The highest salary in the institution is owed to police officers too: the CCR dismissed the Coast Guard plea

A police officer paid less than a colleague with the same position, the same rank and the same length of service, in the same institution, is entitled to be raised to the highest level actually being paid. The rule for calculating police and military pay was confirmed again, this time through Constitutional Court Decision no. 420/2026. The Constitutional Court confirmed this once again through Decision no. 730 of 9 December 2025, published on 9 September 2026 in Official Gazette of Romania no. 766, dismissing as unfounded the plea raised by the Constanța Coast Guard. It is the second decision on public sector pay published in the same week, after the one of 7 September in which the Court held that bonuses do not fall under the principle of „equal pay for equal work”.

The stakes are worth explaining from the outset, because they are among the highest in Romanian pay litigation. Between 2010 and 2017, pay in the public sector was no longer set by a single law actually applied, but by annual ordinances that kept in place the amounts already being paid. The result, in an ordinary office: two people with the same position, the same rank and the same length of service took home different money, usually because one of them had won a court case and the other had not.

The legislature tried to repair this through the very texts the Coast Guard attacked. The first is Article 1(5¹) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 83/2014, introduced by Law no. 71/2015 approving the ordinance, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 233 of 6 April 2015. The decision reproduces it in full: „Prin excepție de la prevederile alin. (1) și (2), personalul din aparatul de lucru al Parlamentului și din celelalte instituții și autorități publice, salarizat la același nivel, precum și personalul din cadrul Consiliului Concurenței și al Curții de Conturi, inclusiv personalul prevăzut la art. 5 din aceste instituții, care beneficiază de un cuantum al salariilor de bază și al sporurilor mai mici decât cele stabilite la nivel maxim în cadrul aceleiași instituții sau autorități publice pentru fiecare funcție/grad/treaptă și gradație, va fi salarizat la nivelul maxim dacă își desfășoară activitatea în aceleași condiții.” In English: by way of exception, staff of the working apparatus of Parliament and of the other public institutions and authorities paid at the same level, as well as staff of the Competition Council and of the Court of Accounts, who receive basic salaries and bonuses lower than those set at the maximum level within the same institution for each position, rank, grade and step, are to be paid at that maximum level if they carry out their work in the same conditions.

The second text, Article 3¹(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 57/2015, widens the rule to the whole public sector: „Prin excepție de la prevederile art. 1 alin. (1), începând cu luna august 2016, personalul plătit din fonduri publice care beneficiază de un cuantum al salariilor de bază/indemnizațiilor de încadrare, aferent unui program normal al timpului de muncă, mai mic decât cel stabilit în plată la nivel maxim pentru fiecare funcție, grad/treaptă, gradație, vechime în funcție sau în specialitate, după caz, va fi salarizat la nivelul maxim al salariului de bază/indemnizației de încadrare din cadrul instituției sau autorității publice respective, dacă își desfășoară activitatea în aceleași condiții.” In English: from August 2016, staff paid from public funds whose basic salary or grading allowance, for normal working hours, is lower than the highest amount actually being paid for each position, rank, grade, step and length of service in the position or in the speciality are to be paid at that maximum level within the institution concerned, if they carry out their work in the same conditions.

The difference between the two is visible to the naked eye. The first lists its addressees: the apparatus of Parliament, institutions paid at the same level, the Competition Council, the Court of Accounts. The second lists nothing at all, says „staff paid from public funds” and starts from August 2016, even though the ordinance hosting it had been published on 11 December 2015. The index in the article number also shows that it was inserted into the ordinance later.

On paper, the second text excludes nobody. In practice it tripped over terminology. Both speak of the basic salary, and the second also of the grading allowance. Neither mentions the „solda funcției de bază”, the basic position pay of military personnel, or the „salariul funcției de bază”, the basic position salary of police officers and of the other public servants with a special statute. The institutions employing such staff refused the levelling-up on exactly this argument: if the law does not name our pay element, the law does not concern us.

