Pension update referral rejected as inadmissible over failure to meet preliminary ruling standards.

The High Court of Cassation and Justice (Înalta Curte de Casaţie şi Justiţie), sitting in a panel for the preliminary ruling on questions of law, dismissed as inadmissible the referral from the Bucharest Court of Appeal concerning whether Article 425 of Law No. 223/2007 justifies updating service pensions by the percentages set in Article 14(1) of Government Emergency Ordinance No. 57/2015 (5% from January 2016), Article 12(1) of GEO No. 99/2016 (5.25% from January 2017), and Article 2(1) of GEO No. 2/2017 (9% from July 2017). The dismissal means the substantive question was not answered on the merits, and the referral is rejected as inadmissible; the decision is binding under Article 521(3) of the Civil Procedure Code. The case arose in a labor and social insurance dispute (file No. 32254/3/2023) where a lower court sought clarification on whether statutory wage increases applied to active military personnel should also be applied to recalculate service pensions. The decisive legal basis was procedural admissibility under Article 521 of the Civil Procedure Code, governing preliminary rulings on questions of law, with the court finding the referral failed to meet the statutory conditions for such a procedure.