One of the fundamental principles of criminal law is the principle of legality. At the same time, based on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, in accordance with article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, any law must comply with the quality standard, which means that the law must be accessible, clear and predictable. Th is article analyzes the extent to which the “serious consequences” sign used by the legislator to describe the injurious consequences of criminal off enses complies with the principle of legality and the quality of law. In essence, the authors criticize the use of this estimative sign in the criminal law, especially in the context of the adoption by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova of the Decision no. 22 of 01.10.2018, which declared unconstitutional Article 328 para. (3) lit. d) of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Moldova which established the criminal liability for excess power or the overrun of the service duties that involved “serious consequences”. In this context, the authors propose to Parliament to exclude or explain this estimative sign. However, until this happens, the authors propose that prosecutors should re-qua lify the actions of suspects on the basis of criminal off enses that do not involve “serious consequences”.