Romanian Democrat Liberals Propose Single-Chamber Parliament

Romania’s Democratic Liberal Party, or PDL, plans to revise the Constitution after general elections end-November to instate a single-chamber Parliament and reduce the number of lawmakers.

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Party president Emil Boc told a news conference Sunday he will propose Monday the start of a signature-collection campaign for the instatement of a single-chamber parliament.

"We’ll discuss this proposition in the party’s leading college meeting, and if colleagues vote in favor of the proposition - and I doubt hey won’t - we start the campaign next week. (...) These signatures will be used after elections to back our proposal to revise the constitution," Boc said.

He added the existence of two chambers of Parliament, whose members are appointed in the same manner and which have similar attributions, is ungrounded.

Boc also said a single-chamber parliament is more efficient and works faster to draw up and adopt laws.

"There are cases when emergency ordinances take nearly one year to go through Parliament when these ordinances have already had legal effects,” the democrat liberal leader explained.

Another argument backing the instatement of a single-chamber parliament is that "two-chamber parliaments are justified in federal states”, where one chamber represents the nation as a whole and the other represent’s the state’s interests.

"The current two-chamber system in Romania is in fact working as a single-chamber Parliament, so why not instate one?" Boc added.

Asked to estimate when the proposal could be put into practice, Boc said Romania could have a single-chamber Parliament no sooner than 2012.

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