Parliament passes amendments to criminal legislation
The deputies have passed the amendments to the criminal legislation approved earlier by the Senate, amendments which the opposition has decided to challenge.
Corina Cristea, 25.04.2019, 13:57
Controversial changes to the criminal code and the code of criminal procedure have been adopted by the Chamber of Deputies, the decision-making body in this respect, in exactly the same version as that adopted by the Senate. A series of articles were thus adopted that were criticised by the opposition but were declared constitutional by the Constitutional Court. These include the reduction of the statute of limitations, the introduction of a one-year deadline for denunciations with respect to bribe taking and peddling in influence, the complete decriminalisation of negligence in employment and the reduction by half of punishments for embezzlement and abuse of office.
The changes are an attack on the rule of law, says the opposition, who will challenge them in the Constitutional Court. The speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and president of the Social Democratic Party Liviu Dragnea rejects the accusations made by the opposition and says the rulings of the Constitutional Court judges were respected:
Liviu Dragnea : “The decision we made last year was to submit to parliamentary procedure only the articles declared constitutional and those that were not challenged. No other change has been made in addition to the rulings of the Constitutional Court.”
In the opinion of the representatives of the opposition, Wednesday’s vote is a dark day for the Romanian legal system, a vote in the interest of criminals. The leader of the Save Romania Union, Dan Barna: “Liviu Dragnea has no limits, nothing else matters for him other than solving the criminal problem he is confronted with and in order to solve this problem he is willing, as he has explicitly done today, to sacrifice Romania’s interest.”
President Klaus Iohannis has pointed out that Parliament has once again re-discussed and adopted the two amended bills in a hasty, superficial and non-transparent manner. He approached the subject in Bucharest with the representatives of the Venice Commission, saying that the adoption of measures that have an impact on the judicial system without holding public consultations and taking into account the opinion of the judicial system makes this vital area for democracy extremely vulnerable.
The president added that this is what makes the 26th of May referendum necessary, adding that the independence of the judiciary is a subject Romanians care deeply about, and their voice must be heard through their vote. The European Commission says it will look closely at the amendments passed and has recalled that its position on the situation of the rule of law is very clear and that Bucharest must urgently resume the reform process.
