In brief
- The Constitutional Court has held that the State was entitled to require the aid application of spring 2020 to be lodged by e-mail alone. The phrase „prin poșta electronică”, by electronic mail, in Article IV(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020, together with paragraph (4) of the same article, stays in force and has been declared constitutional. On this point the plea was dismissed as unfounded, that is examined on the merits and found to be without basis.
- The second head of the application was not even examined. The criticism of Article 3(5), second sentence, of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 132/2020, the text which in 2020 reserved the second allowance to those who had received the first, was dismissed as inadmissible: the Court said that the grievance concerns the way in which the law is applied and interpreted, and that this is a matter for the courts of law, not for it.
- Who is concerned. Directly, the people who have had or still have cases about the pandemic allowances: professionals, authorised natural persons and persons with individual employment agreements in a cooperative. Indirectly, anyone on whom an authority imposes an obligation to communicate only electronically, because the reasoning of the decision shows exactly on what conditions such an obligation passes the constitutional test. The decision is final and generally binding from 28 September 2026, the date of publication.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 822 of 28 September 2026, pages 2-7
Delivered: 9 December 2025, unanimously
Final and generally binding: 28 September 2026, the date of publication
A woman who did not receive the aid granted to professionals during the state of emergency of 2020 went all the way to the Constitutional Court with two questions, and the Court answered only one of them. Decision no. 729 of 9 December 2025, published on 28 September 2026, confirms that the obligation to send the application only by e-mail was not discrimination, but refuses to examine the second criticism, the one about the condition of having first received the aid from the state of emergency. On that condition the Court had already ruled on the merits 54 days earlier, in a different case, and then held that whoever did not claim the first pandemic aid lost the second one for good as well.
The story begins on 16 March 2020, when Decree of the President of Romania no. 195/2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 212, instituted the state of emergency. Five days later, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2020 created, through Article XV(1), an allowance for professionals who are not employers and who were interrupting their activity because of decisions of the authorities. On 30 March 2020, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020 added the procedure: Article IV(1) provided that the entitled person lodges, by electronic mail, with the territorial agency, an application accompanied by a copy of the identity document and by a declaration on own responsibility. Not „poate depune”, may lodge, but „depune”, lodges. No paper alternative at all.
The author of the plea, Sanda Hanea, raised the issue in case no. 701/85/2021 before the Sibiu County Court, Second Civil, Administrative and Tax Litigation Division, and the court referred the matter to the Constitutional Court by the referral order of 7 May 2021. Her argument has two layers. The first: in Romania there is a large number of people who either have no access to an electronic mail service, because they have neither internet nor devices, or do not know how to use one, so a rule that requires e-mail alone shuts the most vulnerable out of the right. On top of that, the Government itself went back on its position, since Government Decision no. 719/2020 allowed the application for the second allowance to be sent „în format electronic sau în format letric”, in electronic or in paper form. The Sibiu County Court agreed with her in the opinion sent to the Court, on both heads.
The Court dismissed the first criticism and explained why. The measure was adopted during the state of emergency, and the main way of stopping a highly contagious virus was to limit physical contact between people. Articles 38 and 50 of Annex no. 1 to Decree no. 195/2020 had already required that applications for social benefits be capable of being lodged electronically as well and that the authorities organise their activity so that direct contact be avoided. The measure, the Court says, is a reflection of Article 34(2) of the Constitution, which requires the State to take hygiene and public health measures, and is therefore objectively justified. As to whether it was reasonable, the Court openly acknowledges, at paragraph 37, that the population’s access to electronic mail differs according to material means, according to the area in which a person lives and according to the level of education. It acknowledges this and moves on: an exception to the rule of transmission by e-mail could have brought consequences more serious than the inconvenience, „afectarea sănătății sau chiar deces”, harm to health or even death, so the restriction remains reasonable.
