In brief
- The rule under which public sector staff were re-graded, in January 2010, into the post and seniority bracket they held in December 2009 is constitutional, the Constitutional Court has held. The text, Article 30(3) of Framework Law no. 330/2009, ceased to be in force on 1 January 2011, that is, 5,745 days ago, but it still decides pension recalculation cases. Decision no. 589 of 11 November 2025 was published on 24 September 2026 and is generally binding from that date, adopted unanimously.
- The pensioner who raised the plea loses, in the appeal before the Cluj Court of Appeal, and his argument was rejected point by point. He invoked Decision no. 51 of 4 February 2020, by which the Court had declared unconstitutional the interpretation given by the High Court of Cassation and Justice to a text of almost identical content. The Court replied that that decision concerned the compensatory sums for holding a doctoral degree, not the re-grading solution itself, so the arguments do not carry across.
- What matters for anyone with a recalculation case pending: this ground is now closed, but only for the criticisms put forward. The operative part says that the text is constitutional „in relation to the criticisms put forward”, and in this case the criticisms amounted to a reference to another decision. A different construction, with constitutional grounds expressly set out, is not blocked.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 813 of 24 September 2026
In force from: the decision is generally binding from the date of publication, 24 September 2026
The Constitutional Court rejected as unfounded the plea raised by Gigi Sorin Sasu and held that Article 30(3) of Framework Law no. 330/2009 on the uniform remuneration of staff paid from public funds is constitutional in relation to the criticisms put forward. The main proceedings are an application for the recalculation of a pension, now on appeal, and the text at issue is the one that decided, in January 2010, into which post and which seniority bracket each public sector employee was re-graded. The decision joins the line of cases in which the constitutional court refuses to rewrite the way pensions are calculated, after the one holding that military pensions cannot be updated with inflation through the courts.
The contested text is short and leaves no room for interpretation: „Staff shall be re-graded in accordance with the seniority brackets and into the posts corresponding to the category, grade and professional step held in December 2009.” It sits in Chapter IV of the law, headed „How salaries are set in the first year of application of the law”, and that chapter forms part of Part II, which the law itself says governs the uniform pay system for a transitional period.
The transitional period lasted one year. Framework Law no. 330/2009 was published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 762 of 9 November 2009, applied from 1 January 2010 and was repealed on 1 January 2011 by Article 39(w) of Framework Law no. 284/2010, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 877 of 28 December 2010. The date of repeal is the very date on which the new law entered into force, fixed by Article 46 of that law. From then until the decision was published, 5,745 days passed, that is, 15 years, 8 months and 23 days. The reference month in the text, December 2009, is 16 years and 9 months in the past.
The author of the plea is a pensioner, and his case is before the Cluj Court of Appeal, Fourth Division for Labour and Social Insurance Disputes, in case no. 496/100/2019*. The court referred the matter to the Constitutional Court by the civil interlocutory order of 21 October 2020, and before the Court the case was given file number 522D/2021. Neither the presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, nor the Government, nor the Ombudsman sent points of view.
The author’s argument was a single one, an argument by analogy. By Decision no. 51 of 4 February 2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 204 of 13 March 2020, the Court had upheld a plea concerning Article 4(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 1/2010, a text which says, in almost the same words, that public sector staff are re-graded into the posts and seniority brackets held on 31 December 2009. If that text fell, the author submitted, this one has to fall too. The author cited no article of the Constitution, confining himself to that reference. The representative of the Public Ministry asked, for precisely that reason, that the plea be rejected as inadmissible.
The constitutional court went to the merits all the same and explained why the analogy does not hold. Decision no. 51/2020 did not concern re-grading as a legislative solution, but the interpretation the High Court of Cassation and Justice had given, by Decision no. 21 of 21 November 2016, published in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1002 of 13 December 2016, to a group of texts read together, and only as regards the compensatory sums due for holding a doctoral degree. There, the problem had been the divergence between the supreme court and the Constitutional Court’s own case-law. Here, the subject matter of the case is the recalculation of a pension, so, in the wording of the decision, the arguments do not apply mutatis mutandis.
