If it reaches the conclusion that “the rules are broken” by Romania’s revised justice laws, the European Commission will not hesitate to take “the right measures”, including taking Romania’s government to court if necessary, European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans stated while holding an exchange of views on the situation in Romania, including the independence of judiciary, with the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee on October 1.

Romania has reached a critical moment when the ruling coalition, based on robust electoral support enhanced by favourable economic conditions partly helped by a massive fiscal stimulus, is on the verge of jeopardising the rule of law.

“If the laws that amend the justice laws and the criminal codes are adopted without modification, the laws under the new form would affect the functioning of the judiciary, including by altering the ability to fight corruption and other crimes, which is all the more important as it has been so much done so far in the fight against high-level corruption in Romania in recent years. This would mean a serious step back compared to the Commission's positive assessment [of the state of judicial reforms in Romania] of January 2017,” said Timmermans. The current government came to power after the December 2016 general election. 

The situation in Romania is not the result of a thoroughly designed plan with an illiberal ideology behind it, but rather the result of chaotic actions by the country’s political leaders (symbolised by the leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party Liviu Dragnea) that mimic the illiberal ideologies circulated in the region at this moment with the sole purpose of avoiding legal sanctions for their past deeds and for their autocratic ruling style. 

Furthermore, the ruling majority has made use of the weak points of the anticorruption bodies that have not consolidated enough over the past years to the point of developing broad, effective anticorruption policies able to alter the deep causes of corruption, rather than pursuing individual high-profile cases with major public impact.

The justice laws and the criminal codes have not yet been promulgated, therefore the Romanian institutions still have time to take a step back, Timmermans stressed.

At this moment, however, those in Romania who objected to the justice laws (President Klaus Iohannis, opposition parties, the magistrates body) have already used all the instruments provided by the existing legislation and the Constitutional Court has rejected their objections. Iohannis is supposed to promulgate the three key justice laws and there is hardly any procedural scenario under which the bills can be further revised.

But even if there was such a procedure for last-minute revision of the bills, the ruling coalition is not willing to adjust the bills that were judged by Timmermans to be so detrimental to the rule of law in Romania. 

Dragnea made this clear by reacting angrily to Timmermans’ comments. “I watched this debate [in the LIBE Committee], which was not really a debate but rather a list of pre-established positions, a condemnation decided before studying the evidence,” said Dragnea, quoted by Mediafax.

Nobody pointed out which specific paragraphs of the justice laws are threatening the rule of law, Dragnea stated. He accused LIBE members of having ignored any evidence, while Romania has delivered to the EU evidence pointing to abuses by the anticorruption bodies during the prosecution process.

"I do not think that those who spoke knew exactly the situation in Romania," Dragnea concluded.