The new Civil Procedure Code, under the impulse of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, has established for the first time, in the Romanian law, a procedural means intended to be an effective remedy for unjustified tendencies to delay trials: the contestation regarding the delay of the trial. The present approach was occasioned by a recent decision of unconstitutionality regarding the application of the provisions of Article 524 (3) of the Civil Procedure Code. In the introduction of this study, the author makes a general delimitation of the contestation by other procedural means, stating that it can be qualified neither as means of appeal, nor as a civil action or as a special procedure. The author emphasizes the contestation’s nature of procedural incident and of means to remove any obstruction in the settlement of civil cases in an optimal and predictable time limit. The control of constitutionality carried out by the Court concerns a very concrete aspect of the competence to settle the contestation. Through the analyzed decision, the court of constitutional control has appreciated that the settlement of the contestation by the panel notified with the settlement of the main action is likely to affect the objective impartiality of the court. In the present approach, the author considers such an action of the court of constitutional control as being judicious, but expresses reservations regarding the solution of attributing the competence to settle the contestation to the higher court. In justifying this point of view, the author notes also the existence of other similar procedural means the settlement of which is given, however, in the competence of a panel of the court empowered to judge the main action as well. On the other hand, the settlement of the contestation by the superior court is not likely to provide celerity in its settlement.

The present study proposes for analysis some of the implications of the pandemic generated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the matter of the property right and not only, following to consider the property right in its broad sense, derived from the ECHR case law in the matter. As concerns the research hypothesis, the author starts from the premise that the inclination towards martyrology manifested throughout the history by our country determines that some particularly restrictive measures be adopted also in the context generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the most often without a solid theoretical foundation. It is also considered, as a research hypothesis, that there is currently a trend worldwide towards authoritarianism and interventionism from the state government, which is reflected in the measures taken during this period in order to prevent the spread of the respiratory virus.

The study analyzes the initial version of the first sentence of Article 426 (5) of the Civil Procedure Code, according to which the judgment had to be drafted within maximum 30 days from the date of pronouncement. In the author’s opinion, such a time limit ensured the achievement of one of the fundamental principles of the civil trial, respectively, the right to a fair trial, in an optimal and predictable time limit, as provided by Article 6 (1) of the Civil Procedure Code. In the version of the Law No 310/2018, the first sentence of Article 426 (5) of the Civil Procedure Code was amended, in the sense of granting the possibility to extend the drafting time limit, over the initial one of 30 days from the date of pronouncement. Thus, for well-grounded reasons, this time limit may be extended by 30 days, at most twice. In the author’s opinion, the total current time limit of 90 days for drafting the judgment is not able to ensure a reasonable time limit for the completion of the trial and should return to the version existing prior to the amendment by the Law No 310/2018, respectively, the time limit of no more than 30 days from the date of pronouncement.

Simplification and debureaucratization, in many cases, indeed, lead to a positive result. However, the complexity and apparent bureaucratization of some institutions and procedures, in many cases, have a well-defined, useful, even necessary role. The elimination of functional and strict requirements may drive the expected rationalization but an undesirable adverse effect: dysfunctions and legal uncertainty. These ideas can be best illustrated by the recent amendment of the Law No 31/1990 on companies, through Law No 23/2020 for the simplification and debureaucratization of the transfer of shares („social parts”) and the payment of the share capital. Unfortunately, in recent years, the limited liability company has become a subject of experimentation for different improvement attempts, without noticing that companies’ legal regime is an organic whole. Most of the time, reforms are well-intentioned but distorted by enduring normative realities. They also distort the existing law: as is currently the case with share capital and shares transfer.

The cases that justify a home search are still the subject of important controversies both in doctrine and especially in practice. Also, the delimitation between the situation in which the criminal investigation agents enter a person’s home in order to carry out a home search and the situations in which the police agents are obliged to enter a home to fulfil their duties is of ten extremely sensitive. It is precisely these controversies that often lead state agents to be reluctant to enter a private space in order to avoid being accused of committing a crime. We hope that this study will prove to be a useful tool in identifying those hypotheses in which it is really necessary to resort to a home search as well as the criteria for delimiting the search and other institutions of criminal procedural law.

