In brief

  • The Constitutional Court has refused to examine the text that says how the service pensions of professional flight crew in civil aviation are updated. By Decision no. 697 of 4 December 2025, the Court dismisses as inadmissible the plea raised against Article 425 of Law no. 223/2007, because what the two pensioners were unhappy about was, in reality, the way the High Court of Cassation and Justice had reasoned a decision of 2020. A dismissal as inadmissible does not say that the text is constitutional. It says that on the route chosen it could not be weighed.
  • Who is concerned. Professional civil aviation flight crew who receive a service pension under Law no. 223/2007: pilots and co-pilots, aeroplane instructor pilots at the Școala Superioară de Aviație Civilă, the higher school of civil aviation, cabin crew, navigators, flight mechanics and flight engineers, radio navigation operators, parachutists, aircraft acceptance and control engineers. The two authors of the plea, Cornel Dumitru and Cornel Vasile, are asking the courts to update their pension, in two sets of proceedings before the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Seventh Division for labour disputes and social insurance.
  • The figures and the time limits that count. Article 425 has had the same wording since 7 August 2017, that is for 3,340 days at the date the decision was published. On this article the supreme court has dismissed three referrals in a row as inadmissible: Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020, Decision no. 198 of 26 May 2025 and Decision no. 331 of 29 September 2025. Between the referral order in the first case, of 12 January 2022, and the delivery of the Constitutional Court’s decision, 1,422 days went by, and another 299 until publication. Even so, in 2026 service pensions in civil aviation are not updated at all, and the basis is not Article 425 but Article XXX(4) of Law no. 141/2025. From 29 September 2026 the decision is final and generally binding.
Act: Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 697 of 4 December 2025 on the plea of unconstitutionality of the provisions of Article 425 of Law no. 223/2007 on the Statute of professional civil aviation flight crew in Romania, in the interpretation given by Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020, delivered by the High Court of Cassation and Justice — Panel for the Resolution of Points of Law
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 825 of 29 September 2026, pages 2-4
Delivered: 4 December 2025, unanimously
Final and generally binding: 29 September 2026, the date of publication

A pilot who retires has a simple promise in the law: his pension is updated every year with the rate of inflation. What he does not have is an answer to the question „the inflation of which year”, and the Constitutional Court has decided that it cannot give that answer either. Decision no. 697 of 4 December 2025, published on 29 September 2026, dismisses as inadmissible the plea raised by two former flight crew members against Article 425 of Law no. 223/2007. It is the second dismissal of this kind in the same week: on 28 September 2026 there appeared the decision by which the Court refused, likewise as inadmissible, to rule on the text that lets the Senate request the prosecution of the same former minister more than once. The difference between a dismissal as unfounded and a dismissal as inadmissible is a large one and deserves to be stated in the very first line: „unfounded” means that the text was weighed and passed the test, „inadmissible” means that it was not weighed at all.

The plea reached the Court by two routes. The first, through the order of 12 January 2022 of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Seventh Division for labour disputes and social insurance, in File no. 24.599/3/2020, in proceedings in which Cornel Dumitru was asking the court to update his service pension. At the Constitutional Court that file received the number 393D/2022. The second, through the order of 19 December 2022 of the same division in File no. 25.004/3/2020, at the request of Cornel Vasile, again for the updating of his pension. There the constitutional file received the number 476D/2023 and was joined to the first, under Article 53(5) of Law no. 47/1992 on the organisation and functioning of the Constitutional Court.

The text at issue has two sentences: „Pensia de serviciu se actualizează, din oficiu, în fiecare an, cu rata medie anuală a inflației, indicator definitiv, cunoscut la data de 1 ianuarie a fiecărui an în care se face actualizarea și comunicat de Institutul Național de Statistică. Dacă în urma actualizării rezultă o pensie mai mică, se păstrează pensia aflată în plată.” In English: the service pension is updated of the pension house’s own motion, every year, with the average annual inflation rate, a final indicator, known on the first day of January of each year in which the updating is made and communicated by the National Institute of Statistics; if the updating results in a lower pension, the pension in payment is kept. On paper, an automatic mechanism, which requires no application from the pensioner. In practice, the blockage sits in the third comma.

