On Thursday, 22 October 2026, the court found a constitutional conflict between Parliament and the government by a 5 to 4 vote, upholding Sorin Grindeanu's referral.
Emergency Ordinance GEO 38/2026 was published in the Official Monitor on 8 May 2026, three days after the 5 May 2026 censure motion removed the Bolojan government.
The court postponed its decision on the Ombudsman's referral, which argued the ordinance lacked a Legislative Council opinion and was issued by a dismissed government.
Romania has a 16.7 billion euro SAFE allocation, and contracts worth more than 9 billion euros have been signed that could be put at risk by the ruling.
On Thursday, 22 October 2026, Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) found that a constitutional conflict exists between Parliament and the government over the emergency ordinance on the SAFE defence programme. The vote was 5 to 4. The referral came from Sorin Grindeanu, leader of the PSD and president of the Chamber of Deputies, who argued that the government led by Ilie Bolojan had exceeded its powers. Court sources told HotNews.ro that the court admitted the referral. The court postponed a separate decision on a referral from the Ombudsman, who had asked for the ordinance to be declared unconstitutional.
Grindeanu's referral raised two problems. The first concerns the adoption and publication of the ordinance after Parliament withdrew its confidence in the government through a censure motion on 5 May 2026. The second is that the ordinance regulated matters already under debate in Parliament, where the solutions were already on the agenda of plenary sittings in both chambers. The referral was addressed at the time to the court's president, Simina Tănăsescu, and described the cabinet in these terms:
“a Government that, under Article 110 paragraph (4) of the Constitution, was no longer empowered to exercise anything other than acts of current administration of public affairs.”
Grindeanu argued that the interim government could not issue legislative acts of this kind and should have been limited to the day-to-day running of public affairs.
Emergency Ordinance GEO 38/2026 was adopted by the interim government on 4 May, according to HotNews.ro, and was modified on 5 May, the day of the censure motion. Its final form was sent for publication and appeared in the Official Monitor (Monitorul Oficial) on 8 May 2026, three days after the government was removed. Grindeanu filed his referral on 20 May. The Ombudsman's challenge cited the absence of a request for an opinion from the Legislative Council and the constitutional ban on ordinances issued by a dismissed government.
Romania has a 16.7 billion euro allocation under SAFE, and contracts worth more than 9 billion euros have already been signed. The programme consists of loans rather than grants, with a maximum interest rate of 3% and a 10-year grace period, so repayment would begin only in 2035 and run for about 30 years. Unconstitutionality would not end the programme or automatically cancel signed contracts. It would, however, remove for the future the ordinance's mechanisms that allow the state to expropriate certain industrial assets or take stakes in strategic companies, which could block projects that depend on them.
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The Thursday finding concerns the conflict between the two branches. Whether the ordinance itself is unconstitutional is the question raised by the Ombudsman's referral. The court has not yet ruled on that referral, and the SAFE contracts already signed remain the largest exposure in the case.
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The Constitutional Court ruled 5 to 4 that a constitutional conflict exists between Parliament and the government over the emergency ordinance on the SAFE defence programme. The case was brought by Sorin Grindeanu after the interim government led by Ilie Bolojan issued the ordinance following a censure motion.
AI text based on reports by Mediafax.ro, Libertatea, HotNews.ro and other publishers. Published .