In brief

  • The Constitutional Court found that Parliament Resolutions no. 45/2025 and no. 46/2025, by which the boards of directors of the Romanian Television Corporation and of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation were appointed, are unconstitutional. The reason is the same in both cases: the seats were not shared out in line with the weight of the parliamentary groups.
  • The unconstitutionality covers only the 8 seats out of 13 that the parliamentary groups nominate. The appointment of the chairs of the two boards, who are also the directors general of the two institutions, ceases to produce legal effects on 4 September 2026, and Parliament has to run the procedure again.
  • Both decisions were taken by a majority of votes, not unanimously. Judge Laura-Iuliana Scântei wrote a separate opinion to each of them, arguing that the referrals should have been dismissed, because the law does not require fractions of a seat to be rounded up.
Act: Constitutional Court Decision no. 394 of 29 April 2026 and Constitutional Court Decision no. 395 of 29 April 2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 748 of 4 September 2026
In force from: 4 September 2026, the date of publication

The boards of directors of Romanian Television and of Romanian Radio, appointed by Parliament in November 2025, lose their legal basis on 4 September 2026. Official Gazette of Romania no. 748 of 4 September 2026 carried, one after the other, Decision no. 394 and Decision no. 395 of the Constitutional Court, both delivered on 29 April 2026. The first concerns Parliament Resolution no. 45/2025, which set the composition of the board of directors of the Romanian Television Corporation. The second concerns Parliament Resolution no. 46/2025, with the same object for the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation. The Court upheld both referrals. As with any decision of the Constitutional Court, the effects arise from the date of publication and only for the future.

The referrals were lodged by the parliamentary groups of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate and were registered with the Court on 22 December 2025, under numbers 14.466 and 14.467. The complaint was a single one: when the members were designated, the AUR groups put forward two nominations for full members and two for alternate members, and the joint culture committees of the two chambers gave a favourable opinion to only one of each. The remaining nominations never reached the lists put to the vote in the plenary.

Law no. 41/1994 on the organisation and functioning of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation and of the Romanian Television Corporation states, in Article 19(2)(a), that the joint parliamentary groups nominate candidates for 8 of the 13 seats on the board, in accordance with their political configuration and their weight in Parliament. The other 5 seats are filled from other sources: the President of Romania, the Government, the employees of the two corporations and the parliamentary group of the national minorities. The Court held that the two criteria, configuration and weight, are cumulative and binding, and that political negotiation between group leaders cannot bypass them.

The starting point of the reasoning is a table of parliamentary arithmetic. On 18 November 2025, the date on which the two resolutions were adopted, Parliament had 463 deputies and senators: 129 in the joint PSD groups, 90 in AUR, 73 in PNL, 59 in USR, 32 in UDMR, 17 in the national minorities group, 15 in SOS România, 14 in POT, 12 in the PACE group in the Senate and 22 unaffiliated members. The Court compared these weights with the composition that was voted through and found two things: groups holding more than 10% of the total number of members of Parliament received as many seats as a group below 10%, while other groups below 10% received none at all. Differences in weight of two or three times over, the Court writes in paragraph 59 of both decisions, should have produced a different number of seats.

A second criticism concerns the plenary, not the committees. The Court recalls that the opinion of a parliamentary committee is a preliminary act, a recommendation, and that the plenary could have sent the lists back to the committees or proposed amendments. In the joint sitting of 18 November 2025, the request to send them back was rejected and the plenary adopted the committees’ proposals as its own. The conclusion, identical in both decisions, is that Article 1(3) and (5) of the Constitution were breached, that is, the principle of the rule of law and the duty to comply with the law.

What it changes in practice

The operative part of the two decisions does not annul the resolutions of Parliament in their entirety. The formula used is that each resolution „is unconstitutional as regards the designation of the candidates by the joint parliamentary groups of the two chambers of Parliament”. In practice, the 8 seats of full members nominated by the groups fall away, together with their alternates, at each of the two institutions. The 5 seats coming from the President, the Government, the employees and the minorities group are not touched by the operative part.

In paragraph 62, the Court states that the resolutions keep their presumption of constitutionality until the date on which the decisions are published, so that the legal acts adopted by the two boards of directors up to 4 September 2026 remain valid. Nothing the boards decided in the past nine and a half months is undone retroactively.