The average annual inflation rate, as a final indicator, is a figure that closes only after the year it refers to has ended, that is after 31 December. The law requires it to be already known on 1 January and communicated by the National Institute of Statistics. The supreme court itself found, at paragraph 65 of Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020, that the institute does not communicate the indicator on 1 January, but it called that a mere circumstance of fact, which has no power to turn the indicator into one that can be determined some other way. In other words: the date in the law does not move because reality does not fit inside it.

From here, two possible readings, which the supreme court described at paragraph 58 of the same decision. The first: the rate of the year immediately preceding the updating applies, even if on 1 January it had not yet been published, so the pension house waits for the communication and only then updates. The second: the last rate known on 1 January applies, which is necessarily the rate of an older year. For a pensioner the difference is not academic: these readings take in years with inflation of a few per cent and years with inflation above ten, and the result stays in the pension for the rest of his life, because the updating is applied to the sum in payment.

What the supreme court did in 2020 is the part that caused the upset. It dismissed the referral as inadmissible, holding, at paragraphs 57 and 71, that the text is clear, that it presents no difficulties of interpretation and that there is therefore no need for it to step in. But before getting there it said, at paragraphs 59-68, that the first reading introduces a new criterion, one the law does not contain, and that the indicator has to be both known on 1 January and communicated. It refused to resolve the point of law, then explained how it ought to be resolved. At the end, the decision carries the printed mention „Obligatorie, potrivit dispozițiilor art. 521 alin. (3) din Codul de procedură civilă”, that is, binding under the Code of Civil Procedure, although Article 521(3) declares binding only „dezlegarea dată chestiunilor de drept”, the resolution given to the points of law, and here no resolution was given.

The authors of the plea followed this thread. They argued that, through its reasoning, the supreme court added to the law a condition the legislator had not laid down, namely that the date of 1 January should apply to the communication as well, not only to the knowing, on a day when institutions do not work. And they showed that the second reading, the one the reasoning favours, does not produce a single result: if the year immediately preceding is set aside, all the indices published since 1990 are left to choose from, that is 28 values for an updating made in 2019, with no criterion to say which one to reach for. On top of that they added a finding of fact: the supreme court can no longer come back, because it has already ruled, and Parliament has not stepped in with a clearer text.

The positions taken in the file were unusually scattered. The same division of the Bucharest Court of Appeal gave two opposite opinions: in File no. 393D/2022 it considered the plea well founded, for breach of the standards of quality of the law, and in File no. 476D/2023 unfounded, relying on Decision of the Constitutional Court no. 302 of 2022, according to which there is no fundamental right to the updating or to the indexation of a service pension, nor to any particular amount of it. The representative of the Public Ministry asked for the plea to be dismissed as unfounded, not as inadmissible. The presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament, the Government and the Ombudsman sent no view at all, although Article 30(1) of Law no. 47/1992 provides for the referral orders to be communicated precisely for that.

The Court’s answer fits into four paragraphs, from 28 to 31. The criticisms are not aimed at the law but at the reasoning of a court judgment, and constitutional review does not reach that far. The Court restates the distinction it drew in Decision no. 96 of 16 March 2023, paragraph 26: it is one thing to criticise the decision of the supreme court, another to criticise the text of the law in the binding interpretation that decision gave it. The first is not within its jurisdiction. The limit comes, under Decision no. 397 of 18 June 2020, paragraph 18, from Article 1(4) of the Constitution, which enshrines the separation of powers, and from Article 126(1), under which justice is done through the High Court of Cassation and Justice and through the other courts of law. The conclusion, based on Article 29(1) of Law no. 47/1992: the plea is inadmissible.

What it changes in practice

Not a letter changes in the law. Article 425 stays exactly as it was, and the territorial pension houses go on applying it as they applied it before. The legal effect of a dismissal as inadmissible is that the question put receives no constitutional answer, neither in one direction nor in the other. Nobody can say, after 29 September 2026, that Article 425 has been declared constitutional, because it was not examined.

