In brief

  • The Constitutional Court dismissed the plea raised by the mayor and the Harsova Local Council. The duty of town halls to pay, from the local budget, part of the water and sewerage bill of low-income families stays in force, unchanged.
  • The allowance goes to families and single people whose average monthly net cash income per family member is below the national gross minimum wage, that is below 4,325 lei from 1 July 2026, up to a limit of 75 litres per person per day, or 2.25 cubic metres a month.
  • For a customer, nothing changes on the meter, in the contract or on the bill. What is confirmed is an entitlement that many town halls do not apply: the right to ask for a monthly allowance towards the water bill. The decision is final and generally binding from 10 September 2026.
Act: CCR Decision no. 712 of 9 December 2025 on the plea of unconstitutionality concerning the provisions of Article 12(1)(m) and (n) and Articles 121 and 122 of Law No 241/2006 on the water supply and sewerage service
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 770 of 10 September 2026
In force from: 10 September 2026, the date of publication, from which the decision becomes final and generally binding

The duty of town halls to cover, from the local budget, part of the water and sewerage bill of low-income families stands: the Constitutional Court dismissed, as unfounded, the plea by which the mayor of the town of Harsova and the Harsova Local Council sought to have it struck down. Decision no. 712 of 9 December 2025 was published in the Official Gazette of Romania on 10 September 2026 and is final and generally binding from that date. For the ordinary customer nothing changes on the meter, in the contract or on the bill, but the decision confirms an entitlement that few people know about and that many town halls do not apply, in a year when the contributions for the water resource rise in four steps up to 2029.

Four provisions were challenged, all of them from Law No 241/2006 on the water supply and sewerage service. The first, Article 12(1)(m), obliges local authorities to grant monthly allowances from the local budget towards payment for the water and sewerage service. The second, point (n) of the same paragraph, obliges them to provide the money for the full or partial payment of the costs of connection to the water supply and to the sewerage network. The other two are Articles 121 and 122, two articles added in 2018 immediately after Article 12, which were given not new numbers but the number of the neighbouring article with a superscript index, so as to avoid renumbering the whole law. Article 121 sets out the mechanism of the monthly allowance and Article 122 that of the support towards connection.

The eligibility rule is a single one for both forms of support: the average of monthly net cash income per family member must be below the national gross minimum wage guaranteed in payment. From 1 July 2026 that wage is 4,325 lei, so the current threshold is a net income of up to 4,325 lei for each member of the family. The subsidy does not apply to the whole of consumption, however: Article 121(1) limits it to 75 litres per person per day, both for water supplied and for waste water discharged into the sewer. That is 2.25 cubic metres a month per person, so 9 cubic metres for a family of four. Anything consumed above that limit is paid in full.

The allowance is granted by order of the mayor, on written application, but the amounts, the conditions and the way it is settled with the water operator are set by a decision of the local council. That is where the dispute arose: at Harsova, court proceedings were brought to compel the local council to initiate and adopt that decision, and the mayor and the council responded with a plea of unconstitutionality. Their argument, in essence, was that the State imposes an expense on them without giving them the money, which would breach Article 138(4) and (5) of the Constitution, on local budgets and on the duty to establish the source of financing for any expenditure, as well as local autonomy under Articles 120 and 121.

The Court dismissed every criticism. On the budgetary point, it repeated a line of case law more than two decades old: the Constitution requires the source of financing to be established before the expenditure is approved, not to be written into the law that creates the expenditure, and the insufficiency of the resources in the source so established is a question of political expediency rather than of constitutionality. In this case, the Court says in paragraph 22, the law does indicate a source, in the wording „from the local budget or from other lawfully established sources of financing”, so the requirement is met. On local autonomy, the Court recalls that it is administrative and financial only and is exercised within the limits of the law, and that local authorities have no legislative power of their own.

The most useful sentence for a citizen is in paragraph 20: the lack of funds „does not render the contested rules unconstitutional but may give rise to difficulties in applying them”, difficulties to be resolved through budget adjustment and local administrative measures. Put plainly, a tight local budget is no defence for refusing the allowance.

What it changes in practice

The decision is final and generally binding from the date of publication, 10 September 2026, under Article 147(4) of the Constitution. In practice it adds nothing to the law and takes nothing out of it. Its effect lies elsewhere: it closes the argument about the validity of the four provisions and leaves them exactly as they are.

