Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) on Wednesday has ruled as constitutional the law that amends the Ordinance on public pay law, after repelling notifications by the PNL (National Liberal Party) and Government.
The two notifications were merged into a single file, and the exceptions raised were rejected after debates.
The CCR decision is final and generally mandatory.
The Government on one hand, along with another 65 liberal deputies on the other have formulated one constitutionality challenge each in reference to the Law on approving the Government Emergency Ordinance (OUG) No. 20/2016 for the modification and completion of OUG No. 57/2015 on the public staff's pay.
The Chamber of Deputies in a plenary sitting has endorsed on 7 November 2016 OUG No. 20/2016 with amendments brought by the specialty committees, that foresee on average 15pct salary raises in Education and Healthcare.
Premier Dacian Ciolos specified on 8 November, after the piece of legislation was passed, that the Government was compelled to ask for a constitutionality check, focused only on the law that is amending the OUG and not on the entire OUG.
On 9 November, the PNL group with the Chamber of Deputies has notified in its turn the CCR for the same reason.
"PNL could not ignore the fact that the vote expressed in the plenary sitting of the Chamber of Deputies was not given in accordance with the regulation and that it is an infringement to constitutional jurisprudence," said at the time the Liberal deputies' leader, Eugen Nicolaescu.
According to the liberals, by adopting this law the principle of bicameralism consecrated through in the constitutional jurisprudence, meaning that the amendments at the Chamber of Deputies are modifying the contents of the regulation and generate a "significantly different" configuration of the piece of legislation as against the form adopted by the Senate.
PNL invoked the violation of Art. 69 para (2) of the Chamber's Regulation which says that a report adopted by a permanent committee of this forum must be distributed to the MPs electronic box at least five days before the plenary debate.
The PNL deputies' parliamentary group contested the adoption of OUG 20/2016 and the other draft laws approved in the plenary sitting on 7 November on grounds that the vote was a fraud, yet the Permanent Bureau rejected the litigation.
Subsequently, the liberals announced they were to lodge a court complaint against those who have run the plenary sitting and notified the CCR on the unconstitutionality of the law on approving OUG No. 20/2016.
"According to the current structure of the Chamber of Deputies, the sitting's legal quorum is 177 deputies, a condition that wasn't met neither in the opening of the debate sitting (quote from the statement by Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Florin Iordache: 'out of 353 deputies, as many as 152 deputies were present'), nor at the beginning of the final vote sitting, according to video recordings captured by the Chamber's own audio-video system," specified the liberals.
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