Revocation of a protection order issued under Law No. 217/2003: the duration requirement
The article titled “Revocation of a Protection Order Issued Pursuant to Law No. 217/2003: The Duration Requirement,” written by George-Alexandru Stan, Ph.D., of the Faculty of Law at the University of Bucharest, was published in A.U.B.D. – Legal Forum No. 2/2026.
The article examines the possibility of revoking an order issued for a duration shorter than the maximum allowed. The paper is based on the provision of Article 49(1) of Law No. 217/2003, which reads as follows: “[t]he person against whom a measure has been ordered by a protection order for the maximum duration may request the revocation of the order or the replacement of the ordered measure.” The courts have offered differing responses, but the prevailing interpretation has been that such requests are inadmissible, holding that the legislature has imposed a genuine condition to the effect that only orders issued for the maximum duration provided by law are subject to revocation. The author is of the opinion that the issue cannot be considered resolved, as it is also necessary to approach it through the lens of Article 8 regarding the right to respect for private and family life under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
In the article, the author provides two examples to anchor the discussion in factual terms, briefly analyzes the applicability of the Convention’s provisions under national law, and examines the relevance of Article 8 of the ECHR in cases falling within the scope of Law No. 217/2003. On this occasion, the author emphasizes the consequence of analyzing the interference in light of the right to respect for private and family life, given that the Constitutional Court has upheld the constitutionality of a condition for revocation—namely, that the order must have been issued for the maximum duration. Essentially, since the perspective proposed by the author was not addressed by the constitutional court, the arguments already formulated cannot be considered res judicata.
Subsequently, the paper analyzes the standard derived from Article 8 of the ECHR, demonstrating that no legitimate purpose can be identified in establishing an additional condition that the order in question must have been issued for the maximum duration: it cannot reasonably be argued that the legislature intended to allow revocation only for aggressors who had committed the most serious acts of violence and who had created a state of danger of such intensity that the issuance of the order for the maximum duration was necessary, while other perpetrators, who had committed less serious acts, would be placed in a position where they could not obtain revocation and would, in all cases, be required to comply with the obligations for the entire duration initially established. On this occasion, the reasons why the widely accepted interpretation is open to criticism in light of the very interpretive arguments used are also outlined. Finally, it is argued that the duration requirement fails to satisfy the proportionality test because it does not contribute to enhancing the protection afforded to the victim, both in relation to national law and, briefly, in relation to French and Spanish law.
