Algorithmic evidence in Romanian Civil Procedure: admissibility, transparency and contestability in the context of the e-SIGUR system

This article examines the legal regime of algorithmically generated evidence in Romanian civil procedure, with particular reference to the e-SIGUR road-traffic monitoring system, operational nationwide since 2025. Its central thesis is that an administrative-offence report (proces-verbal de contravenție) whose evidentiary content is produced through an integrated chain of video capture, radar measurement, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and software processing cannot be assessed solely by reference to the formal status of the resulting document. Its admissibility and evidentiary weight must also depend on transparency, integrity and effective contestability under the Romanian Code of Civil Procedure (RCCP), the European Convention on Human Rights case law on equality of arms and effective remedies, and the EU fundamental-rights framework. The analysis starts from the hybrid legal regime of administrative-offence proceedings: judicial review is conducted under civil-procedure rules pursuant to Article 47 of Government Ordinance No. 2/2001, while sufficiently punitive administrative offences may fall within the autonomous “criminal” limb of Article 6 ECHR. Particular attention is therefore paid to the distinction drawn by the Romanian High Court of Cassation and Justice between facts personally observed by the reporting officer and facts established through technical evidence, for which the issuing authority bears the burden of proving the report's substantive accuracy. The paper proposes a minimum due-process standard for algorithmically mediated evidence, centered on procedural transparency, access to the technical basis of the finding, case-specific justification, effective expert scrutiny, and the operationalization of the public authority’s evidentiary burden across the entire relevant technical chain.