The European Commission’s report on the rule of law in Romania, published on July 24, 2024, brings praise for the fight against corruption, progress in asset control, and the “Integrity” chapter.
The fight against corruption in Romania
The fight against corruption in Romania could not have registered progress, primarily because many competences in investigating corruption cases have been cut. Furthermore, many cases under investigation were closed due to some very controversial legislative changes and there are basically no new high-level corruption cases being investigated at the time being.
Integrity: The National Integrity Agency (ANI) is praised, although in high-profile cases involving local leaders, it found no irregularities. In many other cases, it did not even look into the huge assets reported by the media, despite some very obvious evidences of assets far larger than the ones officially declared.
Do you know ANI doing anything in the cases of: Head of Prahova County Council, Iulian Dumitrescu, (sent before Court by the National Anticorruption Directorate for a received bribery of up to 3,2 million EUR from a total of almost 10 million EUR), Vaslui County Council’s Dumitru Buzatu (caught red-handed, bribery), even in the case of Cătălin Cîrstoiu –the candidate of the Social Democrats withdrawn from the race for Bucharest City Hall after the mass media investigations into his assets? Yet ANI is proactive and extremely attentive to all opposition elected officials (the 2-3 who remain), starting numerous cases against them.
EC report on rule of law in Romania
The only criticisms in the EC report: the statute of limitations, through which dozens of major high-profile corruption cases were closed, and, half-heartedly, the money with which political parties buy the media and, of course, manipulate reality and erode trust in the media with extremely toxic long-term consequences.
Justice, among all key areas in any society, had everything it could in Romania to implement reforms. Technical assistance, attention, internal and external pressure, funding programs, sufficient salaries and pensions, reimbursed rents. And it did. It is evident that it has stopped. The anti-reformists have taken back the system. They closed it and disconnected it from society. And from reality.
Of course, politicians contributed fully: with complicity in favors and special pensions for magistrates, and with the pen cutting laws or rewriting attributions and cutting the powers and competences of anti-corruption.
We follow with attention, concern, and bewilderment the excessively optimistic tone of this report.
Anticorruption was stopped in Romania
- Few judicial systems in the EU can boast the track record and investigations of DNA (except the post-Dragnea that started in 2016-2018). We frequently talk with our Italian partners in justice-related projects and are assured that “in Italy, we do not send rich people to jail.”
- Others are worse than us – Poland has only recently returned to the European trajectory and has reduced pressure on justice, Hungary plays a different game, and anti-corruption is not even a topic, Bulgaria is far behind.
- The EU has many other crises to solve.
- And, last but not least, America is also starting to not be what it once was.
Later edit: By the time we published this rapid reaction, advertorials with the headline “European Commission: Romania strengthens its position in the fight against corruption” paid for by political parties had appeared. Dozens of them.
Author: Bianca Toma, Romanian Center for European Policies