The second effect is the one that counts in practice for a pending case, and it is more favourable than it looks at first reading. The reasoning of Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020 is not binding on the judge. Article 521(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure binds the courts to „dezlegarea dată chestiunilor de drept”, the resolution given to the points of law, and there no resolution was given: the referral was dismissed as inadmissible, on the ground that there was said to be no difficulty of interpretation. So a lawyer can still argue the first reading before the court of appeal, the one with the rate of the year immediately preceding, without going against a binding resolution. On the other hand, there is no longer any point in asking for the same problem to be sent to the supreme court or to the Constitutional Court on the same grounds: both have already answered, and both answered that they do not rule.

The third effect is more bitter and does not show in the decision. In 2026 the updating does not take place anyway, whichever reading one takes. Article XXX(4) of Law no. 141/2025 on certain fiscal and budgetary measures, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 699 of 25 July 2025, provides that, by way of derogation from Article 425 of Law no. 223/2007, in 2026 service pensions established under the law are not updated with the average annual inflation rate. The same suspension existed for 2025, through Article XVI(4) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 156/2024, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1334 of 31 December 2024, and for 2021, through Article VIII(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 226/2020, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 1332 of 31 December 2020. Pending cases are therefore heard for past years and for the differences left unpaid then, not for this year.

The fourth effect is one of precedent. The reasoning takes its place beside Decision no. 397 of 18 June 2020 and Decision no. 96 of 16 March 2023 and strengthens a line already firmly drawn: whoever wants to challenge an interpretation of the supreme court before the Constitutional Court has to show what exactly in the text of the law, read in that interpretation, breaches the fundamental law. Dissatisfaction with the way a set of reasons was written does not open the door, however justified that dissatisfaction may be.

The effects run from publication, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution, which provides that decisions of the Constitutional Court are published in the Official Gazette of Romania and that, from the date of publication, they are generally binding and have force only for the future. The date that counts is 29 September 2026, not 4 December 2025, when the decision was delivered.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Through this decision, nothing. What did change, and where the whole blockage comes from, is the text itself, rewritten on 7 August 2017.

Until then, Article 425 read differently. The form introduced by point 1 of Article I of Law no. 83/2015, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 270 of 22 April 2015, said: „Pensia de serviciu se actualizează, din oficiu, în fiecare an, odată cu modificarea valorii punctului de pensie, cu procentul corespunzător ratei inflației utilizat la stabilirea valorii punctului de pensie, conform prevederilor Legii nr. 263/2010 privind sistemul unitar de pensii publice, cu modificările și completările ulterioare.” In English: the service pension is updated of the pension house’s own motion, every year, together with the change in the value of the pension point, with the percentage corresponding to the inflation rate used in setting the value of the pension point, under the law on the unitary public pension system, as subsequently amended and supplemented. The updating was therefore hooked to another mechanism, that of the pension point in the public system, and to the percentage used there. Article I of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 59/2017, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 648 of 7 August 2017, replaced that sentence with today’s one, which describes the indicator itself, without referring to another act, and makes it conditional on a calendar date.

The difference of substance is one of type of rule. The old text pointed to a value set somewhere else, and its defect was of another nature: starting with Government Emergency Ordinance no. 1/2013, the value of the pension point was no longer obtained through the formula in Law no. 263/2010 but was fixed directly by law, in the form of an increase, as the supreme court showed in Decision no. 198 of 26 May 2025, at paragraphs 50 and 51. The new text no longer depends on anybody, but it asks for something that cannot exist: a final figure about a year that ended a few hours earlier. The legislator swapped a mechanism that had stopped working for one that cannot work.

