Constitutional Court to Discuss Opposition, Ruling Coalition Constitutional Amendments on July 18

The Constitutional Court must green-light the two projects before they are brought up for a vote in the Parliament.

Opposition parties PNL and USR filed on July 1 a bill which bans individuals who were convicted with final prison sentences from running in any type of elections, while also banning amnesty and pardoning for all corruption offences and restricting the government from passing emergency decrees in areas related to the judiciary.

Romania’s ruling PSD-ALDE coalition filed with a similar bill with the Lower Chamber on July 2, mainly regarding the subjects of the May 26 judicial referendum.

The revision includes the subjects of the May 26 referendum on judicial matters, at which Romanians voted in favor of restricting the government from passing decrees on criminal offences, sentences and judicial organization, and also of extending the right to challenge government decrees and banning amnesty and pardoning for corruption offences.

According to the bill, the government will be restricted from passing emergency decrees in the aforementioned fields, while constitutional challenges against the executive’s decrees can be initiated by either the president, the chairmen of the Parliament’s chambers or at least 50 MPs or 25 senators. Currently, only the country’s ombudsman has the right to challenge emergency decrees at the Constitutional Court.

However, the bill only interdicts individual pardoning or amnesty for corruption offences, despite the fact that Romanian citizens voted in favor of banning any type of amnesty for such offences at the referendum.

Constitutional revision bills must gain a majority of at least two thirds in both chambers of the Parliament. If one or both of the bills pass the vote, they will then become the subject of a constitutional referendum.

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