SUSPENDAREA CONTRACTULUI ADMINISTRATIV

The suspension of the administrative contract is an institution rather newly-introduced in the Romanian law, at the same time with the entry into force of the Law No 101/2016. However, this normative act exclusively regulates the judicial suspension of the administrative contract, which makes room for the following question: Can an administrative contract be suspended only by court decision and only under the conditions established limitatively by the Law No 101/2016 or in other circumstances as well, namely following a procedure other than that established by the aforementioned normative act? We believe that the suspension of an administrative contract may also be reached under conditions other than those established by the provisions of Article 53 (2) of the Law No 101/2016, either by administrative means, by a decision of measures taken by the competent bodies of the Court of Accounts, or as a result of the raising by one of the parties to such a contract, in relation to the other, of an exception for non-performance of the contract, or, finally, as consequence of the suspension of the unilateral administrative act on the basis of which such a contract was concluded, using the rule according to which the legal fate of the original act determines the legal status of the subsequent act. The subject seems to be new in our legal literature and engages extraordinary implications of substantive and procedural law. It is sufficient to mention here that the judicial suspension of the administrative contract enjoys, at the level of the Law No 101/2016, by a superficial regulation, requiring the supplementation by several provisions of the Law on administrative disputes No 554/2004, but also with those pertaining to the current Civil Procedure Code. It is this supplementation that makes it possible to clarify the institution of the judicial suspension of the administrative contract, but in a direction that raises problems which the practitioner not accustomed with the analytical doctrinal discourse could hardly envisage, of a higher depth than that encountered in the marginal comments of the legal provisions incidental in this matter. In other line of ideas, in the context of analyzing the set of prerogatives attributed by the law to the Court of Accounts, it can easily be concluded that an administrative suspension of the administrative contract is perfectly possible, ordered by a unilateral administrative act of an individual nature. Likewise, the administrative contract may end up in the situation to be suspended, as consequence of the legal suspension of the unilateral administrative act, on the basis of which the contract was concluded, an act challenged by the prefect in the exercise of the prerogatives of administrative trusteeship with which he was empowered by law. Both scenarios are binding on the use of the terminological luggage of the Law on administrative disputes No 554/2004. Lastly, the suspension of the administrative contract may be engaged also by the possible raising by any of the parties to an administrative contract, in relation to the other, of an exception of non-performance, which sends the assumed analysis to the ideological set of the civil law.