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance No 90/2017 had been applied and invoked in litigation, but had no constitutional verdict of its own. The ordinance had been tested once, by Decision no. 230 of 2 June 2020, but there the Court ruled on Article 7(2) and on the approving law, not on Article 9. This decision extends to Article 9(1) the solution and the reasoning of 2020, and adds an answer on the organic law criticism, which the Court had dealt with separately, in Decision no. 543 of 29 October 2024.
The second thing that changed, though earlier, concerns the act rather than the decision. The ban in paragraph (1) did not stay total even in 2018. Law No 80/2018, the law by which Parliament approved the ordinance, added two new paragraphs to Article 9, (3) and (4), applicable from 31 March 2018. Under them, the same public institutions did grant, in 2018, a single holiday allowance or holiday premium, in the form of vouchers, on the basis of Government Emergency Ordinance No 8/2009, while for military personnel, police officers, public servants with special status in the prison system and civilian staff of defence and public order institutions, tourist services supplied in Romania were reimbursed. In other words, the holiday allowance from Framework Law No 153/2017 was stopped, but replaced by the 2009 holiday voucher. The ban that was real and had no substitute applied to gift vouchers, bonuses and the meal allowance.
The third change is the one between 2018 and 2026, and it shows how the logic of the measure has shifted. In 2018 the ban was flat: nothing for anyone, apart from the exceptions in paragraph (2), the prizes for athletes and their technical teams and for pupils, students, researchers and teachers who won distinctions at olympiads and competitions. In 2026, bonuses and value vouchers remain stopped, nursery vouchers excepted, but the meal allowance and the holiday voucher are granted subject to an income cap, at net salaries of up to 6,000 lei. The measure has therefore moved from general suspension to selective award, which does not make it gentler for everyone: whoever is above the cap gets neither of the two.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It closes off, for all future litigation, the two formal criticisms most often used against pay austerity ordinances: organic law and the absence of an extraordinary situation.
- It gives the courts a citable answer on a provision that generated disputes for eight years, instead of leaving each panel to make its own sense of earlier case law.
- The reasoning is short and verifiable, with references to the decisions it rests on, so it can be followed even by a reader with no legal training.
- It confirms that the pay of staff financed from public funds is not a matter for organic law, which also clears up the debate about future fiscal and budgetary packages.
- It expressly holds that supplementary pay entitlements may also be differentiated between categories of staff, which supports the income caps used since 2025.
What remains a problem
- Between delivery, on 9 December 2025, and publication, on 10 September 2026, 275 days went by, and the decision becomes binding only on publication. Throughout that time, the courts ruled without it.
- From the referral to the Court, on 19 April 2021, to publication, 1,970 days went by, that is five years, four months and 22 days, for a provision that was in force for 365 days.
- The town’s most serious argument, that the local budget is distinct from the State budget, is recorded in paragraph 7 of the decision but receives no answer in paragraphs 15 to 19.
- Nowhere does the Court ask itself whether a measure presented as annual is still temporary once it is renewed year after year, even though by 2025 it was in its eighth renewal.
- The summary of the prosecutor’s submissions, in paragraph 3, credits the 2017 ordinance with a deficit target „in 2023”, whereas the preamble of the act speaks throughout of 2018.
- The reference to the leading precedent is misdated: Decision no. 230/2020 was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1321 of 31 December 2020, not of 13 December 2020.
Practical advice
- If you have proceedings under way over pay entitlements from 2018, the decision neither helps you nor harms you: it confirms the provision the court was applying anyway. Do ask for your file to be checked, though, because since 2010 proceedings are no longer stayed pending the Court’s answer, and a stay ordered nonetheless is wrong.
- Do not start fresh proceedings over the bonuses, vouchers or allowances not granted in 2018. The three-year period in Article 268(1)(c) of the Labour Code expired long ago, and the decision does not set it running again.
- Authorising officers preparing payments in 2026 should read Article XIX of Law No 141/2025 before promising anything: the only value voucher allowed is the nursery voucher, and bonuses and premiums are stopped, apart from the entitlements in Article XIV(1) of the same law.
- Public sector employees should check their net salary against the 6,000 lei cap: below it, 2026 brings the meal allowance of 347 lei a month and the holiday voucher of 800 lei; above it, neither of the two.
- Institutions in dispute with the Court of Accounts over payments made between 2018 and 2025 can cite this decision, but in the Court of Accounts’ favour, not against it. Check from the outset whether your defence rests on an argument the Constitutional Court has already rejected.
- When you read a decision of the Constitutional Court, look at the date of delivery as well as the date of publication. The gap can run to almost a year, and during that interval the legal position is not the one the published case law shows.
Frequently asked questions
Was the plea upheld or dismissed?
What does „constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised” mean?
What is a fiscal and budgetary measure, in plain terms?
What exactly did Article 9(1) provide?
Can I still claim the money for 2018?
Is Article 9 still in force?
What applies in 2026 in place of that provision?
Why did it take five years?
