The Legal Nature of Time Limits in which the Disciplinary Sanctions can be Applied

Abstract

The current Labour Code, like the previous normative acts, does not qualify the time limits within disciplinary sanctions can be applied. On this lacunar background, un-unitary opinions were formulated in doctrine and jurisprudence, meaning that these deadlines were qualified either all of them to be decay terms, either as decay terms or prescription terms, either all of them as prescription terms. The last opinion is the majority. Only the prescription was established at a legislative level, while the decay being only recognized and debated by the doctrine and applied by the courts. The conjuncture was partially modified by the entry into force of the 2011 Civil Code, the decay being expressly regulated in it, only with a partially different physiognomy. However, in special normative acts, such as Law no. 360/2002 regarding the status of the policeman or Law no. 80/1995 regarding the status of military forces, the terms in discussion (by amendments to the applicable rules, made after 2011) are expressly qualified as having different legal natures, even if the effect of their fulfilment is the same. In this study we analyze the fairness of possible qualifications in all possible variants, as well as the course of these time limits.