Parliament rejects two simple motions

The Chamber of Deputies rejected on Wednesday two simple motions initiated by the opposition against the finance and justice ministers.

Bogdan Matei, 21.03.2019, 13:55

The leftist parliamentary majority in Bucharest formed by the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats on Wednesday rejected, by a comfortable margin, the simple motions filed by the opposition against the finance and justice ministers. The latter, Tudorel Toader, has been criticised for the changes to the justice laws by means of emergency orders, the underfunding of the system and Romania’s failure to have its Cooperation and Verification Mechanism lifted.

Put in place when Romania joined the European Union in 2007, the Mechanism is an instrument by which Brussels continues to monitor the Romanian justice system. An independent backed by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, Tudorel Toader has also caused vexation among the Social Democrats, who have criticised him for taking too long to make changes in the system. The strongman of the ruling coalition, the Social Democrats’ leader Liviu Dragnea, announced at the beginning of the month that some of his party’s MPs were unhappy with Toader.

The president of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, Kelemen Hunor, said his party, which has an agreement of parliamentary collaboration with the ruling coalition, would no longer support Toader and that its MPs would vote against him. Entitled “Tudorel Toader and the Coalition, take your hands off the judiciary”, the no-confidence motion initiated by the National Liberal Party and the Save Romania Union was only backed, however, by 126 MPs, while 148 MPs voted against it and two abstained. Important figures from the Social Democratic Party such as the former ministers Florin Iordache and Olguta Vasilescu explained that the coalition wants to solve its problems on its own, not through the opposition.

The Chamber of Deputies rejected with an even bigger margin, 108 yes, 154 no and 18 abstentions, the no-confidence motion against the finance minister entitled “The Social Democrats’ greed undermines the national economy” and initiated by the Save Romania Union, the National Liberal Party and the People’s Movement Party. The signatories say the now infamous Government Emergency Order no. 114 “set the Romanian economy on fire”, and that the opposition are trying “to fix, if not to repeal, this toxic order”.

Cristina Pruna, the leader of the Save Romania Union MPs, has called for the resignation of the finance minister Eugen Teodorovici and said repealing the order in question is the only way in which Romania can still show stability and predictability to the private sector, which the government “is blackmailing and trying to chase away”. Also criticised by the business community because of the severe fiscal measures it introduces, the emergency order can be improved, the finance minister himself has admitted. He rejects the idea of repealing it, but has promised that the government will make corrections by the end of the month with respect to the introduction of certain duties on energy, telecommunications and banking companies.