As a result of the measures taken at the level of the Member States in order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the statistics show that the number of teleworkers has increased and, at the same time, telework can become an „endless job” with negative effects on the mental and physical health condition of teleworkers. In this context, at the level of the European Union, it was appreciated that it is necessary to secure the labour relations of teleworkers by unification of the legislations of the Member States in terms of the right to disconnect. The implicit way of regulating this right, which also exists in Romania, does not create an adequate protection for teleworkers. Exercising the right to disconnect implies a clear delimitation of the working time and of the rest time and the obligation of employers to monitor and measure the daily working time provided by teleworkers, as it results from the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The role of the social partners is essential for the implementation of the right to disconnect and appropriate individual information measures must be taken in order to ensure that the employee is sensitized and made aware of the risks associated with permanent availability. Artificial intelligence creates the premises for telework to evolve into smartworking, which gives the teleworker full autonomy in choosing the place where he performs work.

The study examines the possibility of bringing into a limited liability company as a social contribution a good subject to a conventional right of pre-emption. The right of pre-emption is linked – by its nature, as well as by the regulation of the Civil Code – to the contract of sale and gives a preference – at an equal price – to a certain buyer, designated by law or by contract. Failure to comply with the pre-emption cancels the contract made with the third party and the pre-emptor becomes the acquirer if he makes the price available to the seller. The bona fide third party is guaranteed for eviction by the seller. The contribution in a limited liability company does not make a sale although it produces a transfer of ownership from the contributing partner to the company, because the partner does not receive a price but a participation in the company where the contribution is made. Therefore, the contribution of a good affected by a right of pre-emption cannot be refused to the receiving company by the Trade Register Office, on the ground that against it (the company) – acquiring third party – a preference for acquisition can be invoked by the conventional pre-emptor; this, even when the right of pre-emption is accepted against an offer of alienation.

After a summary examination of the mechanisms that develop the unilateral and conventional resolution, the author finds that the specific formalism established by the Civil Code for achieving the objectives of the pacts agreed by the parties is – in some situations – difficult to fulfil, in the context in which the partners do not know or cannot rigorously follow the steps required by the delay procedure. The uncertainties that the mechanism can produce in special conditions are observed and, then, practical solutions are suggested, starting from the premise – generally accepted – that the commission pact is itself a subsequent and accessory convention to the fundamental contract.

Cross-border private life is under the rule of legislative changes occurred in the European law and in the national private international law. The property regimes of the international couples benefit from parallel regulations – the Regulation „matrimonial regimes” and the Regulation „registered partnerships”, for the states participating in enhanced judicial cooperation, the national law respectively, for the other Member States. Although they have different sources (the marriage, the registered partnership), the matrimonial regime and the partnership regime have multiple areas of convergence (the role of the will of the parties in determining the law of the patrimonial regime and in designating the competent court of law, the objective location of regimes, the most connecting factors). At the same time, the elements that differentiate the property regime of the spouses and of the partners configurate the specifics of the couples’ unions and the instruments of achieving the predictability and security of the civil circuit with an element of extraneity.

Enforcement in kind of the obligation to do resulting from a synallagmatic promise to contract cannot be enforced in kind, a situation which determined the legislator to identify a substitute means to replace the actual enforcement and to produce the desired effects in the patrimony of the contracting parties. The present study aims to analyze the substitute remedy of the judgment replacing the contract from the perspective of the local judge, who is facing in the process of solving such requests with a series of specific procedural and substantial impediments. Aspects such as the legal nature of the obligation to enforce, the prescription of the substantive right to action, the referral to the arbitral tribunal, the legal nature of the action filed, the modality of designing the operative part of the judgment and others similar are key points of the study, and their analysis tries to determine such an understanding from the courts of law of this specific and special mechanism among the contractual remedies.

The aim of this study is to point out the way in which transnational spaces exert their influences on the international legal order and the national legal ones. Theorizing transnational law opens the way of such demarche. Therefore, the overview of some schools of transnational law offers the opportunity for understanding the link between transnational spaces, transnational legal orders and transnational law. The transnational spaces "Mitsubishi" and "FIFA" evolve in transnational legal orders; the latter legal orders inspire the scholars to theorize actively the transnational law itself. Such theorizing may help us to be conceptually equipped in front of future transnational spaces.

