COUNCIL OF
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GOVERNMENT ORDINANCES<\/strong> On Wednesday, Romania’s Superior Council of
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CVM REPORT<\/strong> Romania continues to make progress in
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2017 BUDGET<\/strong> Romania’s revised
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BREXIT<\/strong> The British Government has announced that
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CORRUPTION
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Klaus Iohannis speaks before the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly.\/Romania keeps making progress in reforming the judiciary and fighting corruption, reads the European Commision’s report on progress under CVM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":75903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[14005,31503,31436,31504,31501,31502],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-101644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-brexit","tag-collective-pardoning","tag-cooperation-and-verification-mechanism","tag-corruption-perceptions-index","tag-council-of-europes-parliamentary-assembly","tag-romanias-president-klaus-iohannis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nEUROPE <\/strong> Romania’s President Klaus
\nIohannis said on Wednesday in plenary session of the Council of Europe’s
\nParliamentary Assembly that the world needs democratic societies, where
\nmajorities do not take undue advantage of their rights, societies where the
\nprinciple of loyal and constructive cooperation between democratic institutions
\nworks flawlessly. The President said that Romania has turned into a role-model
\nas regards the protection and promotion of national minorities’ rights, a model
\nacknowledged at European level. Also, the head of state announced that on April
\n6th, together with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe
\nThorbjorn Jagland, will inaugurate in Bucharest an international conference
\norganized in cooperation with the Venice Commission on the roles played by the
\nmajority and the opposition in a democratic society. On Tuesday, on the first
\nday of his visit to Strasbourg, the Romanian head of state met with Romanians
\nworking at the Council of Europe and with representatives of the Romanian
\ncommunity in Alsace. Also, he attended the ceremony marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.<\/p>\n
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\nMagistracy, which has a consultative role in the debate on the draft government
\nordinances on pardoning and amending the Criminal Code, advised against the
\nproposed changes. Among other things, according to the drafts set forth by the
\nnew left-wing Government in Bucharest, convicts sentenced to less than 5 years
\nin prisons would be pardoned. The pardon would not benefit repeat offenders and
\nthose who committed certain offences stipulated by the Criminal Code or by
\nspecial laws. One of the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code stipulates
\nthat a case of abuse of office will be considered a criminal offence only if
\nthe damage exceeds 44,000 thousand Euros, and the maximum sentence will no
\nlonger be 7, but 3 years in prison for such an offence. The two draft emergency
\nordinances have been vehemently criticized by the opposition and citizens. Last
\nweek, dozens of thousands of people marched the streets of Bucharest protesting
\nagainst these measures and President Klaus Iohannis joined them. The Justice
\nMinister Florin Iordache claims that these changes are necessary in order to
\nsolve the issue of prison overcrowding and to get the legislation in line with
\ncertain rulings of the Constitutional Court. <\/p>\n
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\nreforming the judiciary and fighting corruption, but criticism leveled by
\npoliticians and the press against judicial institutions, the National
\nAnticorruption Directorate in particular, might undermine trust in the justice
\nsystem. This is one of the conclusion of the European Commission’s report on
\nprogress in Romania under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM),
\npresented in Brussels on Wednesday. According to the report, the fact that many
\ntop-level politicians in Romania have been indicted and convicted is a sign
\nthat, as regards the independence of the judiciary, the trend is positive. In
\nten years of EU membership and by implementing reforms under the CVM, Romania
\nhas made major progress, reads the report drawn up by the European Commission,
\naccording to which the positive trend of the past three years will also be
\nreflected in the 2017 report. Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis, the left-wing
\nGovernment in Bucharest and the main judicial institutions in the country have
\nappreciated the report. The next CVM report is to be drawn up at the end of
\n2017. We recall that Romania’s judiciary system has been monitored since 2007,
\nwhen the country joined the EU.<\/p>\n
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\ndraft budget will be debated by Government on Friday, and will be submitted to
\nParliament on the same day, Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu has announced. He
\nhas also said that most of the money will go to the ministries of transport,
\nagriculture and health and to SMEs. The Presidential Administration and the
\nRomanian Intelligence Service, on the other hand, will get lower budgets, the
\nPrime Minister has also stated. <\/p>\n
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\nit will present on Thursday the bill under which it calls for Parliament’s
\napproval to officially start negotiations on withdrawing from the European
\nUnion. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that Prime
\nMinister Theresa May must ask for Parliament’s approval to trigger article 50
\nof the Lisbon Treaty. Brexit Minister David Davis has stated that the British
\nParliament will have to vote on the simplest bill possible. We recall that Theresa
\nMay has repeatedly stated that the withdrawal procedure will start by late
\nMarch, and negotiations with Brussels will last two years. <\/p>\n
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\nPERCEPTIONS INDEX<\/strong> The rise of
\npopulism in many countries is a reason for concern, according to Transparency
\nInternational’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index made public on Wednesday. Corruption and inequality feed off each other to
\ncreate a vicious circle between corruption, unequal distribution of power in
\nsociety, and unequal distribution of wealth. This makes people feel
\ndisappointed and turn towards populist trends, which are by no means the right
\nremedy, the report says. The Corruption Perceptions
\nIndex 2016 covers perceptions of public sector corruption in 176 countries.Denmark and New Zealand perform best
\nwith scores of 90, closely followed by Finland (89) and Sweden (88).For the tenth year running, Somalia is the worst
\nperformer on the index, scoring only 10 this year. Romania is on the 57th
\nposition.<\/p>\n