For a household customer, the immediate consequence is that they can apply to the town hall for the allowance without fearing that the provision they rely on will be struck down. The income condition is checked for the month preceding the one in which the application is filed, and all income earned by the members of the family goes into the calculation. The application is made in writing, and the decision comes as an order of the mayor.

Anyone living in an area the network has reached but the connection has not has a second entitlement, less widely known: Article 12(1)(n) obliges the town hall to provide the money for the full or partial payment of the costs of connection to the water supply and to the sewerage network, from the local budget or from other lawfully established sources, including national and European programmes. The amount, the period, the number of beneficiaries and the settlement arrangements are set by a decision of the deliberative authority, under Article 122.

For town halls, the effect is that the duty remains, and the margin of appreciation the Court allows them is a single one: which budget they pay from, not whether they pay. A local council that has not yet adopted the decision setting amounts and conditions has no constitutional reason to withhold it, and this decision can be invoked in any proceedings seeking an order that it be adopted.

There is also a lever that does not come out of the local budget. Article 121(8) allows a „solidarity component” to be included in the structure of the service price, at up to 1% of the value of operating costs. The fund is approved by decision of the deliberative authorities or by the general meeting of the inter-community development association, is held in a separate interest-bearing account at the treasury and is used exclusively for the monthly allowances. The consequence for the customer is that, where such a fund is approved, the allowance for poor families is financed out of the tariff paid by all customers rather than out of taxes.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the text of the law, nothing. The four contested provisions remain in the form they had before the decision, and a check on the legislative portal confirms that they are in force in exactly the form the Court examined. The only amendment made between the referral and the judgment is the one to point (n) by Government Emergency Ordinance No 144/2021, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1258 of 31 December 2021, and the Court finds in paragraph 12 that it preserved the contested legislative solution.

What has changed is the degree of certainty. The duty had existed since 3 August 2018, when Law No 215/2018, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 664 of 31 July 2018, entered into force, but its validity was contested. From 10 September 2026 it no longer is. That is 2,960 days, or eight years and 38 days, in which the provision was applied with a question mark over it.

The reach of what the decision covers has changed too. The referral by the Constanta Court of Appeal concerned Article 12(1)(m) and (n) and only paragraphs (1) and (2) of Article 121. The constitutional court, however, established in paragraph 12 that the subject matter of the plea is the whole of Article 121 and Article 122, and the operative part declares all of them constitutional. So all eight paragraphs of Article 121, including the solidarity fund, and Article 122, which nobody had put in issue, now have a verdict of constitutionality.

Finally, a new argument has been added for use in practice. Until now, a town hall refusing the allowance could invoke the lack of money as a substantive point. Paragraphs 17, 20 and 22 of this decision say expressly that the duty to pay exists, that the local margin concerns only the budget the money comes from, and that a lack of funds is a difficulty of application rather than a cause of invalidity of the rule.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The right to a monthly allowance towards water and sewerage charges stays intact, on a basis that can no longer be questioned on constitutional grounds.
  • The decision gives the citizen three citable paragraphs to use before the town hall and in court: the duty to pay exists, the local margin concerns only the budget source, and a lack of money is no defence.
  • The income threshold is generous. A net income is compared with the gross minimum wage, so families in which every adult earns the minimum wage are eligible as well.
  • Support towards connection remains compulsory and can be financed from national and European programmes, not from the local budget alone.
  • The solidarity fund inside the tariff remains a lawful alternative to the local budget, useful above all in localities where the budget is small.

What remains a problem

  • The decision does not solve the practical problem raised at Harsova. The law sets no deadline within which the local council must adopt the decision setting amounts and conditions, and without it the mayor has no framework to apply.
  • No new source of money is created. The Court confirms the duty but points out that the allocation of funds from the State budget falls outside its jurisdiction.
  • Four of the eight paragraphs of Article 121 refer to acts that no longer exist, and the decision declares them constitutional without touching on that.
  • The limit of 75 litres per person per day is a fixed figure from 2018, with no updating mechanism.
  • Support towards connection has no statutory minimum, so it can be set locally at a token amount.
  • The decision was delivered on 9 December 2025 and published on 10 September 2026, 275 days later, and until publication it had no general effect.

