Romania’s Lower Chamber Adopts National Integrity Agency Bill

Opposition social democrats refused to vote on the bill and left the meeting. Earlier on Monday, social democrat leader Victor Ponta said his party would not attend the debates on the national integrity law, as its unconstitutionality issues were not solved and the Government did not come up with new amendments so that the bill should meet the European Union's and the Constitutional Court's demands.

On July 19, the Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional the revised version of the law regulating the activity of the ANI, after President Traian Basescu challenged the revised normative act's constitutionality. In his contestation, Basescu cited breaches of certain constitutional provisions regarding law adoption procedures and the powers of the two chambers of the Parliament.

Romania's Parliament had amended the law regulating the country's integrity agency, a EU-required anticorruption body that screened public officials' wealth and recommended prosecution for alleged illicit gains in a move to tackle endemic corruption, after the country's Constitution Court found the initial law unconstitutional. The new law, however, considerably weakened the agency's powers and the European Commission said in its monitoring report the revised law was a significant step back in the country's fight against corruption.

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