The RCA Law: How Insurers Tried to Rewrite It

Through a draft amending Law no. 132/2017, the major insurance companies attempted something that sounds almost elegant in legal language: to rewrite the rules on RCA compensation in their favour. The PL-x 216/2024 draft was adopted by the Senate in March 2024 and reached the Chamber of Deputies, the deciding chamber. There, a large part of the amendments favouring insurers did not pass. The legal arguments we formulated and advanced against these amendments played a decisive role in their rejection.

This article explains, article by article, what was attempted and why those changes ran against the Civil Code, the Constitution and Directive 2009/103/EC.

What the RCA law is and why this draft mattered

Law no. 132/2017 governs compulsory motor third-party liability insurance. It establishes the right of a person injured in an accident to be fully compensated by the at-fault driver's insurer. Unlike a CASCO policy, where compensation is negotiated between the insured and the insurer, here the right to compensation arises from the wrongful act, not from the insurance contract. This seemingly technical distinction is exactly the one the draft tried to blur.

Article 14: compensation „only by agreement" with the insurer

The proposed amendment to article 14 left the compensation to be set „only by agreement between the insurer and the injured person". In translation, the insurer could have blocked the compensation simply by refusing to agree on the costs.

The legal problem is twofold. First, it removed the single national calculation system, the very one the lawmaker had introduced in 2017 to take subjectivity out of the equation. Second, it deliberately confused the regime of the optional policy with that of compulsory civil liability. Amicable settlement by agreement of the parties, governed by article 2.225 of the Civil Code, concerns the relationship between insured and insurer on an optional policy, not the relationship with the injured third party on an RCA policy. Moving this rule onto RCA meant granting the insurer a discretionary right to pay as little as it wished, even though it had collected the full premium.

Article 21 (3): investigations „based on suspicions", with no deadline

Another proposal allowed the insurer to delay settling the file „based on suspicions", without a clear deadline and without a sanction for inaction. The wording lacks predictability, a serious defect in a legal text.

In practice, an insurer could hold „suspicions" for two years, during which the injured person is left without a car or without money. If there are genuine suspicions of insurance fraud, the insurer has one legal obligation: to notify the criminal investigation authorities. Not to replace them, nor to turn its suspicion into a tool for postponing payment.

Article 21 (5): removing the 0.2% per day penalties

Here lay, probably, the real financial stake. The draft sought to remove the late-payment penalties of 0.2% per day, replacing them with the plain statutory default interest, which is far lower.

The insurer's calculation would have become simple and profitable: delay the payment, pay the injured person only the statutory interest, but recover from the other insurer, by way of recourse, the 0.2% per day penalty provided in the recourse agreement. The difference stays as profit. The legal argument against this change rests on the Civil Code: the victim is entitled to full reparation of the damage, both the actual loss and the lost benefit, under article 1385 (1) and article 1531 (1). The two components, default interest and penalty, serve different purposes: one repairs, the other sanctions. Removing the sanction means turning delay into a business model.

Article 40: banning the assignment of the right to compensation

The draft also tried to ban the injured person from assigning the claim arising from the compensation. The reason invoked, that assignees would obtain non-taxable income, is simply false: any claim assignee owes income tax under articles 114 and 116 of the Fiscal Code.

The right to dispose of one's own claim is protected by article 44 of the Constitution and by article 1.381 (3) of the Civil Code, which provides that the right to reparation is subject, from its birth, to all provisions on the transmission of obligations. The CJEU case law invoked by insurers in litigation has nothing to do with banning assignment; it concerns the jurisdiction of courts under Regulation 1215/2012. In other words, case law cited selectively, taken out of its context.

Article 23: SAL-Fin decisions should be enforceable

Not all observations were defensive. One constructive proposal is that SAL-Fin decisions be enforceable by law, even if challenged. In practice, insurers challenge SAL-Fin decisions favourable to the injured person precisely to delay payment until a final ruling, sometimes a minimum of three years. An enforceable decision would relieve the courts and protect the consumer.

Conclusion

The major insurance corporations treated a draft law as an opportunity to optimise their profit at the expense of injured persons. Legal argument, when soundly built and advanced in time, remains the best defence of the consumer. The RCA law exists to protect the accident victim, not the insurer's margin.