The text, on the other hand, has stayed untouched for nine years. The last time Article 425 was touched is that of 7 August 2017, and between then and 29 September 2026, 3,340 days went by. Throughout that interval, the only interventions of the legislator on this updating were the annual suspensions, which stop it altogether, not the clarifications that would tell the pension house which index to calculate with.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The limit of jurisdiction stays clearly drawn. The Court repeats that it does not censor the reasoning of a court judgment, which shields the courts from a second level of review over their own reasoning and preserves the separation of powers in Article 1(4) of the Constitution.
  • The text does not receive a stamp of constitutionality it has not earned. A dismissal as unfounded would have closed the discussion about the clarity of Article 425 for many years. Inadmissibility leaves the door open for a plea that is properly framed, that is aimed at the text and not at the reasoning.
  • The trial judge stays free. Because the supreme court resolved nothing, Article 521(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure does not bind him, so he can choose the reading that seems right to him and give reasons for it in his own case.
  • Unanimity and short reasons give predictability. Anyone preparing a similar case learns from three paragraphs what there is no point in trying.

What remains a problem

  • The substantive question is left without an answer from any authority. The supreme court said it was not difficult enough to be worth resolving, the Constitutional Court said it is not within its jurisdiction, and Parliament has not changed the text in 3,340 days.
  • The freedom of the trial judge turns in practice into divergent case law. Exactly what the preliminary ruling was meant to prevent is what happens: two panels of the same division of the Bucharest Court of Appeal gave opposite opinions on the same plea, in the cases joined here.
  • The length of time cancels the gain. From the first referral order, of 12 January 2022, to publication, 1,721 days went by, that is four years, eight months and 17 days. A pensioner who was waiting for a clarification received, after more than four and a half years, the answer that his question had been put the wrong way.
  • The annual suspensions empty the right of content. For 2021, 2025 and 2026 the updating was stopped by three different acts. A right that is suspended often becomes a promise conditional on the budget of the year, not a rule.
  • Limitation works against the pensioner. As long as nobody clarifies the index, the differences for the old years come close to the general limitation period of three years, and part of the claim is extinguished while the case waits.

Practical advice

  1. Ask the territorial pension house, in writing, for the updating decision for each year. The updating is made of the pension house’s own motion, so for each year an act either exists or it does not. Without those decisions there is no way of showing which index was actually applied and from what date, and without that the difference cannot be calculated.
  2. Do not build the claim on the reasoning of Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020, either for it or against it. That decision dismissed the referral as inadmissible, so it contains no binding resolution. The argument rests on the text of Article 425 and on the circumstance of fact that a final indicator cannot exist on 1 January.
  3. Check first whether the year you are claiming for was not a suspended year. For 2021, 2025 and 2026 the updating was expressly stopped by way of derogation. A claim for such a year is lost from the start, however good the argument about the index may be.
  4. Do not let the old years become time-barred. Money differences in a pension are claimed within the general limitation period of three years, which runs separately for each monthly instalment. If a case drags on, a separate application for the oldest years holds the period in place.
  5. If you do want the constitutional route, change the target of the criticism. A decision like this one teaches exactly what does not work: a plea aimed at the way a judgment was reasoned is inadmissible. What has to be shown is what exactly in Article 425, read in the interpretation the courts apply, breaches a specific constitutional rule, with an explanation of the breach.
  6. Take the legislative route in parallel. The only solution that closes the problem for everybody is an amendment of the text. The professional associations in aviation can ask the responsible ministry and the labour committees in Parliament, in writing, to replace the condition „cunoscut la data de 1 ianuarie”, known on the first day of January, with wording that names the reference year and the month of application.
  7. Keep every communication of the National Institute of Statistics that you rely on. The date on which the average annual inflation rate was communicated is a piece of evidence, not a detail, because the argument that the indicator was not known on 1 January rests on it.