The courts had to work out what the words meant, and the Constitutional Court lists in the decision the steps taken by the supreme court. Decision no. 23 of 26 September 2016, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 899 of 9 November 2016, clarified which staff the maximum level in Article 1(5¹) applies to, by reference to all four main pay elements: the basic salary, the basic position pay of the military, the basic position salary and the grading allowance. Decision no. 30 of 17 October 2016, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.025 of 20 December 2016, dealt with the equivalence between the basic salary and the basic position salary. And the Constitutional Court itself, through Decision no. 794 of 15 December 2016, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.029 of 21 December 2016, had established equal treatment in matters of pay for public sector staff of the same rank, the same step, the same length of service in the position or in the speciality and the same education.

The end of the road is Decision no. 51 of 11 November 2019 of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Panel for the Resolution of Points of Law, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 64 of 30 January 2020. It held, with binding force for all courts, that the term „salariu de bază” in the two ordinances „se interpretează extensiv, în sensul că se referă și la salariul funcției de bază al polițiștilor”, that it is to be read broadly, as covering the basic position salary of police officers as well. From that moment on, a police officer paid below the maximum level in their institution, for the same position, rank, grade and step, could ask a court to level their pay up.

This is where the detail that changes the whole reading of the file comes in: the plea of unconstitutionality was not raised by a police officer, but by the institution that pays them. The Coast Guard is the territorial structure of the Border Police based in Constanța, and the proceedings in which it raised the plea, case no. 3.659/3/2019 before the Constanța Tribunal, Section for administrative and tax litigation, had been brought by the National Trade Union of Police Officers and Contract Staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on behalf of its members, over pay entitlements. The employer could not attack the High Court decision directly, because under Article 146(d) of the Constitution, invoked in the decision itself, only a law or an ordinance can be the object of a plea of unconstitutionality. So it attacked the statutory texts „in the interpretation given” by that decision, the only door left open.

The institution’s arguments take up nine paragraphs of the decision, from 5 to 13, and add up to a single accusation: through its broad reading, the supreme court is said to have breached the separation of powers in Article 1(4) of the Constitution and Parliament’s role as the sole legislative authority in Article 61(1), by putting itself in the legislature’s place. The Coast Guard relied on Article 36(3) of Law no. 24/2000, under which specialist terms are to be used only where they are established in the field being regulated, and on Article 37(1) of the same law, under which the same notions are to be expressed only through the same terms. It also argued that Article 1(5¹) is a derogating rule within the meaning of Article 15(3) of Law no. 24/2000, and therefore of strict application, and that if the legislature had wanted to cover police officers as well it would have written out all four names of pay elements, not just two.

The Constanța Tribunal considered the plea unfounded, pointing out that the supreme court can interpret a statutory text without putting itself in the legislature’s place. The presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, the Government and the Ombudsman did not send in the opinions requested from them. The representative of the Public Ministry asked for the plea to be dismissed.

The Court dismissed it unanimously, and the reasoning rests almost entirely on an earlier decision: Decision no. 95 of 5 March 2024, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 830 of 21 August 2024, by which it had dismissed the same criticism, on the same texts, brought by the same author. The substantive argument, taken over from paragraphs 25 to 27 of that decision, is that the High Court carried out a purposive reading „având ca fundament considerente constituționale, legale și jurisprudențiale, care înlătură echivocul normativ”, grounded in constitutional, statutory and case-law considerations that remove the ambiguity of the rule, and that in fixing the meaning of the phrase it did not put itself in the legislature’s place, because „sensul stabilit normei nu o modifică, nici nu o completează”, the meaning given to the rule neither amends nor supplements it. In paragraph 26, the Court closes the file in a single sentence: no new elements have arisen, so the solution and the reasoning from 2024 remain valid.