The active procedural quality in the direct guarantee action is one of the basic elements of the legal mechanism, regardless of whether we are talking about the active or the passive one. At first glance, we would say that the mechanism of direct action in general should not create too much discussion about its protagonists. However, in legal practice there has been a confusion about the subjects of the direct action, which has led to the questioning of the creditor’s active procedural capacity within the legal mechanism. Through this study, we are trying to shed some light on the practical application of direct collateral action, but also on the interest and procedural quality of the creditor and the debtor within the legal mechanism. Also, since the direct action in classic guarantee does not have a legal basis, unlike the direct action in payment, being derived from the notion of group of contracts, we will show why, in order to avoid contesting the procedural quality of the creditor within the legal mechanism of the direct action under warranty, the contracting parties must expressly insert a clause in the contract giving their consent to the transfer of the right of action to the sub-acquirer, in order to strengthen the transfer of the right of action under the guarantee for hidden defects. At the same time, as the direct action is an exception to the principle of relativity of the effects of the contract, the legislator is obliged to intervene, by introducing expressly some texts in the Civil Code, both in terms of the guarantee for eviction and in terms of the guarantee for hidden defects, so that the direct action in the guarantee finds its practical application. Only in this way will creditors be able to be protected from the effects of the exception of the lack of active procedural capacity, in terms of both guarantees provided by law (hidden defects and eviction).

The national legislation on social security provides for different standard retirement ages for women and men, and this aspect does not contravene the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sex in social security matters, enshrined in Directive 79/7/EEC of 19 December 1978 on the progressive implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women in matters of social security, nor the principle of equality of citizens, enshrined in Article 16 of the Romanian Constitution. However, failure to apply the more favourable age conditions, laid down for women, to people who have changed their gender identity from woman to man may give rise to discrimination on the grounds of sex. The rationale for maintaining different standard retirement ages is based on the socio-professional disadvantages of women in Romania in relation to men, so that being a woman during their working lives justifies the application of a lower retirement age, regardless of whether at the time of retirement, following the change of gender identity, the beneficiary of the pension is a man, and not a woman. As national law does not regulate this issue, it is for the national courts to interpret social security legislation in accordance with the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sex. The existence of different standard retirement ages for women and men does not automatically lead to the de jure termination of employment relationships as a result of retirement at different ages, as Article 56 of the Labour Code regulates the possibility of termination of employment relationships, for both sexes, at the same age. Nor does the change in gender identity give rise to different treatment, on the basis of sex, on the date of the termination of employment relationships as a result of the fulfilment of retirement conditions.

In a modern society, which faces many challenges, from the perspective of complying with the legal rules in force regarding the payment of taxes and duties owed to the state, in which the electronic means of payment and, mostly, the system of payments in virtual currencies, not very strictly regulated nowadays in any part of the world, it is necessary to take special legal measures to control and reduce socially dangerous deeds, such as tax evasion, money laundering, the appropriation by state officials of immeasurable assets, from doubtful sources, unverified or even illegal. The Romanian society has also not been exempt from such legislative and organizational concerns, especially since the specific challenges of an emerging and developing society and in correlation with good European practices have been much more pronounced. From this perspective, the Romanian legislator has designed an ingenious system of control and disclosure of assets acquired under conditions that exclude the justification of their sources of funding by the beneficiaries of these values, being integrated a legislative and administrative system for submission by the civil servants of some asset declarations and an organizational set for carrying out thorough verifications, by a specialized institution, called the National Integrity Agency (hereinafter referred to as ANI). However, in order for the ANI notifications not to unnecessarily burden the role of the courts of appeal in the country, by the Law No 115/1996 for the declaration and control of the assets of dignitaries, magistrates, of some persons with management and control positions and of civil servants, corroborated with the Law No 144/2007 on the establishment, organization and functioning of the National Integrity Agency and with the Law No 176/2010 on the integrity in exercising public functions and dignities, amending and supplementing the Law No 144/2007 on the establishment, organization and functioning of the National Integrity Agency, as well as amending and supplementing other normative acts, it was conceived an integrated institutional framework, through which ANI notifies the relevant cases from the perspective of unjustified assets to a specialized structure, integrated in the system of each court of appeal, called the commission of investigation of assets, which performs a preliminary verification of the evidence attached to the ANI notification and it can take the measure of notifying the court of law with this notification, if the origin of the assets acquired by the civil servant is unjustified, it may close the case, if the source is justified, or it may order the suspension of the control and the referral of the case to the competent prosecutor’s office. The present study intends to reveal the multiple valences of the acts of one of the most specialized institutions for verification and control of the assets of dignitaries and civil servants from Romania.