Frequently asked questions

Does this decision change my pension?
No. It changes no sum and obliges no pension house to do anything. It is a procedural decision, by which the Constitutional Court says that it cannot examine the criticism as it was framed.
So is Article 425 constitutional?
That cannot be said. A dismissal as inadmissible contains no verdict on the text. Had the plea been dismissed as unfounded, then yes, the text would have been confirmed against the criticisms brought.
Can I still raise a plea of unconstitutionality on the same article?
Yes. Article 29(3) of Law no. 47/1992 bars only pleas on provisions already found unconstitutional by an earlier decision. Here nothing was found. But the criticism has to be aimed at the text of the law and reasoned on a specific constitutional rule, not at the reasoning of a judgment.
Is the judge in my case obliged to apply the reading in the reasoning of the supreme court?
No. Article 521(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure makes binding only the resolution given to the point of law, and Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020 dismissed the referral as inadmissible, so it resolved nothing. In practice many courts follow the reasoning all the same, so the contrary argument has to be set out at length.
With what rate is my pension updated in 2026?
With none. Article XXX(4) of Law no. 141/2025 provides that, by way of derogation from Article 425 of Law no. 223/2007, in 2026 service pensions established under the law are not updated with the average annual inflation rate.
Who falls within the category of professional civil aviation flight crew?
Under Article 4 of Law no. 223/2007: pilots, including the pilot in command and the co-pilot, the aeroplane instructor pilots at the Școala Superioară de Aviație Civilă, navigators, flight mechanics and flight engineers, radio navigation operators, cabin crew, parachutists and aircraft acceptance and control engineers.
What did the supreme court actually decide in 2020?
It dismissed as inadmissible the referral of the Bucharest Court of Appeal in File no. 15.798/3/2019, taking the view that the text is clear and that there is no difficulty of interpretation to justify its intervention. The decision was published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 132 of 9 February 2021.
Has anyone else tried after 2020?
Yes, twice, with no result. By Decision no. 198 of 26 May 2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 670 of 17 July 2025, a referral of the Constanța Court of Appeal was dismissed as inadmissible. Then, by Decision no. 331 of 29 September 2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 987 of 27 October 2025, a referral of the Bucharest Court of Appeal was dismissed, likewise as inadmissible.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • The title and the operative part of the decision assume an interpretation that in law does not exist. Both speak of Article 425 „în interpretarea dată prin Decizia nr. 61 din 26 octombrie 2020”, in the interpretation given by that decision. Only that decision dismissed the referral as inadmissible, and Article 521(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure makes binding only „dezlegarea dată chestiunilor de drept”, the resolution given to the points of law. Having given no resolution, the decision of 2020 could not confer a binding interpretation on the text. The difference is not one of style: at paragraph 29 the Court builds its whole analysis precisely on the distinction drawn in Decision no. 96 of 16 March 2023 between a criticism aimed at the decision of the supreme court and a criticism aimed at the text „în interpretarea obligatorie conferită” by it, in the binding interpretation conferred by it, and the second situation could not exist here. The two precedents invoked confirm it: Decision no. 96/2023 concerned an appeal in the interests of the law that had been allowed, and Decision no. 397 of 18 June 2020 concerned Decision no. 30 of 17 October 2016, by which the supreme court had indeed settled something. A reader in good faith cannot learn from the text whether Article 425 „în interpretarea dată prin Decizia nr. 61/2020” is an object of review that can be brought before the Court again or one that never existed.
  • For one of the authors, the operative part covers more than what was sent to the Court. According to paragraph 8, in File no. 24.599/3/2020 the court seised the Court with the plea concerning Article 425 „astfel cum au fost modificate prin Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 59/2017”, as amended by that emergency ordinance, with no reference at all to the decision of the supreme court. Only the second order, that of 19 December 2022, adds the interpretation. Paragraph 25 rewrites the object for both files, deducing it from the reasons given, and the operative part dismisses, for both authors, the plea concerning the text in the interpretation given by Decision no. 61/2020. What happened to the criticism aimed at the text on its own, in the form given to it by the ordinance of 2017, remains unclear: it was either dismissed without being named, or it was not examined and can be raised again.