Practical advice

  1. Check whether your locality has a local council decision on the water bill allowance. Look in the local official gazette or on the town hall’s website, under council decisions. Without it, the mayor has no amounts to apply and the application goes unanswered on the substance.
  2. If the decision does not exist, ask for it in writing. This judgment confirms that the duty to grant the allowance is laid down by law and that a lack of money does not cancel it. The petition is registered and the town hall has a deadline to reply under the legislation on petitions.
  3. Prepare the income documents for the month preceding the one in which you file the application, for every member of the family. The law asks for the average of monthly net cash income per family member, not the income of a single person, so a large family with one wage has a good chance of qualifying.
  4. Do not assume that having a wage disqualifies you. The threshold is the gross minimum wage, 4,325 lei from 1 July 2026, compared with a net income. Two adults on the minimum wage and two children come to roughly 1,350 lei net per family member, so under a third of the threshold.
  5. If you live on a street with a network but no connection, apply separately for support towards water or sewer connection. It is an entitlement distinct from the monthly allowance, provided for in Article 12(1)(n) and in Article 122, and it too is granted by a local council decision.
  6. If you receive inclusion benefit, ask expressly for the threshold of at least 50% of the cost of the service to be applied. The provision ties it to a law repealed on 1 January 2024, so it helps to invoke the purpose of the rule as well as its letter, and to ask for the reply in writing.
  7. Local councils with a small budget can put before the inter-community development association the solidarity fund of up to 1% of operating costs. It is a solution provided for by law and it asks nothing of the State budget.

Frequently asked questions

Did the Constitutional Court uphold or dismiss the plea?
It dismissed it, as unfounded, unanimously. The operative part finds that Article 12(1)(m) and (n) and Articles 121 and 122 of Law No 241/2006 are constitutional in relation to the criticisms raised.
Will my water bill go down from 10 September 2026?
No. The decision changes no figure in the law and imposes nothing on the water operator. It only confirms that the provisions obliging the town hall to grant an allowance to low-income families are valid. Any reduction comes from the local council decision, not from this judgment.
Who can apply for the monthly allowance?
Families and single people whose average monthly net cash income per family member is below the national gross minimum wage guaranteed in payment, that is below 4,325 lei from 1 July 2026. The month taken into account is the one preceding the month in which the application is filed.
How much of the bill is covered?
That depends on the local council decision, which sets the amounts and the percentages. The law imposes a single minimum: for recipients of social assistance benefit, the monthly allowance covers at least 50% of the cost of the service. The subsidy applies up to a limit of 75 litres per person per day, for water as well as for sewerage, that is 2.25 cubic metres a month per person.
Can the town hall refuse on the ground that it has no money?
The Court says in paragraph 20 that a lack of funds does not affect the validity of the rule but may give rise to difficulties of application, to be resolved through budget adjustment and local administrative measures. A refusal based solely on a lack of money can be challenged, and the Harsova case shows that such disputes do reach the courts.
What are Articles 121 and 122?
They are two articles inserted into the law in 2018, immediately after Article 12. To avoid renumbering the whole law, they were given the number of the neighbouring article together with a superscript index. They are read as „Article 12 one” and „Article 12 two”, the Romanian equivalent of Article 12a and Article 12b. The first sets out the mechanism of the monthly allowance, the second that of the support towards connection.
What happens to the Harsova case?
It goes back to the Constanta Court of Appeal, which continues to hear the application for an order against the local council, now without the possibility of arguing that the statutory provisions are unconstitutional. The decision is communicated to that court and binds it.

Editorial analysis

The decision is soundly built on the budgetary law side and short exactly where it would have counted. The Court answers the question it was asked, whether a law can impose an expense on a town hall without giving it the money, and it answers with case law that has been consistent since 1993: the source must be established before the expenditure, not written into the law that creates it. What nobody does in this case, neither the authors of the plea nor the Court, is look at the state of the text declared constitutional.