Paragraph 63 contains the part with the most visible effect. The act by which Parliament appointed the chair of each board of directors, under Article 19(7) of Law no. 41/1994, ceases to produce legal effects on the date of publication, that is, on 4 September 2026. Since the chair of the board is, under the same law, also the director general of the corporation, the executive management of Romanian Television and of public radio is left without a basis for appointment from that day. Parliament is to make a fresh appointment, from among the people who will make up the new composition of the boards.

The decisions set no deadline for redoing the procedure. Nor do they say who runs the two corporations between the moment the appointments cease and the new vote in Parliament. Law no. 41/1994 provides for the extension of a board’s term only in one specific situation, where the appointment procedure is not completed during the legislature in which it was started, which is not the case here. And the usual mechanism for filling a vacant seat, replacing the full member with his alternate, does not work either, because the decision removes full members and alternates from the board at the same time.

The Court further holds, in paragraph 64 of each decision, that not only the operative parts are binding, but also the grounds on which they rest. That means the reasoning about the weight of the groups itself becomes a rule for the future procedure, not only for the one that has been struck down.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until 4 September 2026, the two boards were operating normally. The terms of the previous boards had expired on 15 November 2025, the joint standing bureaus had started the procedure on 12 November 2025, and the new compositions had been voted on 18 November 2025 and published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1061 of the same day. The term of a member of the board of directors is 4 years, so it should have run until November 2029.

From 4 September 2026, the 16 positions of full member and the alternate seats that went with them, 8 at each corporation, no longer have any legal cover. The method of calculation changes as well, at least as a matter of principle. Until now, the seats left after the first round were shared out by negotiation between the group leaders, a mechanism that the Rules of the Senate expressly recognise in Article 43(e), through the power of the Committee of Leaders to set the algorithm of representation. After these decisions, negotiation remains possible, but it can no longer produce a result that falls outside the margin given by the weight of each group.

What is at stake for the small groups has changed too. The Court expressly criticises the fact that groups with a weight below 10% are not represented at all, which raises the question of seats for SOS România and for the Party of Young People, which received none although they had put forward candidates.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • It sets a rule that can be checked: the 8 seats are shared out according to weight, and understandings between leaders cannot rewrite the result. Until now, the criterion was invoked but nobody was policing it.
  • It confirms that an individual resolution of Parliament, even one that merely appoints a few people, can reach the Constitutional Court when it concerns an institution provided for by the Constitution. Public television and radio come in here through Article 31(5) of the Constitution.
  • It puts the role of the plenary back on the table. The Court says plainly that the opinion of the committees is a recommendation and that the plenary had the option of sending the matter back to committee, so it cannot hide behind the preparatory work.
  • It brings into the public domain the exact figures for the parliamentary weights on a precise date, which makes the next allocation far harder to challenge or to improvise.

What remains a problem

  • The Court does not say how many seats AUR was entitled to, nor what method of calculation must be used for fractions of a seat. The law does not lay one down, and Parliament restarts the procedure without a binding formula, so the same dispute can come back.
  • There is no deadline. The decisions say that Parliament „is to make a fresh appointment”, without any cut-off date, and the two institutions are left with no lawfully appointed management for an indefinite period.
  • The 16 full members and their alternates lose their terms without anything being held against them personally. The flaw lies in the parliamentary procedure, not in their work.
  • The decisions were delivered on 29 April 2026 and published on 4 September 2026. Throughout that interval, boards that the Court had already found to be wrongly composed carried on running the two corporations with full powers.
  • The separate opinion points out that ending the terms of the management of a public broadcaster early runs against the standards of the Venice Commission and against Article 5(2) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1.083, which requires those terms to be protected for their full duration.

Practical advice

  1. If you are following the case, remember which date counts: 4 September 2026, not 29 April 2026. Delivery produces no effects, publication in the Official Gazette of Romania does.
  2. Do not mix up the two decisions. Decision no. 394 concerns Television, through Resolution no. 45/2025. Decision no. 395 concerns Radio Broadcasting, through Resolution no. 46/2025. The texts are almost identical, but the files are separate: 5.126L2/2025 and 5.127L2/2025.
  3. If you hold a contract, a board resolution or an administrative decision issued by one of the two corporations before 4 September 2026, it remains valid. Paragraph 62 of both decisions says so expressly.
  4. For acts issued after 4 September 2026 and until a fresh appointment is made, ask to be shown the basis on which the person signing represents the corporation. The situation is not regulated by the decisions.
  5. The list of names that has been annulled can be found in the annexes reproduced in the text of the decisions themselves, in paragraph 42 of each. They are public lists, useful if you are checking conflicts of interest or length of service.
  6. If you want to understand the opposite argument, read the separate opinion. It is longer than the decision itself in both cases and contains the table calculating the weights, with the fractions of a seat for each group.
  7. Keep an eye on the agenda of the joint sittings of the two chambers. That is where the new designation procedure will appear, together with the joint opinion of the culture committees.