On the second criticism, the Court did not reach the merits. Article 3(5), second sentence, of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 132/2020 said that, by way of exception, in 2020 the new allowance went only to those professionals and persons with individual employment agreements in a cooperative who had benefited from the allowance of the state of emergency. The author challenged the text both for lack of clarity and for discrimination. At paragraph 43, the constitutional court found that the reproach concerns the situations and the persons falling within the scope of the text, that is application and interpretation, and that these operations are for the courts of law. It therefore dismissed the plea as inadmissible.
The difference between the two solutions is not a formal one. „Unfounded” means that the constitutional court weighed the argument and found it wrong: the text passed the test and nobody can usefully attack it again with the same arguments. „Inadmissible” means that the constitutional court did not enter the discussion at all, because the question was not for it. For somebody with a pending case, the second solution leaves the ground free: the argument can be taken up again before the trial judge, as an argument about the interpretation of the law, not about constitutionality. The first solution closes it.
What it changes in practice
The first effect concerns the text: neither of the two articles challenged changes. The phrase „prin poșta electronică” stays in Article IV(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020 exactly in the form published on 30 March 2020, and paragraph (4) of the same article likewise. The mechanism in Article 31(3) of Law no. 47/1992, by which a provision declared unconstitutional is suspended by operation of law and ceases to have effect within 45 days if Parliament or the Government does not bring it into line with the Constitution, applies only where a plea is upheld. Here it was not upheld, so nothing is suspended and nothing falls.
The second effect concerns the case from which everything started. Raising a plea of unconstitutionality does not suspend the trial, and Article 29 of Law no. 47/1992 provides for no suspension. The Sibiu court receives the decision, puts it in the file and goes on judging. On the first head the judge is bound: the text is constitutional. On the second he has a free hand to establish himself what „a beneficiat de indemnizația prevăzută la art. XV alin. (1)”, has benefited from the allowance provided for in that article, means and to whom it applies, because that is exactly what the Court sent back to him.
The third effect is the one that reaches beyond the case. The reasoning fixes the conditions on which an authority may impose a single channel of communication without breaching equality of rights. There are two, and they can be read from paragraphs 36 and 38: the measure must be appropriate to the aim pursued, and the disadvantage caused to those excluded must be smaller than the harm the measure prevents. The Court did not say that compulsory digitalisation is constitutional in itself. It said that, in a health emergency, the risk of illness and of death weighs more than the inability of some people to send an e-mail. Outside such a context, the second condition no longer has anything to balance.
The fourth effect is one of internal precedent. At paragraph 21 the Court agreed to examine a text that was no longer in force in the form criticised, invoking Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 549 of 3 August 2011, according to which provisions whose legal effects continue after they cease to be in force also fall under review. It therefore did all the work of establishing its jurisdiction over an abandoned text, only to find afterwards that the question was not one of constitutionality.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
In positive law nothing changed on 28 September 2026. The two emergency ordinances criticised are still in force today, unrepealed, and Article IV(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020 still carries untouched the phrase the Court has just validated. What has changed is the state of the question: until publication, a judge could wait for an answer from the Court; from now on he has it, and it is binding.
The real change to the text of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 132/2020 had, however, taken place long before, and not in the direction hoped for by anyone who reads only the operative part. On 7 June 2021, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 44/2021 amended, through Article I, paragraphs (1) and (5) of Article 3. Paragraph (5) was emptied: what remained was a mere reference to the Government decision laying down the payment procedure. The contested condition survived the move: it went up into paragraph (1), where from an exception for 2020 it became the very rule of eligibility. In 2022, Article 16 of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 2/2022 rewrote paragraph (1) once more and widened the circle, adding the recipients of the allowance in Article 6(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 111/2021. The condition survived both rewritings.
The distance from the moment of the facts has changed as well. Between the referral order of 7 May 2021 and the delivery, 1,677 days passed, and between the delivery and publication in the Official Gazette of Romania another 293. From the referral to publication there are 1,970 days, that is five years and almost five months. The text the Court examined, the one in Government Emergency Ordinance no. 132/2020 in its earlier wording, had been replaced 31 days after the referral.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It closes an old uncertainty. Claims about the 2020 allowances went on circulating through the courts for years, and judges now have a binding answer on the constitutional head concerning communication by e-mail.
