On Thursday, 4 June 2026, during the first day of the 7th edition of Bucharest Arbitration Days 2026, held on 4–5 June 2026, the President of the Constitutional Court of Romania, Professor Elena-Simina Tănăsescu, PhD, attended the event and delivered an opening address with the following content, according to a press release issued by the Constitutional Court of Romania.

Mr. President Ștefan Deaconu,

Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

Allow me to thank the organisers and particularly the Court of International Commercial Arbitration of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania for the invitation to open the proceedings of the seventh edition of the Bucharest Arbitration Days.

The fact that the President of the Constitutional Court and the President of the Court of International Commercial Arbitration stand together at the opening of this conference is more than a matter of protocol. It reflects a connection that is sometimes overlooked: the connection between state justice and arbitral justice. These are not two separate worlds. They are two dimensions of the same commitment – that disputes between persons should be resolved fairly, rigorously, and with respect for the law.

In Romania, this connection has a precise constitutional foundation. Article 146, letter d) of the Romanian Constitution provides that exceptions of unconstitutionality may be raised not only before courts of law, but also before commercial arbitration tribunals. The wording is deliberate, and its implications are significant. It means that the supremacy of the Constitution binds the judge and the arbitrator alike. No tribunal applying the law – whether judicial or arbitral – may apply a provision contrary to the Constitution. And it means that the parties to an arbitration have a direct guarantee: constitutional review is available to them during the proceedings, not only at a later stage.

To date, the Constitutional Court of Romania has delivered eight decisions following exceptions raised by arbitration tribunals. In its case law, the Court has assessed the role of arbitration in light of free access to justice and the prohibition on extraordinary courts. The Court has held that arbitration constitutes an efficient legal mechanism designed to ensure an impartial, swifter and less formal adjudication, culminating in enforceable awards. At the same time, the Court has been clear: arbitral tribunals are not extraordinary courts. They are private, consensual jurisdictions founded on the parties’ agreement. The Constitution itself recognizes this, and the relationship it establishes is one of complementarity, not competition.

It is worth noting how distinctive this constitutional solution is. Since its judgment in Nordsee (Case 102/81, 1982), the Court of Justice of the European Union has consistently held that a contractual arbitral tribunal is not a “court or tribunal of a Member State” for the purpose of making a preliminary reference under Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The EU framework has its own logic and its own reasons for this position. The Romanian model adds, on the constitutional side, a procedural channel that operates in a complementary manner: where Romanian law applies to an arbitration seated in Romania, a constitutional question that arises during the proceedings has a direct route to the Constitutional Court. For parties choosing a Romanian seat, this is a guarantee that operates ex ante, within the arbitration itself, rather than only at the stage of annulment or enforcement. It is, I believe, a comparative advantage that deserves to be better known in the international arbitral community.

This brings me to the theme of your conference. Evidence – its admissibility, its burden, its standard, its integrity – is not a purely technical matter. It is, at its core, a matter of fundamental rights. The right to be heard means nothing without an opportunity to challenge the evidence on which one is judged. Equality of arms is hollow if one party controls the means of producing proof and the other does not. The duty to give reasons loses its force if those reasons cannot be traced to materials the parties have had the chance to examine and answer.

The Constitutional Court and an arbitral tribunal work with evidence differently. We do not hear witnesses or weigh expert opinions on contractual realities. Our evidence is textual and normative: the contested provision, its legislative history, parliamentary debates, the views of public authorities, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Where the arbitral tribunal reconstructs what occurred between the parties, the Constitutional Court determines what a provision means in the letter and spirit of the Fundamental Law. The method differs. The discipline is the same: a reasoned decision, anchored in materials open to scrutiny, supported by argument rather than by conviction alone.

The challenges you will be discussing over these two days – digital and AI-assisted evidence, data integrity, standards of proof across legal traditions – place these principles under real pressure. How do we preserve adversarial proceedings when evidence is generated by systems whose logic remains opaque? How do we ensure equality of arms between a party with considerable technological resources and one without? These are practical questions for any arbitral tribunal today. They are also, in their essence, constitutional questions. It is only a matter of time before the Constitutional Court, too, is called upon to assess the impact of new technologies on fundamental rights. There is between us, if I may say so, a natural division of labor: the arbitral community develops the practice in real time; the constitutional jurisdiction evaluates, in due course, whether the legal framework keeps pace.

I have spoken in other settings about the enduring tension between the law of power and the power of law. The international arbitral community, by the very nature of its work, has chosen its side in that tension. The legitimacy of an arbitral award does not come from the power of those who issued it. It comes from the discipline with which it was issued, from the safeguards that surrounded it, and from the trust that the parties – and the constitutional order behind them – place in that discipline.

The recalibration this edition invites us to consider is not a reinvention. It is an act of fidelity – fidelity to the conditions under which any tribunal earns the authority that the state recognizes and that the parties accept. The instruments may evolve. The principles that give them meaning must not. If arbitration remains true to those principles – integrity, fairness, adversarial proceedings – it will continue to be what the international business community needs it to be: a resilient, trusted mechanism, open to the future.

I wish you fruitful and demanding debates over these two days, and I invite you to keep in view the common denominator of every act of adjudication: the resolution of disputes under safeguards, with respect for the dignity and fundamental rights of the parties. That denominator is not negotiable. It is what makes our work – yours and mine – legitimate.

Thank you for your attention.