Frequently asked questions

Who asked the Constitutional Court to review the two resolutions?
The parliamentary groups of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, through the signature of the group leaders. The referrals were registered with the Court on 22 December 2025.
Is the whole resolution of Parliament unconstitutional, or only part of it?
Only the part concerning the designation of candidates by the joint parliamentary groups, that is, 8 of the 13 seats on each board. The other 5 seats, which come from the President of Romania, the Government, the employees and the national minorities group, are not covered by the operative part.
Do the members appointed through the resolutions declared unconstitutional stay in office?
No. The decisions say in paragraph 63 that the act of appointment by Parliament ceases to produce legal effects on the date of their publication, that is, on 4 September 2026, and that Parliament is to make a fresh appointment from among the people who will make up the new composition of the boards.
What happens to the decisions taken by these boards so far?
They remain valid. The Court shows in paragraph 62 that the resolutions of Parliament kept their presumption of constitutionality until the decisions were published, so the legal acts adopted by the boards up to 4 September 2026 are not affected.
How long does Parliament have to redo the appointments?
The decisions set no deadline. They only say that Parliament „is to make a fresh appointment”, in compliance with Article 19(7) of Law no. 41/1994.
Why did publication take so long?
The decisions were delivered on 29 April 2026 and published on 4 September 2026, 128 days apart. The decisions do not explain the interval. The law sets no maximum period for drafting them and sending them for publication.
Did the judges agree among themselves?
No. Both decisions were taken by a majority of votes, a formula written into the text of the decisions themselves, in paragraph 65. Judge Laura-Iuliana Scântei signed a separate opinion to each, arguing that the referrals should have been dismissed as unfounded.
What is the main argument of the separate opinion?
That no law and no set of rules requires fractions of a seat to be rounded up. According to the calculation in the opinion, the 19.44% weight of AUR gave it a quota of 1.5552 seats out of the 8, hence a single whole seat, and the additional seat could be obtained only through negotiation in the committee of leaders. The opinion further argues that, by upholding the referral, the Court reviewed the specific way in which Parliament applies its own rules, which would breach the parliamentary autonomy provided for in Article 64(1) of the Constitution.
Why can the Constitutional Court review a resolution by which Parliament appoints people?
Because, according to the case-law invoked in the decisions, resolutions of Parliament concerning the organisation and functioning of authorities of constitutional rank can be reviewed. The public radio and television services are provided for in Article 31(5) of the Constitution, which also requires parliamentary oversight of their activity.
What happens to the directors general of the two corporations?
The chair of the board of directors is, by law, also the director general of the corporation, and he is appointed separately by Parliament, under Article 19(7) of Law no. 41/1994. The decisions say that this act of appointment ceases to produce effects on 4 September 2026, so both offices are left without a legal basis until a new vote in Parliament.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Paragraph 65 of both decisions invokes a legal basis that does not fit the procedure. The operative parts are delivered „under Article 146(d) and Article 147(4) of the Constitution, Articles 1 to 3, Article 11(1)(A)(d) and Article 29 of Law no. 47/1992”. Article 146(d) of the Constitution concerns pleas of unconstitutionality raised before the courts or before commercial arbitration bodies, and Article 29 of Law no. 47/1992 governs precisely that procedure. Neither has anything to do with a referral against a resolution of Parliament. In paragraphs 41, 44, 45, 46 and 47 of the same decisions, the Court founds its jurisdiction, correctly, on Article 146(l) of the Constitution and on Article 27 of Law no. 47/1992. One and the same published act therefore says two different things about the power under which it was delivered. The text was checked against the printed edition, on pages 9 and 24, so this is not a loss in extraction.
  • Paragraph 58 of the majority decision and point 17 of the separate opinion count the same Parliament differently, on the same date. The majority holds that, on 18 November 2025, the PACE group in the Senate had 12 members and there were 22 unaffiliated members of Parliament. The separate opinion records 11 members in PACE and 23 unaffiliated. Both versions close at a total of 463 members of Parliament, so the figures cannot be checked against one another. Since it is precisely the weight of the groups that the solution rests on, a divergence of this kind inside one and the same publication leaves the reader without a single numerical basis.