And that state is a problem. Of the eight paragraphs of Article 121, four refer to acts that no longer exist. Paragraphs (2) and (3) rest on Law No 416/2001 on the guaranteed minimum income, repealed with effect from 1 January 2024 by Law No 196/2016 on the minimum inclusion income. Paragraphs (4) and (5) rest on Government Emergency Ordinance No 70/2011 on social protection measures during the cold season, which has not been in force since 1 November 2021, replaced by Law No 226/2021 on the vulnerable energy consumer. At the date this decision was published, the first reference had been dead for two years and eight months, the second for four years and ten months. The most concrete consequence is in paragraph (2): the mandatory threshold of „at least 50% of the cost of supply” is reserved to recipients of social assistance benefit „under the provisions of Law No 416/2001”, a category which, read literally, no longer has any members. One mayor acting in good faith applies it by equivalence to recipients of the minimum inclusion income, another treats it as inapplicable, and both have an argument.

The detail that turns this from sloppy legislative drafting into something heavier is the chronology. Government Emergency Ordinance No 144/2021 was published on 31 December 2021, that is two months after Government Emergency Ordinance No 70/2011 had ceased to be in force, and it amended precisely the neighbouring provision, point (n) of Article 12. The delegated legislature had the text open in front of it and left the references as they were.

The second observation calls for a little arithmetic and emerges from combining two paragraphs of the same article. Paragraph (8) caps the solidarity fund at 1% of the value of the operator’s operating costs, while paragraph (2) requires at least 50% of the cost of the service to be covered for the poorest. If operating costs are taken to be roughly equal to the amount invoiced, the fund can reach the 50% threshold on its own only as long as beneficiaries account for at most 2% of the volume invoiced. Above that level, the difference necessarily falls on the local budget. The only alternative source the law offers is therefore calibrated for localities where poverty is a statistical exception rather than for those where it is the rule, which is exactly the wrong way round.

The third observation concerns how generous the eligibility threshold is, which explains why the town halls’ complaint is not fanciful. The law compares a net income with the gross minimum wage. From 1 July 2026 the gross minimum wage is 4,325 lei, and the corresponding net figure is roughly 2,699 lei. The threshold therefore sits some 60% above the minimum wage actually received net, and a family with two adults on the minimum wage and two children comes to roughly 1,350 lei net per member, under a third of the threshold. The potentially eligible group is far wider than „families in difficulty”, which is a legitimate social policy choice, but one whose cost nobody has estimated publicly. The Court answered the constitutional question, not the arithmetical one, and it was right to do so. The arithmetical question is still unanswered after eight years.

One last aspect concerns the pace of the procedure, because it changes the practical value of the decision. The interlocutory judgment of referral is dated 21 September 2020 and delivery took place on 9 December 2025, so 1,905 days between the two, with publication on 10 September 2026, another 275 days. The Court’s case file bore the number 1.275D/2021, even though the referral is dated September 2020, and the decision does not explain the gap. For as long as a decision of dismissal is unpublished, it has no general effect, so during those 275 days any other town hall could go on raising the same criticisms. By comparison, the citizen who files an application for the allowance gets a reply within the statutory deadline for petitions and has to prove income for the preceding month.

What should be changed

  • Replacement of the two dead references in Article 121. Law No 416/2001 gives way to Law No 196/2016 on the minimum inclusion income, and Government Emergency Ordinance No 70/2011 to Law No 226/2021. Effect: the mandatory 50% threshold becomes applicable once more to a category of recipients that actually exists, and town halls stop each deciding differently on the same provision.
  • A statutory deadline for the local council decision under Article 121(7). For example 90 days from the start of the budget year, with a duty to review it annually. Effect: the situation that produced the Harsova dispute disappears, where the statutory duty exists but has no local framework of application, so nobody can exercise it.
  • A statutory minimum for the connection support under Article 122. The monthly allowance has a 50% floor for the poorest, the connection support has none. Effect: the support can no longer be set locally at a token amount that leaves the duty discharged on paper and the connection unbuilt.
  • Recalibration of the solidarity fund, or a complementary source from the State budget. The 1% cap works only where beneficiaries are few. Effect: localities with a high share of families below the threshold, which also have the smallest budgets of their own, are no longer the only ones with no practical source of financing.
  • Linking the limit of 75 litres per person per day to a figure that can be updated. Either a reference consumption set by technical norm, or a periodic review. Effect: the limit no longer stays a fixed figure from 2018 inside a law that is amended often around it.
  • Comparing net income with the net minimum wage, or stating the opposite choice expressly. If the present width of the threshold is intended, the provision should say so and the explanatory memorandum should quantify it. Effect: town halls can estimate the cost before building the budget, and applicants know in advance whether they qualify.

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. 770 of 10 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 114 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.