The local court of every commune in Romania: a map of the 175 court districts and the road to each

#How big are the court districts?

The smallest district, that of the Baia de Aramă court, has 14,935 residents in seven places. The largest, Iași, has 512,752 residents in 44 places: 34 times as many. A typical district has about 68,836 residents. In Bucharest each of the six sectors has its own court, with between 217,367 and 374,737 residents.

District size shows how many people a court serves, not how many cases it hears or how many judges work there; those figures are not on the map.

#Where is another court closer than the one on the official list?

For 105 communes and towns, home to 326,870 people, the court on the official list is at least 10 minutes further by road than another court in the same county. For 50 of them the gap is at least a quarter of an hour, for 24 at least 20 minutes. Every one of them is listed by name under its court in the 2023 decision that redrew the map.

Butimanu, in Dâmbovița county, is 26 minutes from the court in Răcari and 67 minutes from the court in Târgoviște, where the 2023 list sends it.

The comparison stays within the county, because court districts are drawn inside county borders. Times are for a car with no traffic. Someone travelling by bus or train may reach the big town sooner than the small one nearby; the law does not say on what basis each district was drawn.

#How far away is the court?

Measured from each commune’s seat village, half of the residents outside Bucharest can drive to their court in 14 minutes or less, and 39% live in the court’s own town. 1,197,909 people (6.9% of them) face a drive of more than three quarters of an hour, 362,430 of more than an hour.

The longest drives: Borca (Neamț county), 108 minutes to Bicaz; Ostrov (Constanța county), 104 minutes to Medgidia; Farcașa (Neamț county), 102 minutes to Bicaz; Nereju (Vrancea county), 99 minutes to Focșani.

C.A. Rosetti, Ceatalchioi, Chilia Veche, Crișan, Maliuc, Pardina, Sfântu Gheorghe and Sulina, in the Danube Delta, have no road to Tulcea without a boat or ferry, so the map gives them no time. The Cornetu court (Ilfov county) has its legal seat in Cornetu but has worked from Buftea, at 24 Știrbei Vodă street, since 7 March 2024; the map times the drive to Buftea.

#How has the court map changed?

On 1 November 2011 a law (148/2011) abolished twelve local courts. Five were not working in practice; the other seven still served communes, which were moved to other courts. The Însurăței court stopped working in 2016, when its communes went to Brăila and Făurei, and was abolished by a 2025 law (132/2025). Altogether 76 places with 245,642 residents lost their nearby court.

For 74 of them the drive to the court they were sent to grew by more than 5 minutes, typically by about 30 minutes. Ostrov was 32 minutes from the Băneasa court; it was sent to Medgidia, 104 minutes away.

The new list of 2023

Government Decision 1.217/2023, adopted on 29 November and published on 7 December 2023, replaced the 1993 list. Of the places named in both lists, 47, home to 129,398 people, changed court: 14 ended up more than 5 minutes closer to their court, 13 more than 5 minutes further, the rest about the same. Another 20 now have a different court from their 1993 neighbours, but they were not named in the old list, so where they came from cannot be shown.

Two communes are missing from the 2023 list: Capu Câmpului (Suceava) and Gologanu (Vrancea). The official look-up on the courts’ portal assigns them to the Gura Humorului court and the Focșani court, and the map shows them there.

#Every court and its places

Each court has its own page with the full list of places it serves and the drive to the court.

#How the map was made

The districts come from the annex of Government Decision 1.217/2023 on the localities that make up the districts of the local courts (legislatie.just.ro; on 24 October 2026 the legislation portal listed no amendment to it). Each name in the annex was matched to its place’s SIRUTA code within its county; fifteen names spelled differently from the SIRUTA register were matched by hand (Rimetea, Petreu, Sâniob and others).

The comparison with the old map uses the annex of Government Decision 337/1993, as consolidated in 2018, matched to SIRUTA codes in the same way.

435 places, among them every place moved in 2023 and the two missing from the annex, were also looked up in the official list on the courts’ portal (portal.just.ro, Circumscripții). For 433 the court is the same. For Apostolache (Prahova) the portal still shows the Ploiești court of before 2023, and for Negreni (Cluj) it shows Turda, though the decision lists it under Huedin; the map follows the decision.

Drives run from the commune’s seat village (the GeoNames point) to the centre of the court’s town, with the OSRM routing engine on OpenStreetMap, for a car with no traffic. Each commune was routed to every court in its county; “closer” means at least 10 minutes less.

Residents are from the 2021 census (INS, table 1.22). Commune outlines: geo-spatial.org after ANCPI, March 2025 version.

How often each court grants protection orders is in a separate investigation that uses the same districts. Protection orders, court by court →

Download the table (CSV): every place, its court and the drive

#Sources

• Government Decision 1.217/2023 on the localities in the districts of the local courts (legislatie.just.ro, Romanian)
• Government Decision 337/1993, consolidated in 2018: the old list (legislatie.just.ro, Romanian)
• Law 148/2011 abolishing twelve local courts (legislatie.just.ro, Romanian)
• Law 132/2025 abolishing the Însurăței court (legislatie.just.ro, Romanian)
• Courts’ portal: Circumscripții (the official look-up by place, Romanian)
• INS, 2021 Population and Housing Census, table 1.22: resident population by county, city, town and commune
• geo-spatial.org: administrative boundaries (after ANCPI), CC BY-SA 4.0
• GeoNames: places in Romania (seat-village points), CC BY 4.0
• OSRM on OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL): driving times
• Cornetu local court, contact page: working from Buftea, 24 Știrbei Vodă street, since 7 March 2024 (portal.just.ro, Romanian)