On Thursday, Romania’s Constitutional Court (CCR) postponed until 15 July a ruling on a referral filed by Chamber of Deputies Speaker Sorin Grindeanu concerning a possible constitutional conflict of a legal nature between Parliament and the Bolojan Government, triggered by the issuance of the emergency ordinance on the SAFE programme for equipping the army.
In essence, Grindeanu complains that the Bolojan Government adopted Emergency Ordinance No. 38/2026 after Parliament withdrew its confidence through a no-confidence motion. He says the executive no longer had law-making powers and should have been dealing only with acts of current public administration.
‘The constitutional legal conflict is generated by two distinct but convergent unconstitutional actions of the Government of Romania: the adoption and submission for publication of Government Emergency Ordinance No. 38/2026 after Parliament withdrew its confidence through a no-confidence motion (5 May 2026), and its publication in the Official Gazette on 8 May 2026, by a Government which, in accordance with Article 110(4) of the Constitution, was no longer entitled to carry out anything other than acts of current public administration, to the categorical exclusion of any delegated law-making power; the regulation, through Government Emergency Ordinance No. 38/2026, of legislative solutions that were already in parliamentary procedure – under debate or even on the agenda of plenary sittings in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate respectively – thus turning the Government from a delegated law-maker, from whom precisely the democratic mandate had been withdrawn, into a law-making authority competing with Parliament, abandoning its constitutional role and at the same time disregarding the duty of constitutional loyalty towards Parliament, as the country’s sole legislative authority’, the referral states.
Grindeanu also says that, from the analysis of the procedural timeline and the content of the normative acts involved, it emerges that the Government substantially expanded the original draft of the emergency ordinance on the morning of 5 May, the day of the debate and vote on the no-confidence motion, by adding 12 new articles.
‘The explanatory memorandum to the law approving it explicitly acknowledges that “the additions made during the Government meeting to the Emergency Ordinance were motivated by the importance and urgency of the regulations, together with the possibility that, if the no-confidence motion against the executive were adopted, it would no longer be able to issue emergency ordinances during the period of interim government”. In conclusion, through its conduct, the Government not only intervenes in an area already under parliamentary debate, but also anticipates and replaces the outcome of the legislative process, diminishing Parliament’s deliberative role and affecting the constitutional balance between the powers of the state, enshrined in Article 1(4) of the Constitution’, the Chamber of Deputies Speaker argues.
Source: AGERPRES
