ON THE CONSTITUTIONALITY CONTROL OF THE ACTS ISSUED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF ROMANIA

Abstract

Together with the Romanian President, the Government forms the executive. In its activity, the Government issues two categories of acts: decisions, which are the acts that organize the enforcement of laws (an activity that lies within its exclusive competence) and ordinances, by means of which a genuine delegated legislative activity is carried out. All acts issued by the Government are subject to control, but the nature of this review differs depending on the nature of the act. Thus, while decisions are subject only to a review of legality, which is exercised by the courts, under the Law of the Contentious- Administrative, ordinances are subject to both a review of legality and to a review of constitutionality. The peculiarities of the procedure for adopting Government ordinances also made their procedure of constitutionality control differ in some respects from the procedure of reviewing the constitutionality of laws. Thus, the constitutionality control of government ordinances is performed only after their entry into force, by settling the exceptions of unconstitutionality by the Constitutional Court; the exception of unconstitutionality may be brought to court only with the introduction of an action before the contentious-administrative court and not before another court or in another stage of the proceedings; the holder of the objection of unconstitutionality is only the applicant in the proceeding; the resolution of rejecting the criticism of unconstitutionality is a plea of inadmissibility, which, in all cases, obliges the contentious-administrative court to overrule the action as inadmissible. As an exception, the Ombudsman may appeal directly to the Constitutional Court against a government ordinance or against a provision of an ordinance, without having to file for a common law action.