The Guardianship Mandate

Abstract

The Constitutional Court of Romania, in its Decision No 601 of 16 July 2020, declared Article 164 (1) of the Romanian Civil Code on the placement of persons under judicial guardianship as unconstitutional. The legislator intended to bring the provisions on the protection of natural persons into line with the Constitutional Court’s decision by means of Law 140 of 2022. The law substantially amended the Romanian Civil Code, including the rules on the mandate contract, giving a new definition of mandate, and creating a new type of mandate, which can be translated as ’protection mandate’ (mandat de ocrotire). The paper examines the theoretical and practical effects of the legislative amendment in a comparative legal and historical context and seeks to answer the question as to whether it was indeed necessary to reform the rules on the mandate contract in order to achieve the legislative objective.