Editorial analysis

The decision is, in its letter, correct and predictable. The Constitutional Court has no instrument with which to repair the reasoning of a court, and the authors of the plea asked for exactly that. The problem is not the solution but what it shows about the whole route of a very simple question, put by people who bear no blame for the way the text is written: with the inflation of which year is their pension updated. On 26 October 2020 the supreme court said that the question is not difficult enough to deserve a resolution, and it repeated that refusal on 26 May 2025 and on 29 September 2025. The Constitutional Court said, on 4 December 2025, that it is not its business. Parliament said nothing. Three gates, all shut, over the same sentence of 39 words in the Romanian text.

Two figures that the act does not show explain better than any argument why the mechanism cannot run as it is written. The first: Article 425 has had the same wording since 7 August 2017, that is for 3,340 days at the date this decision was published, and in all that time the only interventions of the legislator on the updating were the suspensions for 2021, 2025 and 2026, that is the exact opposite of a clarification. The other: if one accepts the reading that the 2020 reasoning favours, namely the last rate known on 1 January, the criterion does not produce a single result, because the rates published since 1990 are all known on that date. The authors counted 28 values for an updating made in 2019, and the count checks out: from 1990 to 2017 inclusive there are 28 years. A criterion that admits 28 answers is not a criterion.

It is also worth looking at the relation between the time limits the system imposes on the pensioner and those it allows itself. The pensioner has three years in which to claim the differences, and the period runs month by month, so he steadily loses part of his claim while he waits. Cornel Dumitru’s file sat for 1,422 days from the referral order to the delivery, then another 299 days until publication, that is 1,721 days in all, four years, eight months and 17 days. In that interval at least one of the three years for which he could have claimed differences became time-barred. And at the end of it, the answer he received does not touch the substance.

The last observation concerns an inaccuracy that is being passed on. At paragraph 68 of Decision no. 61 of 26 October 2020, the supreme court speaks of the introduction of Article 425 into Law no. 223/2007 by the emergency ordinance of 2017. The article was not introduced then: it was introduced by point 1 of Article I of Law no. 83/2015, with an entirely different content, and the ordinance of 2017 only amended it. The difference has consequences, because for pensions opened between 22 May 2015 and 6 August 2017 the question arises with what text the earlier period is to be updated, which is precisely the object of the referral dismissed by Decision no. 198 of 26 May 2025. The text published now takes over the 2020 wording without correcting it.

What should be changed

  • Article 425 should name the reference year and the month of application. Wording of the kind „with the average annual inflation rate communicated by the National Institute of Statistics for the previous calendar year, starting with the pension for the month following the communication” removes both readings and, with them, the litigation. The model already exists: Article 47 of Law no. 223/2007, in the form in force on 29 December 2009, provided for the updating in March of each year with the percentage that fully covered the inflation rate of the previous year.
  • The law should say what happens when the indicator arrives later than the updating. Either a review of the pension house’s own motion, with payment of the difference, or an express rule that there is no review. The question was sent to the supreme court and was left without an answer, and the pension houses decide today each on its own.
  • The annual suspension of the updating should no longer be done through derogations scattered through fiscal and budgetary laws. Three suspended years through three different acts, each with its own article and paragraph, make the right hard to follow even for a lawyer. If the updating has to be stopped, the place for that rule is in Law no. 223/2007, not in an Article XXX of a law on fiscal and budgetary measures.
  • Decisions of the supreme court dismissing a referral as inadmissible should no longer carry the mention that they are binding. The printed formula „Obligatorie, potrivit dispozițiilor art. 521 alin. (3) din Codul de procedură civilă”, binding under the Code of Civil Procedure, on a decision that resolves nothing produces exactly the confusion seen in this case: parties and courts treat the reasoning as a resolution, although the law gives it no such effect.
  • Citations of Constitutional Court decisions in the Court’s own acts should be complete. At paragraph 20 the decision invokes Decision no. 302 of 2022 without day, month or publication reference, although everywhere else in the text the other decisions are fully identified. The one meant is Decision no. 302 of 18 May 2022, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 804 of 16 August 2022. A reader without access to a legal database will not find it.

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. 825 of 29 September 2026, pages 2-4 16 pages PDF, 132 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.