The President of the CSM accuses Nicușor Dan of asking for “information he does not need” for the judges' retirement decrees
The President of the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM), Liviu Gheorghe Odagiu, declared on Thursday, in Alba Iulia, that he would never break the law “just to provide the President of Romania with information he does not need” to sign the judges' retirement decrees, reports Agerpres.
Liviu Gheorghe Odagiu claimed, in a press conference, that no legal provision gives the Romanian president the right to request concrete information from a file. The President of the CSM stated that, until the current head of state, the Presidential Administration never requested additional information.
The Presidential Administration, accused of demanding information from files
He explained that after a judge wants to retire, after obtaining all the documents, he obtains the retirement decision from the Section for Judges of the SCM, and then all the documents, together with the decision, are submitted to the President of Romania in order to issue the retirement decree.
“At the present time, exclusively for the judges who judge in criminal matters, exclusively for them, the Presidential Administration requests information regarding the number of pending cases and, what seems very serious to me, the situation of the defendants in the cases, in the sense that whether or not there is a risk of statute of limitations for crimes, how many cases there are in this situation and so on. Or, in order to assess whether liability for a criminal act is statute of limitations or not, you do a true act of judgment (…) I think we cannot provide such information and I have the firm conviction that, as long as I will sign the papers that are submitted to the President of Romania, I will never break the law, just to provide the President of Romania with information that he does not need to sign the decrees”, said the President of the CSM.
Odagiu added that the situation concerns only criminal judges. “It is not a problem with civilian colleagues. They are not asked if any act is prescribed or not, please there is no term in the sense of the criminal law, there is no problem with civilian colleagues. Two contradictory situations are created. Civilian colleagues can retire peacefully. Retirement is a judge's right, the President of Romania cannot assess whether he has the right or not. Only the Section for Judges assesses whether he meets the conditions”, he emphasized the president of the CSM.
“The president was invited to every meeting of the CSM”
At the same time, Odagiu mentioned that there are situations since December in which the President of Romania has not signed the retirement decrees, although the CSM has sent all the documentation that the law obliges him to send.
Asked if it is an abuse on the part of the head of state, Liviu Gheorghe Odagiu replied that this is a “harsh” term, but “certainly it is not a conduct that any legal provision should impose on the president of Romania”. According to him, until the time of the current president, there were no syncopes in signing the retirement decrees.
The president of the CSM said that, until now, he had no discussion, either private or public, with Nicușor Dan. “The President of Romania was invited to every meeting of the CSM plenary session, a meeting in which he has the right and the opportunity to participate, even presiding over that meeting. All invitations were sent in writing. Until this moment, the President of Romania has not honored any of the invitations”, said Liviu Gheorghe Odagiu.
On Thursday, he participated in the presentation of the Report on the activity of the Alba Iulia Court of Appeal and the courts in its constituency for the year 2025. Judges Elena Raluca Costache and Claudiu Marian Drăguşin, elected members of the CSM, and Ioan Sas and Fanel Mihalcea, representatives of civil society in the CSM, were also present at the balance meeting.
An older dispute between Cotroceni and CSM
The dispute between the CSM and the Presidential Administration regarding the signing of the judges' retirement decrees started already during the summer. On July 7, the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM) sent an open letter to the President of Romania, Nicușor Dan, asking for the urgent unblocking of 50 decrees aimed at the retirement and appointment of some judges.
According to the CSM, the refusal to sign these decrees, without any public justification, generated an “inexplicable” blockage in the functioning of the courts. According to the quoted source, it was about fifty decrees.
“On these premises, we address you in the context in which both the appointment to the position of judge and the release from this position are carried out by the President of Romania, upon the proposal of the Superior Council of the Magistracy, and from the date of the start of your mandate we note a real blockage in the development of these procedures, an unprecedented situation in the inter-institutional relations with the Presidential Administration. Specifically, during this period, 29 proposals for release from the position of judge were communicated to the Presidential Administration and 22 proposals for appointment to this position”, the open letter addressed to the president states.
“The postponement, without any explanation, of these procedures generates negative consequences in the activity of the courts”, warned the CSM, stressing that the situation is unprecedented.
“What's with this rampage?”
Nicușor Dan's answer came on July 30, in a press conference in which the head of state said that there is a rule established by the CSM itself according to which a judge must announce his intention to retire 90 days in advance so that the court where he works has time to take the necessary reorganization measures.
“What's with this debacle? 70% of requests do not indicate a precise retirement date. A retirement date must be clearly provided (…) How I want us to work from now on: I want a magistrate who retires to announce 90 days in advance, in these 90 days and the SCM and the president can do the necessary checks and in those 90 days the magistrate can be removed from the panels, they can justify their decisions, so that when they enter the pension to no longer have any obligation,” said the president.
The president of the CSM at the time, Elena Costache, said that the rule invoked by the president could not be applied.
“The reference to the defection was linked to the fact that the retirement requests do not specify the date from which the retirement is requested (…) Our colleagues have no way of passing the retirement date, because in this procedure they have no way of knowing when the president signs the decrees and when the decrees go to the Official Gazette, because that is the moment when a magistrate retires,” Costache said in the interview for TVR.
Despite his grievances, on August 1, 2025, Nicușor Dan signed the retirement decrees of 73 judges, including the former head of the ICCJ, Corina Corbu.
