The ruling of the Constitutional Court

The haste with which the Romanian government tried to amend the Criminal Code stirred not only the criticism of legal institutions and large-scale street protests

Ştefan Stoica, 28.02.2017, 13:23

The lack of an expert opinion, be it consultative, in the adoption of the famous ordinance 13 gave rise to suspicions, which made the National Anti-Corruption Directorate start an investigation. However, the Constitutional Court said that the anti-corruption prosecutors had exceeded their prerogatives.

It has been a month since the Romanian government adopted the controversial emergency Ordinance 13 trying to relax the criminal legislation, but responses to that undertaking continue to be reported, even if the ordinance was repealed. On Monday, the Constitutional Court noted there had been a legal conflict of a constitutional nature between the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) and the government.

The conflict — the Court made it clear — was triggered by the fact that the prosecutors assumed the prerogative of checking the legal and opportune character of the famous Ordinance 13, violating the constitutional powers of the government and Parliament. The Court explained that Parliament was the law-passing authority, but that the government could do the same adopting ordinances.

In this case, the only authority empowered to check the legal character of government ordinances is the Constitutional Court. The anti-corruption prosecutors’ inquiry into the opportune character of issuing the ordinance and the existence of expert opinions exceeds the DNA’s authority and is the prerogative of Parliament and the Constitutional Court respectively, the president of the Court, Valer Dorneanu said.

Valer Dorneanu “We believe that the smooth running of the government’s activity has been upset and so have the relations between the three authorities judicial, executive and legislative”.

Ministers should be held responsible for political decisions, not for those related to criminal law, the Court said. After the Constitutional Court had announced its ruling, the president of the Senate, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, who had submitted the notification, said that the Court’s ruling entailed the avoiding of future inter-institutional conflicts.

Calin Popescu Tariceanu: “Parliament authorizes the government to adopt draft laws and emergency ordinances and Parliament is the one to say whether a law or ordinance is opportune or not; the Constitutional Court alone can decide on the legal character of a law or ordinance and not the Prosecutor’s Office”.

On Monday, when the Constitutional Court issued its ruling, the DNA closed part of the file on the adoption of Ordinance 13, forwarding it to the General Prosecutor’s Office. Anti-corruption prosecutors suspect that the law was violated in that the offender was favoured, documents were destroyed and inaccurate data were dishonestly provided.

The president of the Constitutional Court, Valer Dorneanu, made it clear that from now on only deeds involving direct criminal responsibility could be investigated and the investigation must be made with the observance of the prerogatives of the Constitutional Court, Parliament and government.