In the latest clash over the rule of law in Europe, the European Union’s top court told Romania that it must abide by EU laws and commit to tackling corruption, a long-standing problem in the former communist country. In a ruling that gives heart to those fighting corruption and democratic backsliding in Romania, Europe’s highest court on Tuesday cast into legal doubt a set of controversial judicial reforms passed between 2017 and 2019 by a former Social Democratic government.
#eudebates #Romania #Law #Justice #Corruption
The European Court of Justice’s Grand Chamber ruled on six different legal questions related to a judicial overhaul by a government run by the center-left Social Democratic Party. Critics saw the changes as weakening the independence of Romania’s judiciary and shielding Romania’s corrupt elites from prosecution.
Large protests broke out after the changes were proposed in 2017 and the reforms remain at the center of Romanian politics. A new center-right government led by the National Liberal Party has made repealing the judicial changes a core promise.
At issue in Tuesday’s ruling, which was not immediately available in English, were a set of questions about the primacy of EU law in relation to Romania’s constitution, Romania’s obligations to tackle corruption as a condition to its entry into the EU in 2007 and new questionable mechanisms to hold judges and prosecutors accountable.
Before letting Romania and Bulgaria join the EU club in 2007, Brussels made the former communist countries adopt new laws and pledges to root out deep corruption in their nations. Political corruption was – and remains – a major problem in both countries. In Romania’s case, many say it inherited a corrupt system from the country’s longtime dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.
But in 2017, through laws and emergency procedures, the Social Democratic government amended the “justice laws” Romania had passed in 2004 as part of talks to enter the EU and tried to relax penalties for official corruption and embezzlement.
The three justice laws were crafted to give prosecutors and judges more independence, but by 2017 the Romanian government argued it wanted to make the judiciary more efficient and open with its judicial changes.
Critics cried foul and tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets, accusing the Social Democratic Party of seeking to shield corrupt politicians from prosecution, stacking the courts with cronies and trying to get people convicted of corruption out of prison.
Most prominently, the party was led by Liviu Dragnea, a powerful politician whose business dealings had long been under scrutiny by anti-corruption investigators. He is in prison after being found guilty of vote rigging and abuse of office. He faces new charges of influence peddling to get a seat at former U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to Balkan Insight, a news outlet.
On Tuesday, the EU high court took aim at the reforms, which are being challenged by groups representing prosecutors, judges and others. In September, a magistrate for the high court issued a legal opinion critical of the reforms.
The Luxembourg-based court said that Romania must abide by its pledges to tackle corruption as stipulated under an agreement it signed before joining the EU. The court added that Romania is legally required to meet a set of benchmarks the EU imposed on it to ensure its legal system is run properly and fairly.
The court noted that the benchmarks were established by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to deal with deficiencies in Romania’s legal system.
“Romania is, therefore, required to take appropriate measures to meet the benchmarks and to refrain from implementing any measure which could jeopardize their being met,” the court said in an English statement on the ruling.
However, the high court stopped short of calling illegal a controversial law that set up a special section within the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate and prosecute alleged misdeeds by judges and prosecutors.
The EU court said it is up for Romanian courts to decide whether the new prosecutor’s section breaches EU law, but it noted that the new office must “be justified by objective and verifiable requirements relating to the sound administration of justice” and not be “used as an instrument of political control over the activity of those judges and prosecutors.”
This finding may be largely irrelevant because Romania’s new government is pushing legislation to do away with a special chamber related to such prosecutions, the Special Court for the Investigation of Magistrates.
The court also looked at a new law that makes judges personally liable for issuing rulings containing judicial errors. Critics contend this law can be used to apply pressure on judges and deter them from ruling against powerful interests.
[ Ссылка ] #eudebates