Editorial analysis
The decision solves a real problem, even if it solves it late. For eight years, any public institution audited over bonuses paid in 2018 was able to plead in its defence the unconstitutionality of the provision that banned them, and the courts had to manage with the Court’s general case law rather than with a verdict on that provision. Now the verdict exists, it is unanimous and it is framed as a matter of principle, so it also covers the later provisions in the same family. The reasoning invents nothing: it repeats the argument of Decision no. 230 of 2 June 2020, which concerned the same ordinance, and completes it with Decision no. 543 of 29 October 2024 on the organic law question. Anyone looking for a shift in case law will not find one here, and that in itself is good news for predictability.
The first observation that does not emerge from reading the act from end to end is the arithmetic of the time limits, and it is merciless. The rule under review lived for 365 days, the length of 2018. Its constitutional review took 1,970 days from referral to publication, that is five years, four months and 22 days, of which 1,695 days up to delivery and another 275 after it. The ratio between the length of the review and the length of the rule reviewed is more than five to one, and it has nothing to do with the complexity of the case: the substantive reasoning fits into five paragraphs and contains no new element. The 275 days between delivery and publication deserve to be looked at separately, because Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties binding force to the date of publication. In a case at the appeal stage, nine months are enough for a final judgment to be handed down without the decision that clarified the very provision applied.
The second observation calls for opening another act and changes the way this whole decision reads. The 2018 measure was not, in fact, a one-year measure. It has been renewed without a break: by Government Emergency Ordinance No 114/2018 and its successive amendments, among them Government Emergency Ordinances No 1/2020, No 226/2020 and No 130/2021, for the years 2019 to 2022, by Government Emergency Ordinance No 168/2022 for 2023, No 115/2023 for 2024, No 156/2024 for 2025 and, finally, by Article XIX of Law No 141/2025 for 2026. That is nine consecutive years of a ban presented each time as annual. The most telling detail is that the 2017 wording was copied almost word for word: Article XIX of Law No 141/2025 opens with the same double definition of those covered, Article 2(1)(30) of Law No 500/2002 and Article 2(1)(39) of Law No 273/2006, followed by the same construction „shall not grant their staff”. What the Court validated, then, is not an expired provision but the template of a rule in force right now, and that does not appear anywhere in the decision.
The weak point of the reasoning lies elsewhere and can be seen by simply counting the arguments. Paragraph 7 records the most interesting criticism made by Viseu de Sus: the explanatory memorandum invoked a positive effect on the State budget, but the local public budget is distinct from the State budget, and Article 11 of Framework Law No 153/2017 leaves local authorities free to decide the level and the manner of awarding pay to their own staff. Paragraphs 15 to 19 do not answer it. The Court answers rigorously on the two constitutional provisions invoked in paragraph 14, Article 73 and Article 115(4), and nothing more, which is formally correct, since the author of the plea did not attach the local autonomy argument to any provision of the Constitution. The result is still a decision that validates a rule applicable to local budgets as well without saying a word about local budgets. One figure from the act belongs alongside this: the ceiling on excellence bonuses in Article 26(1) of Framework Law No 153/2017 is 5% of the institution’s basic salary costs, so the ban removed from every authorising officer’s discretion a fund worth up to 5% of their own wage bill, whether the money came from the State budget or from local taxes. Finally, two drafting slips, which we flag here and not under errors, because neither changes the outcome: paragraph 3 credits the 2017 ordinance with a deficit target „in 2023”, although the preamble speaks consistently of 2018, and paragraph 18 dates the leading precedent to Official Gazette of Romania no. 1321 of 13 December 2020, when that issue of the Gazette is dated 31 December 2020. The panel was made up of eight judges out of nine, which satisfies the two-thirds quorum in Article 51(1) of Law No 47/1992, so the unanimity invoked in the operative part is the unanimity of those eight.
What should be changed
- A statutory deadline for publishing Constitutional Court decisions, for example 30 days from delivery. Effect: the 275 days in which a decision exists but binds nobody disappear, and the courts stop handing down final judgments on provisions whose constitutional fate is already settled but not yet communicated.
- An obligation, for any act that renews a temporary measure, to state which year of extension it is in and for what total duration. Effect: Article XIX of Law No 141/2025 would say in black and white that the ban is in its ninth year, and the debate about how exceptional it is would be conducted on a figure rather than on impressions.
- Reasoning in Court decisions should also answer arguments that are not attached to a constitutional provision, at least with one line explaining why they cannot be examined. Effect: the author of the plea and the referring court learn why their central argument went unanswered, and the same criticism is not raised again word for word in another case.
- A correction of the reference in paragraph 18, to Official Gazette of Romania no. 1321 of 31 December 2020. Effect: anyone tracking down the precedent on the strength of the decision finds it first time, instead of landing on an issue that does not exist on the date given.
- A check of the summary of the prosecutor’s submissions against the preamble of the act, before final drafting. Effect: no more published decisions crediting a 2017 ordinance with a budget target for 2023, which leaves the reader thinking the act under review is a different one.
- A statement, in decisions on temporary rules, of whether the reasoning carries over to provisions in force and to which ones. Effect: an authorising officer reading the decision in 2026 grasps at once that the reasoning covers Article XIX of Law No 141/2025, instead of assuming that only 2018 is under discussion.
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. 768 of 10 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 114 KB the act starts on page 3
Open the official PDFDownload the PDF
The viewer is not shown on small screens. Use the buttons above to open or download the file.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.