What it changes in practice
The decision is final and generally binding from 24 September 2026, the date of publication in Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 813. Article 147(4) of the Constitution ties binding force to publication, not to delivery, and between the two moments 317 days passed.
The first effect is felt by the appeal at Cluj, which goes on with the text left standing. The claimant can still argue over how his pension was calculated in concrete terms, what seniority was recognised and what sums were taken into the basis of calculation, but he can no longer submit that the rule of re-grading by reference to December 2009 is, in itself, unconstitutional.
The second effect is wider than the case. The re-grading of January 2010 was a one-off operation, carried out once, on the basis of the position as it stood in December 2009. It fixed the post, the grade, the professional step and the seniority bracket from which all later increases started, including those under Framework Law no. 284/2010 and Framework Law no. 153/2017. Anyone re-graded then into a position they consider wrong, and who is now having their pension recalculated, is stuck with that starting point, and the Court has confirmed that this is not a question of constitutionality.
The third effect concerns the limits of the outcome. The formula in the operative part is narrow: the text is constitutional „in relation to the criticisms put forward”. In this case, the criticisms consisted of a single reference to another decision, with no constitutional ground invoked. The room left for a plea built differently, on Article 16, on Article 44 or on Article 47 of the Constitution, is therefore not closed by this decision.
The fourth effect can be seen by comparison with what was published on the same day. Also on 24 September 2026, the Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) published Decision no. 419/2026, by which the Court rejected as inadmissible, for absence of reasons, a plea concerning military and police pay. There, the author had listed 43 reference provisions without explaining anything. Here, the author invoked no reference provision at all, and the Court examined the merits all the same. Anyone preparing a plea should know that the threshold of reasoning is not read identically in every case.
The fifth effect relates to a decision delivered at the same sitting and published on the same day. On 11 November 2025, with the same panel of eight judges and the same assistant magistrate, the Court also gave Decision no. 591/2025, upholding the cap on the payment of doctors’ on-call duty at the January 2018 level. The mechanism is the same as here: a calendar month fixed more than a decade ago decides how much someone paid from public funds receives today, and in both cases the Court places it within the legislature’s margin of appreciation.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
In the text of the laws nothing has changed, and there was nothing that could change: Article 30(3) of Framework Law no. 330/2009 has been repealed since 1 January 2011, and a decision rejecting a plea neither restores it nor amends it. What has changed is the state of the Cluj case and the standing of the argument used there.
Until this decision, the case-law offered an apparently solid hook. Decision no. 51/2020 had declared unconstitutional, in the interpretation given by the supreme court, Article 30(6) and Article 48(1), point 7 of Framework Law no. 330/2009, Article 4(1) and Article 6(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 1/2010, Article 1(5) of Law no. 285/2010 and Article 8 of Annex no. 5 to Law no. 63/2011. That list contains two texts from the very law of which the paragraph challenged here forms part, and one of them, Article 4(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 1/2010, has almost identical content. The similarity of wording seemed enough.
The present decision narrows that hook. It says that the examination carried out in 2020 concerned solely the relevance of the texts to the right to compensatory sums for holding a doctoral degree, not the solution of re-grading public sector staff. In other words, the declaration of unconstitutionality concerned a reading of the rule, given in an appeal in the interest of the law, on a single category of financial rights, and not the rule itself. For any other situation, including the recalculation of a pension, the text applies without hindrance.
The second change is one of litigation technique. After this decision, the reference to Decision no. 51/2020 can no longer be used as a free-standing argument in pension cases, and anyone wanting to challenge the re-grading rule has to write out a criticism of their own, with the articles of the Constitution set out one by one. The measure of that can be read, indirectly, from this very case: here the Court examined the merits although it had been given no constitutional ground at all, but the result was a rejection.