- It formulates a test usable beyond the pandemic. Paragraphs 36 and 38 lay down two conditions for any single channel of communication imposed by an authority: the measure must be appropriate to the aim and the loss suffered by those excluded must be smaller than the harm avoided.
- It expressly acknowledges the inequality of access. Paragraph 37 says, in black and white, that access to electronic mail differs according to material means, according to area and according to the level of education. The finding stays in the body of the case law and can be used in other cases, including against a digitalisation imposed without any health reason.
- Dismissal as inadmissible is not a defeat on the merits. The party can take up the argument about the meaning of the condition again before the Sibiu County Court, as a question of interpretation of the law.
- The decision was taken unanimously, with no separate opinion, so it leaves behind no divergence to feed further referrals on the same text.
What remains a problem
- The 1,970 days from the referral to publication make the answer almost useless for the person who asked for it. The aid related to the months of March, April and May 2020.
- The Court does not answer the author’s most concrete argument. She had shown that Government Decision no. 719/2020 allowed the application for the second allowance to be lodged „în format electronic sau în format letric”, in electronic or in paper form, and therefore that the Government itself had considered exclusivity unnecessary. The reasoning nowhere discusses that comparison.
- The health argument does not explain the difference in treatment inside the same ordinance. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2020 allowed lodging on paper for social assistance benefits, through Article III(1), and for entitlements from the unemployment insurance budget, through Article X. The risk of contagion was identical in all three cases.
- Dismissal as inadmissible leaves the financially most important head without a constitutional answer. Whoever did not receive the first allowance is left with a question of interpretation, settled differently from one court to another.
- The decision does not mention Decision no. 474 of 16 October 2025 at all, although the prosecutor had invoked it in his submissions and although there the same criticism of the same text received a solution on the merits. The reader is left without an explanation of the difference.
Practical advice
- If you have a case about the 2020 allowances, read paragraph 43 of the decision before the next hearing. There the Court says that the question of who falls within the scope of the condition is for the trial court, which turns the argument from a constitutional one into one of interpretation, to be made before the judge.
- Do not confuse the two solutions in the operative part. Point 1 closes the discussion about e-mail; point 2 closes nothing. A lawyer who treats them alike loses an argument that still exists.
- If an authority imposes a single electronic channel on you today, check whether it has behind it a reason as strong as the one invoked here. The reasoning ties the validation to the health emergency and to the risk of death, not to administrative convenience.
- When you lodge an application by e-mail, keep proof of sending and the confirmation of receipt. Almost all the litigation in this wave started from the impossibility of showing that the application had reached the territorial agency in time.
- Always check the form of the text on the date of the facts, not the form it has today. Article 3(5) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 132/2020 looks completely different today from what it looked like in 2020, and the condition that matters has moved into paragraph (1).
- If only the conclusion interests you, the operative part is on page 7 of issue no. 822. The useful reasoning on the side of electronic communication is in paragraphs 28 to 38.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean that the plea was dismissed as unfounded?
And dismissed as inadmissible?
Does anything change for somebody with a pending case?
Are the ordinances discussed still in force?
What happened to Article 3(5), second sentence?
Does the decision oblige the State to accept paper applications from now on?
Why did it take so long?
How many judges decided?
Editorial analysis
The decision is well built on the part it does examine. The references exist and say what is attributed to them: the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 6 April 2000 in Thlimmenos v. Greece, paragraph 44, does establish that the right not to be discriminated against is breached also where the State fails to treat differently persons in significantly different situations, and Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011 does open review to texts that have ceased to be in force but whose effects continue. The problem lies in what the Court chooses to leave undiscussed.
