Early retirement option for Romanian judges will be deferred by two years

The Romanian Senate’s legal affairs committee issued on Tuesday, December 10, a positive opinion on the amendments to the emergency ordinance (OUG) 92/2018 in the sense of deferring by two years the provision allowing judges to retire after 20 years in office - as compared to 25 years currently, local Digi24 reported.

The lower retirement age was adopted by the previous Social Democrat Government along with other controversial changes in the field of justice, and was scheduled to be enforced starting January 1, 2020. The provision was highly criticized as it would have created a large number of vacancies in the justice system and would have blocked local courts.

The legal affairs committee also decided to defer for January 1, 2021 the term from which the number of judges in the lower court panels will increase from two to three.

The two changes were made through amendments to the draft law for the approval of OUG 92/2018 (for the modification and completion of some legal acts in the field of justice). The draft law for the approval of OUG 92/2018 will enter into the debate of the Senate plenary, which has the decisive vote on this matter.

The debate for amending two other justice laws, which, among other things, loosen the seniority requirements for applying for the National Institute of Magistracy (GEO 7/2019 and GEO 12/2019), were postponed to February 2020, at the beginning of the next parliamentary session.

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