What has not changed is the relation between the law and the pension. A law that was in force for twelve months goes on deciding, almost seventeen years later, the level of pensions in payment. No provision of the decision touches that mechanism.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It closes a case that had been waiting for 2,164 days, that is, 5 years, 11 months and 3 days, from the referral order to publication. The Cluj appeal can move on.
- It makes clear exactly what Decision no. 51/2020 decided and what it did not. The difference between declaring a rule unconstitutional and declaring one of its interpretations unconstitutional is written here in terms someone who does not practise constitutional litigation can follow.
- It examines the merits although the prosecutor had asked for rejection as inadmissible for absence of reasons. The author, a pensioner with no constitutional grounds set out in his application, still got an answer to his argument.
- It reproduces the contested text word for word and places it within the structure of the law, with the chapter and the part it belongs to. Cases working on the 2010 version of the law can use the decision directly.
- It keeps the room for other criticisms open, through the formula „in relation to the criticisms put forward”. It produces no blocking effect on any future plea on the same text.
What remains a problem
- Publication came 317 days after delivery, that is, more than ten months. The outcome existed from 11 November 2025, but produced no effects, and the Cluj appeal court could not apply it.
- The reasoning on the merits runs to seven paragraphs and does not test the text against any article of the Constitution, because none was invoked. The result is a finding of constitutionality with no written yardstick.
- The threshold of reasoning appears to be applied unevenly. In Decision no. 419/2026, published the same day, the failure to explain the relationship of contradiction led to inadmissibility; here, the absence of any constitutional ground led to an examination of the merits.
- The decision says nothing about what happens to people wrongly re-graded in January 2010. The problem is real, but it belongs to the application of the law, and the reader is left without being told to take it to the court dealing with the merits.
- The reference to the law’s own structure is wrong: the decision attributes the rule on the transitional period to Article 2(3), although it is in Article 1(3), while Article 2(3) defines something else entirely.
Practical advice
- If you have a pension recalculation case resting on the way you were re-graded in January 2010, move the argument off constitutional ground and onto the facts. Ask for the re-grading document, check the post, the grade, the professional step and the seniority bracket entered on it, and compare them with your position in December 2009.
- Do not build a plea of unconstitutionality on the mere similarity of wording between two rules. The Court showed here that where the decision relied on concerned an interpretation given in an appeal in the interest of the law, the conclusion does not carry across to another category of rights.
- If you do want to challenge the re-grading rule, cite the articles of the Constitution expressly and explain, for each of them, how it is breached. The formula „in relation to the criticisms put forward” in the operative part leaves open the criticisms that were not put forward in this case.
- Check whether your case involves the increment for holding a doctoral degree. There, and only there, Decision no. 51/2020 remains applicable, and the interpretation given by the supreme court in 2016 was set aside.
- Ask the pension house for the calculation breakdown, not just the decision. The basis of calculation is built from the salary rights of the period, and the 2010 re-grading is only one of the benchmarks that go into it.
- Remember that the text has been repealed since 1 January 2011 and that a decision rejecting a plea does not restore it. It applies only to situations that occurred while it was in force, that is, in 2010, and any claim concerning later periods has a different legal basis.
Frequently asked questions
What did the Constitutional Court decide, in short?
What does the confirmed text actually say?
If the law has been repealed, why does it still matter?
Why was Decision no. 51/2020 not applied, if the texts are almost identical?
Can I still challenge the same text in another case?
From what day does the decision produce effects?
How long did the procedure take?
How many judges took part?
