No scrutiny: Parliament passes social shake-up laws without public debate

September 2009 - From the Print Edition

Romania’s entire legal system is set for its greatest shake-up since the drawing up the country’s constitution.
The country’s Parliament has recently passed the new civil and criminal codes, which regulate what people can and cannot do.
But the Government has faced tough opposition because there has been no public debate or preliminary studies on what the effects of these new legal changes will be.
The Government has argued that it is not necessary for the public to be involved in drawing up what is a complicated document with lots of long and difficult words, which they won’t understand anyway. President Traian Basescu has also championed the swift passing of these codes.
But by overseeing the fast-tracking of these changes through Parliament without proper consultation and transparency, Basescu has lost the backing of many major civil rights organisations, some of whom had supported his actions as a justice reformer.
The suspicion of some groups is that the Head of State engineered the passing of these codes to try and score a policy victory in the build-up to the Presidential elections.
However, if the leadership claims that the public does not have any interest in debating the new legal changes, how could this same electorate understand whether the codes’ passage into law is an important motive to vote for Basescu? Conversely, if the people do realise the significance of these laws and are angry that they were left out of a public debate, this could have a damaging effect on Basescu’s popularity.
The European Commission forced Romania to change its civil and criminal codes as a condition of joining the EU. Now the process of drawing up the codes has been attacked by civil society and the European Commission (EC) is silent. Although it must bear some of the responsibility for forcing Romania to pass these codes, it absolves itself of any problems that have emerged in either the content of the codes or the process that initiated them. The Commission should take part of the blame if its requests do not turn out as expected.
Recently the EC issued another of its monitoring reports on Romanian justice which was almost a carbon copy of a report drawn up six months ago. It again criticised the Government’s reliance on emergency decrees that by-pass scrutiny by the elected chambers and called for greater public consultation on laws. The Government has consistently ignored this advice, so not only seems to believe the EC’s threats are not serious, but also acts in contradiction to its requests.
Although the codes have passed into law, they are likely to transform beyond all recognition before they enter into practice. This structure may be familiar to some people in Romania, where the signing of a business contract tends to be the start of negotiations. There is now a law in place where the Government can change any legislation which has been passed by Parliament before this is enacted. The Ministry of Justice has also announced some impact studies into the effects of the new laws. Due to civil rights groups complaining loudly, public discussions on the contents of the code should also begin. It seems that only after a law is passed in Romania can it be subject to study, debate and change.

Michael Bird