Editorial analysis

The figure that says the most about this case appears nowhere in the two decisions. The Court ruled on 29 April 2026, and the texts reached the Official Gazette of Romania on 4 September 2026, 128 days later. The boards had been appointed on 18 November 2025, so they operated for 290 days until the date on which their appointment ceases to produce effects. In other words, almost 44% of the effective duration of these terms was used up after the Court had already ruled against them, and everything they decided in that interval remains valid, by the effect of paragraph 62. A constitutionality review that produces effects four months and one week after the judges voted is no longer a review of an ongoing situation, but a finding made about a situation that has already largely run its course.

The second thing that leaps out is what the operative part does not say. The Court finds that the 8 seats „were to be filled by the candidates proposed by those groups, in accordance with their political configuration and their weight in Parliament”, but it does not say how many seats AUR was entitled to, nor how many UDMR, SOS România or POT were entitled to, and it points to no method for allocating fractions. The separate opinion shows, with the table at point 17, that this is exactly the problem: weights of 27.86%, 19.44%, 15.77%, 12.74% and 6.91% produce quotas of 2.2288, 1.5552, 1.2616, 1.0192 and 0.5528 seats, that is, only 5 whole seats out of 8, while the other 3 are allocated under a rule that Law no. 41/1994 does not contain. The largest remainder method, the D’Hondt method and a rounding threshold give different results, and Parliament now has to redo the very same operation without knowing which of them is the compliant one. Nothing stands in the way of a second referral on the same ground.

There is also a consequence that emerges from combining two things written in separate places. The decision removes from the board, at the same time, the 8 full members and the 8 alternates designated by the groups, at each of the two corporations. Yet the alternate is precisely the mechanism the law keeps ready for the case where a full member’s seat falls vacant. Here it has nothing left to cover, because it is eliminated together with the full member. And the extension of a board’s term, the only form of continuity provided for by Law no. 41/1994, applies only where the appointment procedure is not completed during a legislature, which is not the case. The result is that two public media institutions are left, from 4 September 2026, without a lawfully constituted board of directors and without an appointed director general, and neither the decisions nor the law says what happens in the meantime, or for how long.

Finally, one drafting detail is worth noting, because it says something about the rush at the end: paragraph 30 of the separate opinion attached to Decision no. 395 concludes that Resolution no. 46 of Parliament of 18 November 2025 concerns „the designation of the members of the Board of Directors of the Romanian Television Corporation”, although that resolution concerns Radio Broadcasting. It is an error with no legal consequences, because the number of the resolution is correct and a separate opinion has no binding force, but it appears in the final sentence of a text that spent 128 days in drafting.

What should be changed

  • The method for allocating the 8 seats should be written into Law no. 41/1994. A single sentence naming the largest remainder method or the D’Hondt method, plus the tie-break rule for equal remainders, would turn a contestable negotiation into a calculation that anyone with a spreadsheet can verify.
  • A statutory deadline for restarting the procedure after a decision finding unconstitutionality. Without one, the two corporations can be left with no lawfully appointed management for months on end, and the delay costs the party responsible for it nothing.
  • An express interim solution for the period between the end of the appointments and the new vote. The decisions do not say who runs the two corporations in that interval and point to no form of provisional management, even though this is precisely the effect they produce.
  • A maximum period between delivery and dispatch for publication, at least for decisions that end terms in progress. In this case, 128 days of drafting meant 128 days in which a composition already declared unconstitutional took decisions on behalf of two public institutions.
  • Publication of the weight calculation together with the joint opinion of the committees. If the table showing the number of seats due to each group were public before the vote in the plenary, the dispute would be fought over figures, before the vote, not over procedure, a year and a half afterwards.
  • Written reasons for the negative opinions given to candidates in committee. In both files, two candidacies were rejected without the act showing why, and this fed the entire dispute that ended up before the Court.

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. 748 of 4 September 2026 32 pages PDF, 209 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.