Editorial analysis
The observation that changes what is at stake in this case comes from setting two decisions published on the same day side by side, not from reading this one from start to finish. On 24 September 2026, the Official Gazette of Romania also carried Decision no. 419/2026, by which the Court rejected a plea as inadmissible on the ground that the author had listed reference provisions without explaining the relationship of contradiction, invoking Article 10(2) of Law no. 47/1992, which requires referrals to give reasons. In the case here, the author cited not even one article of the Constitution, and the representative of the Public Ministry expressly asked for rejection as inadmissible, for exactly that reason. The Court passed over the prosecutor’s submissions and examined the merits. The two outcomes can be reconciled, because in the case here there was an identifiable argument, the analogy with Decision no. 51/2020, which the Court was able to test. But a reader who puts them side by side does not learn where the line runs: an argument without constitutional grounds gets through, and constitutional grounds without an argument do not.
The second observation calls for opening the law on the organisation of the Court. Article 29(1) of Law no. 47/1992 allows a plea only against a law or ordinance „in force”. Article 30(3) of Framework Law no. 330/2009 was not in force either on the date of the referral, 21 October 2020, or at delivery: it had been repealed almost ten years earlier. Here too the Court’s jurisdiction rests on Decision no. 766 of 15 June 2011, which extended review to provisions whose effects continue. It is worth noting that the same Article 39 of Framework Law no. 284/2010 which repealed the law, at letter (w), also repealed at letter (x) Government Emergency Ordinance no. 1/2010, that is, the very act on which the author’s analogy rested. Both of the rules being compared ceased to be in force on the same day, 1 January 2011, and both produce effects in litigation in 2026.
The third observation concerns a wrong reference, verifiable in the text of the law. At paragraph 14, the Court explains the transitional nature of Part II of Framework Law no. 330/2009 and attributes that statement to „Article 2(3) of the same act”. In the law, that sentence is in Article 1(3); Article 2(3) says something else entirely, namely which categories of staff fall within the public budget sector. The content quoted by the Court is reproduced correctly, and the outcome does not depend on the article number, so we have not put the observation in the errata: nobody reading in good faith arrives at two different legal conclusions. What remains is that the Court’s decisions are cited word for word, and a lawyer who opens Article 2(3) to check the transitional character of the law finds there a definition of public sector staff.
The fourth observation is a measurement that says more than the reasoning. Framework Law no. 330/2009 was in force for twelve months, from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2010. The reference month used by the confirmed text, December 2009, is the month immediately before it began to apply. From that month to the publication of the decision, 16 years and 9 months passed, and from the repeal, 5,745 days. In other words, a snapshot of the staffing position taken in a single month of 2009 decides the level of pensions in payment in 2026, and the constitutional review of that snapshot ended after 2,164 days of procedure. The ratio between the lifespan of the law and the length of the litigation it produced is, here, about one to six.
What should be changed
- The Court should apply the same threshold of reasoning in cases decided in the same period. Two decisions published on the same day treat an application without explained constitutional grounds differently. A criterion stated once, in a decision of principle, would spare lawyers from guessing whether their case will be read on the merits or closed on admissibility.
- The reference to Article 2(3) should be corrected, by an erratum or in a later decision, to Article 1(3). The correction does not change the outcome, but it stops the mistake spreading into the judgments that will cite paragraph 14 word for word, as the Court’s grounds are usually cited.
- The 2010 re-grading rule should be restated in an act in force, for use in pension recalculations. As long as the starting figure sits in a law repealed 15 years ago, every case has to reconstruct why a text that does not exist still produces effects, and the pension houses and the courts reach different outcomes in identical situations.
- The interval between delivery and publication should be capped by an express rule. Here there were 317 days in which the outcome existed but produced no effects, and the appeal court could not apply it. A period written into Law no. 47/1992 would make the moment at which waiting cases resume predictable.
- Decisions rejecting a plea based on analogy should state expressly what remains applicable from the decision relied on. Here, Decision no. 51/2020 remains in force for the compensatory sums relating to a doctoral degree. A sentence marking that boundary would prevent people from giving up in cases where it does in fact apply.
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. 813 of 24 September 2026, pages 2-3 16 pages PDF, 113 KB the act starts on page 2
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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.