Globalization, the changing concepts of the family definition and the emergence of new medical techniques for conceiving children have led to the emergence of substitution maternity and the issue of inheritance rights for children born of such a procedure. At international level, no comparable moral or legal basis can be identified in this area. The creation of a common legal framework or the advancement of a large-scale international unification of substantive law or rules on the recognition of the effects of foreign laws seems to be a distant goal to achieve. The issue of the inheritance rights of children born of surrogacy motherhood is a very complex one and currently without legislative protection. On European Union level, European Regulation 650/2012 has been in force since 2012, but there are no provisions on the situation of inheritance rights deriving from a surrogacy contract. The study aims to analyse the general concepts recognised in international, European and national law with regard to the creation of a legal framework as structured as possible for the protection of the inheritance rights of children born of substitution maternity, and to understand how this medical practice works. Another objective will be to analyse the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the national courts decisions, in order to find solutions on how to protect inheritance rights in such a situation.

The loss of the chance to obtain an advantage or to avoid a damage represents a new form of reparation of prejudice regulated by the Civil Code, enshrined by the provisions of Article 1385 (4) of the Civil Code, and represents a distinct category of prejudice reparable by engaging in tort civil liability, which concerns those negative consequences directly caused by the commission of an illegal act that consist in missing the real and serious possibility of the occurrence of a favourable event for the victim’s life, which could have brought him fulfilment in his personal or economic life by the carrying out of some projects. Therefore, the loss of a chance means the loss by a person of the possibility to achieve a gain or, as the case may be, to avoid a damage, which may result in causing a prejudice to that person. De lege lata, we mention that the prejudice caused by the „loss of the chance to obtain an advantage” can be invoked within the framework of tort (extra-contractual) civil liability, but also in the field of contractual civil liability whenever by the non-fulfilment of the legal or contractual obligations such consequences have occurred. This prejudice could be claimed both by the direct victim of an illegal act and by those close to them if they prove that they suffered, through ricochet, such a prejudice. In order to have a reparable prejudice, the chance of occurrence of the favourable event for the victim must be as real as it is serious, which is assessed differently, whether or not the victim was in the process of taking the chance at the time when the event that compromised the possibility to achieve it occurred, and this prejudice must be in a direct causal link with the illegal act committed by the responsible person. The assessment of the chance shall be carried out in relation with two criteria, namely the examination of the circumstances in which the illegal act was committed, on the one hand, and the special situation in which the victim was at that time, on the other hand. With regard to the features of the prejudice, we specify that it must be certain (certain, unquestionable) and real (undeniable, effective, indisputable), and not an eventual one (possible, probable), the loss, therefore, must be actual.

Active procedural quality and interest are essential conditions for promoting any action in court. The verification of the two conditions must be carried out from the outset, firstly, by the person or persons initiating an action in court and, secondly, by the court which is invested with resolving the action. The lack of one of the two conditions paralyzes the resolution of the action on the merits and attracts the rejection of the action, either as being introduced by a person lacking procedural quality, or as being without interest. It is not often that in the defenses formulated by the defendant the exception of the lack of active procedural capacity and the exception of the lack of interest are invoked at the same time. Concomitant invocation is often natural, as procedural quality and interest are two elements which, although not confusing, often justify each other. However, I have encountered in practice multiple situations in which the active procedural capacity has been justified by the applicant’s/applicants’ interest in promoting the action. On the other hand, there may be situations, less common in practice, in which the interest is justified by the procedural quality. Here that the two basic elements of any action or lawsuit are often indissoluble, and their concomitant treatment appears natural. That is why I considered it opportune to carry out a brief study on how the interest justifies the active procedural quality, with references to certain solutions encountered in judicial practice or to solutions that had as inspiration the invocation of exceptions, thus trying to argue which, on the one hand, the two exceptions are invoked together, most of the time and, on the other hand, why, in a particular way, the interest justifies the procedural quality. At the same time, the study includes a comparison between the situations in which the interest is analyzed as an exception and the situations in which the interest must be analyzed on the merits.