One last detail explains why the discussion still makes sense in 2026. Both texts have been repealed. The Court notes that they ceased to be in force through Article 44(1) point 11 and point 20 respectively of Framework Law no. 153/2017, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 492 of 28 June 2017, that is more than nine years ago. It rules on them all the same, relying on Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 549 of 3 August 2011, under which provisions whose legal effects continue after they cease to be in force are also subject to constitutional review. Those effects are the pay entitlements for 2015 and for the period from August 2016 to June 2017, which are still being litigated today.

A second decision on public sector pay points the same way: by CCR Decision no. 594/2025 the Court kept police officers and military staff on the 2008 and 2017 pay rules.

What it changes in practice

The decision takes effect from 9 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. Article 147(4) of the Constitution, invoked in the operative part itself as the legal basis, provides that the Court’s decisions are published in the Official Gazette of Romania and that, from the date of publication, they are generally binding and have effect only for the future. The operative part repeats the settled formula: „Final and generally binding”.

The most important practical effect is that nothing changes, and that is precisely the news. A dismissal as unfounded does not remove the rule from the legal order and does not retouch its meaning. Article 1(5¹) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 83/2014 and Article 3¹(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 57/2015 remain applicable, and the High Court’s 2019 interpretation remains binding on all courts.

For a police officer in pay proceedings, this means that the employer’s main argument disappears. The institution can no longer claim that the statutory text does not concern police officers because they have no basic salary, and it can no longer hold up the hearing with a plea of unconstitutionality on the same ground either: the Court has ruled twice on the same provisions, at the request of the same institution.

For the case itself, the decision is served on the Constanța Tribunal, Section for administrative and tax litigation, and the proceedings brought by the union for its members go on being heard on the merits. The judgment by which the court referred the matter to the Constitutional Court is dated 25 September 2020, so the hearing on the merits resumes after almost six years of waiting.

What the decision does not do deserves to be said just as firmly. It creates no new right, reopens no time limit and does not oblige any institution to pay anything in particular. Nor does it establish how the maximum level is actually calculated, or which bonuses go into it. It dismisses a constitutional criticism, and that is all.

Equally important, „the highest level actually being paid” does not mean the highest salary in the institution. Both texts require a comparison for the same position, rank or grade, step and, in the second text, length of service in the position or in the speciality, and both add the condition that the work be carried out „in the same conditions”. An officer is not compared with a constable, and a desk job is not compared with a field job merely because both salaries appear on the same payroll.

Finally, the period covered is limited. The first text concerns 2015, the second starts from August 2016, and both were repealed on 1 July 2017, when Framework Law no. 153/2017 entered into force. For entitlements after that date the legal basis is a different one, and this decision says nothing about it.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the text of the law, nothing. Not a letter of the two ordinances is amended, and Decision no. 51 of 11 November 2019 of the High Court stays exactly as it was. What changes is the state of the constitutional file: until 9 September 2026, a court could still be seised with the same plea and could stay or delay the hearing on the merits. From now on, the same criticism has two Court dismissals against it, from 2024 and from 2025.

The comparison with Decision no. 95 of 5 March 2024 shows how little is new in the act published now. The same texts, the same author, the same criticisms, the same outcome, and the reasoning taken over expressly. The Court says so itself, in paragraph 26: no new elements have arisen capable of changing the case law. The only difference is that 475 days went by between the publication of the first decision and the delivery of the second.

Looking further back, the chain of decisions on this question runs as follows: in 2015 Parliament introduces the rule of levelling up to the maximum for a narrow group of institutions; in August 2016 it is extended to all staff paid from public funds; in the autumn of 2016 the High Court clarifies twice who falls under the rule; in December 2016 the Constitutional Court adds the principle of equal treatment; in November 2019 the High Court expressly includes police officers; in 2024 and in 2025 the Constitutional Court twice dismisses a public employer’s attempt to overturn that interpretation. The texts had already been repealed in 2017, halfway along this chain.

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