Romania’s Constitutional Court Rules Lustration Law Unconstitutional

The Constitutional Court's decision, which will be published in the Official Journal, will also include the Court's motivation. The Court's decision is final and binding and will be sent to the head of state, the prime minister and the Parliament.

On May 19, Romania's Chamber of Deputies adopted with 203 to 40 votes and 12 abstentions the country's lustration bill which became law as it had already been adopted in the Senate on April 2006.

The lustration law states that all those who were members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), members in the country's communist State Council and Council of Ministers, diplomats, state secretaries, party secretaries, police inspectors, as well as people who worked for the secrete police Securiatate in the March 6, 1945 and December 22, 1989 interval will not be allowed to occupy public positions for five consecutive years starting the moment the lustration law is enforced.

The abovementioned former communist public officials will not be allowed to fill positions such as head of state, lawmakers, member in the High Council of Magistrates, county and local authorities, state and presidential advisers with the Presidential Administration, members in the Government, Constitutional Court judges, ombudsman, presidents or vice-presidents of the Supreme Court, general prosecutors, National Integrity Agency members, members of the central bank's or other state-owned banks' boards, members of the national companies' management boards and General Assemblies of Shareholders.

Within 30 days from the enforcement of the lustration law, people who currently fill public positions must submit with the institution they are working for an affidavit stating whether they are in any of the situations described by the lustration law.

In 2006, Romanian President Traian Basescu condemned communism before the Parliament, but lawmakers failed to pass the lustration law, despite favorable steps taken in this respect.

In 2009, three years after the lustration law was adopted by the Senate and was still pending debates in the Chamber, the head of state stressed the steps he had taken in recent years to condemn communism and declassify the files of the Securitate, the country's former communist secret police, must be carried on and sealed with the lustration law.

In the period of post-communism, after the fall of various European communist countries in the 1989-1991 period, lustration came to define government policies of limiting the participation of former communists, and especially informants of the communist secret police, in the successor political appointee positions or even in civil service positions. Lustration mainly targets to prevent continuation of abuses that had occurred under a former dictatorial regime.

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