Usury referral held inadmissible; no ruling on time-barred incrimination of straddling loan scheme

The High Court of Cassation and Justice dismissed as inadmissible a referral from the Bucharest Court of Appeal seeking a preliminary ruling on whether the offense of usury under Article 3(1) of Law No. 216/2011 or Article 351 of the Penal Code can be found when the actual loan disbursements occurred before the incrimination norm entered into force, while the interest collection activity occurred after Law No. 216/2011 came into effect; consequently, no legal ruling was given on the merits, and the lower court's referral was rejected. The dispute concerned the temporal application of criminal law to a continuing offense allegedly straddling the entry into force of the incrimination statute. The decisive legal basis was admissibility requirements for a preliminary ruling procedure under criminal law—the referral was deemed inadmissible because the question did not meet the statutory conditions for such a mechanism, likely for lacking a genuine difficulty or because the issue did not arise from a pending case in a way justifying the procedure.