The heaviest omission comes out of the very paragraphs the Court uses to justify the measure. At paragraphs 29 and 30 it takes stock of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 30/2020 and finds that there lodging on paper had remained possible in two places: in Article III(1), for social assistance benefits paid from the budget of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, and in Article X, for entitlements from the unemployment insurance budget and from the Fund for guaranteeing the payment of salary claims. At paragraph 31 it adds the decisive observation, again in its own hand: the choice between paper and e-mail „nu este justificată de calitatea solicitanților”, is not justified by the status of the applicants, but by the existence and the efficiency of electronic reception systems at the agency that receives them. Three lines below, at paragraph 32, the electronic exclusivity in Article IV of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020 is declared justified by the health imperative. The two statements do not sit well together. If the existence of the paper channel depended on the technical capacity of the agency and not on the risk of contagion, then Article IV was a choice about administrative equipment, and its cost was borne by the applicant. The risk of falling ill was identical at the social assistance counter and at the unemployment counter, where paper remained permitted.
The second observation comes from comparing the calendars, and it is a figure the act does not write. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020 imposed the single channel on 30 March 2020. Government Decision no. 719/2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 794 of 31 August 2020, allowed both the electronic and the paper form for the second allowance, 154 days after that, and only 21 days after the publication of the ordinance it was implementing. In other words, the executive gave up exclusivity of its own accord in less than half a year, in the middle of the state of alert, without the epidemiological situation having changed fundamentally. The author of the plea put exactly this argument on the table, at paragraph 11. The reasoning of the Court does not touch it in any paragraph, although it is the only element in the file that tests whether the measure was truly necessary or merely convenient.
The third observation concerns the relationship between the time limits imposed on the citizen and those the State sets itself. In 2020, a person had to send the application within a window of days, in a single format, and if he missed it he received nothing. The question whether that single format was constitutional received an answer in 1,677 days, and the answer reached the reader only after another 293. In total, 1,970 days. On 9 December 2025, when the Court delivered its decision, the text examined had been replaced 1,646 days earlier. No stage of this course has a legal time limit, unlike the one imposed on the applicant.
The fourth observation concerns internal coherence. On 16 October 2025, by Decision no. 474, the Court dismissed as unfounded the same criticism of discrimination brought against the same Article 3(5), second sentence, of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 132/2020. On 9 December 2025, 54 days later, the same criticism of the same text receives a solution of inadmissibility. The prosecutor had expressly asked for dismissal as unfounded and had invoked Decision no. 474/2025, as can be seen at paragraph 3. The reasoning mentions it nowhere. For a litigant the difference is not academic: a dismissal on the merits closes his argument, one of inadmissibility leaves it open before the trial court, and the outcome depended on the panel he happened to draw, not on what he had written in his application.
What should be changed
- A legal time limit for publishing the decisions of the Court. Law no. 47/1992 provides for none, and here 293 days passed between delivery and publication, time in which the decision produced no effect. A time limit of 30 days from the drafting of the reasons would shorten the interval in which courts judge without knowing what the Court has held.
- The obligation to discuss the arguments retained in the referral order. The comparison with Government Decision no. 719/2020 has been in the file since 7 May 2021 and does not appear in the reasoning. A rule requiring the Court to answer each criticism raised, point by point, would remove the impression that the awkward argument was sidestepped.
- An express statement of reasons for a change of solution against a recent decision on the same text. Where the same provision receives, within 54 days, a dismissal on the merits and one of inadmissibility, the second decision ought to say why. Otherwise the solution appears to depend on the panel, and the predictability of the case law suffers.
- A general rule of legislative drafting on the single channel of communication. Law no. 24/2000 could require any normative act that imposes a single means of lodging to provide an alternative route as well, or to state in the preamble why there is none. It would settle before litigation exactly the situation in Article IV of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 32/2020.
- Immediate publication of decisions more than a year old from delivery. A decision delivered on 9 December 2025 and published on 28 September 2026 lands in a legislative landscape that has changed twice in the meantime. The reverse order, from the oldest to the newest, would reduce the risk of the answer arriving after the question has lost its object.
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. 822 of 28 September 2026, pages 2-7 16 pages PDF, 131 KB the act starts on page 2
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