Due to the unclear legislation in many domains and to the precarious dialogue between the power and opposition in the legislative process, appealing to the Constitutional Court has become something customary. The court has gradually turned into an arbiter that solves all disputes, be they legislative, institutional or political. Proof thereof is the avalanche of notifications of unconstitutionality, most of them related to laws regarding the judiciary and the criminal codes, which have been topical issues these days.
Wednesday was a busy day for the Constitutional Court of Romania. It admitted the notification regarding the unconstitutionality of the law on school books, submitted by the National Liberal Party and the Save Romania Union, in opposition. The two parties have denounced the setting up of a monopoly and the lack of regulatory norms. In another development, Constitutional Court judges rejected the notification made by the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania and the Save Romania Union related to the modification of the law on expropriation for public utility and the notification of the National Liberal Party and Save Romania Union regarding the modifications to the law on the status of judges and prosecutors.
In exchange, the Constitutional Court of Romania postponed, for autumn, discussing the notifications related to the draft laws for the modification of the Criminal Procedure Code and of the Law on judicial organization. The Court also postponed for autumn a decision referring to the notification made in relation to the modification of the law on the organization and functioning of the Superior Council of Magistracy.
In another move, the Court admitted the notification regarding the right to free movement and residence of same sex spouses, in line with a decision of the European Court of Justice. In keeping with this decision, member states cannot hinder the freedom of residence of a EU citizen by refusing to grant to his or her same sex spouse, a citizen of a non-EU country, a derived right of residence on their territory.
One of the eagerly-waited-for decisions of the Constitutional Court, at least from the perspective of the leftist power, regarded the setting up of the Sovereign Fund for Development and Investments. The Court gave bad news to the leftist ruling coalition as it accepted the notification made by the Romanian President and the opposition parties, according to which the setting up of the Fund was not the prerogative of Parliament but of the government, and through their move Parliament thus violated the separation of powers within a state.
Under that law, 33 companies, in which the Romanian state is a shareholder, were supposed to be included in the Sovereign Fund for Development and Investments, whose capital stock would amount to around 2 billion Euros. For the Social Democratic Party, the Fund would be an instrument meant to boost the development of big infrastructure and the investments in agriculture, Romania’s industrialization and the creation of new jobs. The opposition is concerned with the risk of an inadequate use of the money included in this fund and with the politicization of the process of appointing the Fund’s board, and thus considers it an open door to corruption. The National Liberal Party warned that unless the government finds another way of setting up the Fund, they would contest the decision in Court.
