Critical reports by GRECO on progress made by Romania to combat corruption
Romania has made very little progress to put in place measures to prevent corruption among high ranking officials and to address the concerns raised by its controversial judicial reform, says the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body (GRECO) in two reports published on Tuesday. Consequently, GRECO calls on the Romanian authorities to take determined action to achieve tangible progress as soon as possible. It welcomes, in this context, that on 4 June the Romanian Prime Minister announced the intention to abandon the controversial judicial reforms. In a compliance report assessing progress in implementing measures recommended in 2015 to prevent corruption in respect of MPs, judges and prosecutors, GRECO concludes that Romania has only fully complied with four of thirteen recommendations, whilst it has partly implemented three and not implemented six. In a follow up report evaluating compliance with the recommendations issued in an ad hoc report concerning the judicial reform prepared under its urgent evaluation procedure in 2018, GRECO finds that the Romanian authorities have only implemented one out of five recommendations.
In a first reaction to the GRECO reports, the Speaker of Romania’s Senate, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, has said that the same experts that compliled the reports had nothing to say about the secret protocols and the illegal sections to investigate magistrates, which were brought to light in recent years. Also in reaction to the reports, the leader of the PNL Ludovic Orban, has asked the government to commit in front of European institutions that it suppors the dissolution of the Special section for the investigation of the offences in the judiciary.
Hearings at the parliamentary inquiry commission regarding eventual fraud in euro parliamentary elections on May 26th
The Interior Minister, Carmen Dan, has been heard today by the parliamentary inquiry commission regarding eventual fraud in euro parliamentary elections on May 26th. Also, at today’s hearings a representative from the Foreign Affairs Minister was invited, to answer questions asked by deputies and senators.
Carmen Dan said, in front of parliamentarians, that the institution she leads does not set the number of voting sections in the country or of the voting stamps and does not have any attributions inside the voting sections. Carmen Dan indicated that, on May the 26th, 9 282 intimations have been made from the turnout Monitoring Information System, operated by STS, followed by the opening of 217 criminal files. She said that tablets were wrongly operated inside the voting sections and proposed that the turnout monitoring system be taken out of STS attribution.
Carmen Dan: These 9282 signals also came to the Interior Minister, following the Central Electoral Bureau and they are being verified and we have tried as much as we could to show how they were verified. This is what I believe, that this system should be the attribution and exclusive responsibility of a special service, if we desire a transparent electoral process, as long as we have an independent authority, such as the Permanent Electoral Authority, that could take over these tasks.
Only two candidates have been announced so far for the November presidential elections
The Government has issued a decree on Tuesday, stating that the presidential elections in Romania will be held on November the 10th. Prime Minister Viorica Dancila has said that all legislation needed for smooth elections will be passed shortly. So far, only two people have officially announced their candidacy for the highest position in the state: the current President Klaus Iohannis, who is running for a second term and Ramona Ioana Bruynseels, representing the Party of the Humanist Power. The Social Democratic Party (PSD) is still surveying and is due to choose its candidate at its next congress. ALDE and Pro Romania parties have said that they are willing to have the same candidate as PSD. The USR-PLUS Alliance will have a common candidate, who has yet to be decided./mbrotacel
