After the judgment: what Romania fixed in 2025 and what stayed the same

When Romania loses in Strasbourg, the press writes about the compensation for a day. Then the story disappears. Yet the most important part only starts then: the State must pay, put right the person's situation and, above all, change the law or practice so the violation is not repeated. This work is supervised by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which publishes a report every spring. The report for 2025 came out on 25 March 2026.

The numbers that matter

• 146 cases closed in 2025, the highest number of any member State and more than 15% of the total. Of these, 31 were leading cases, which require reforms, and 115 were repetitive cases.
• 287 cases still open on 31 December 2025, compared with 411 in 2024 and 476 in 2023. The drop of 124 cases was the largest in Europe.
• 22 new cases sent for supervision in 2025, compared with 51 in 2024 and 87 in 2023.
• 83 leading cases still await reforms: 33 under enhanced supervision and 50 under standard supervision. Many have been open for more than five years.

Romania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced that the country had dropped to 7th place among States by number of applications pending before the Court, from 4th place at the end of 2024.

What was fixed

The report cites Romania as a positive example of strengthening national capacity to implement judgments. The most visible progress is in prisons: detention conditions, medical care for seriously ill prisoners and a stronger preventive remedy against overcrowding. Cases were also closed after legislative changes on overlapping criminal and administrative tax proceedings, the regime for prisoners classed as “dangerous” and forensic medicine institutes. Courts aligned their practice on defence rights.

What remains open

The list is as important as the numbers. Still under supervision are: ineffective investigations into sexual violence, unjustified use of firearms or ill-treatment by the police, insufficient safeguards in secret surveillance, the case concerning the secret CIA prison on Romanian territory, State institutions failing to comply with Romanian court rulings, legal recognition of same-sex couples, legal recognition of gender identity, and redress for medical negligence.

New violations also appeared in 2025: investigations into the crackdown on anti-government protests in the early 1990s, domestic violence and freedom of expression.

Why it concerns you

Every case on this list began with a person. A woman who reported a rape and waited years for an investigation that led nowhere. A couple with no legal status at all. Someone who won in court against an institution and never received the money. The execution of judgments is where European law does or does not become real in daily life. In 2025 Romania showed it can close cases quickly. It remains to be seen whether it can also close the ones that require political courage.

Documents on the status of every case are public, in the Council of Europe's HUDOC-EXEC database.