VIEWS FROM THE CAPITALS

Spring 2008

by Sabina Fati

Just one year into Romania’s membership of the European Union, the government’s pre-accession promises to stamp out corruption sound hollow. The country’s overloaded court rooms don’t concern themselves with high ranking corruption cases. Judicial reforms – a condition of Romania’s entry into the democratic club of Europe – have been reversed; anti-corruption prosecutors have been subjected to harassment on the orders of the political elite; the government froze the Commission that was supposed to advise the president on whether certain government ministers should be prosecuted, in order to protect current or former members of the cabinet of Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu. And so the list goes on. Political interference in the nation’s system of justice continues to be ingrained in Romania and our parliamentarians seem unaware that – by defending the status quo - they prevent the country from getting out of its corrupt and provincial backwater and into the democratic mainstream of Europe.

The fate of the National Integrity Agency (ANI) is an example of the state of judicial reform in Romania today. It was created in response to pressure from the EU and was meant to search out top-level corruption by checking the assets of high-ranking dignitaries. However, the law establishing the ANI offered a general amnesty for past corruption; any ill-gotten gains will become lawful, the counter will be reset. As a result, long-standing members of parliament, who profited from the ambiguous legislation that was passed at the beginning of the post-communist era, will no longer have to provide the ANI with any explanation about where they got their fortunes. Today, the ANI is an empty shell subordinated to the political elite.

Parliament even tried to modify the Code of Criminal Procedure to help those under suspicion. Had it been passed, the new code would have required suspects to be told that their houses were about to be searched; their communications could not have been intercepted before a criminal investigation started and, even then, only after suspects were informed that an investigation was underway. These provisions could have been applied retrospectively to trials already taking place. That would have made certain evidence inadmissible, including evidence of terrorist offences at the trial of Omar Hayssam, a Syrian involved in the kidnapping of Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005. Other provisions of the code would have reduced sentences for fraud, when it involved less than €8m, and limited criminal investigations to a maximum of six months, except under exceptional circumstances. This would have prevented most money laundering enquiries that required checks abroad, which tend to take years rather than months.

The proposed criminal procedure code disturbed both Romania’s European partners and its Atlantic allies. The US ambassador to Romania publicly expressed his amazement at the way the law had been conceived. The government in Bucharest only backed down due to diplomatic pressure and “hotline” messages from Brussels. Its attitude to the criminal code raised questions over Bucharest’s ability to meet even minimal standards of propriety set by the EU. Romanian politicians seemed happy to ignore the threat to EU internal security – and to the NATO alliance – from proposals which were, first and foremost, designed to shield themselves from an effective judicial system.

Resistance to the idea that Romania’s judiciary should be fully functional is not confined to just a few politicians. Most members of parliament boycotted the reforms put forward by the former justice minister, Monica Macovei, and most are trying to find a pretext to dismantle the National Anti-Corruption Department. The majority of parliamentarians also voted against a prosecution request to be allowed to search the house of a former prime minister, Adrian Nastase. Other important prosecutions have been sent back to the prosecutor’s office by the judges, including one involving former Vice-Premier George Copos of the Conservative Party and another against businessman Dinu Patriciu, a friend of the current prime minister. It would appear that a fear of justice has created a unity of purpose which transcends party lines.

All such cases highlight the discrepancy between the official promises made at the time of Romanian accession to the EU in January 2007 and the political class’s continued inability to march in step with the rest of Europe. These days, the government only talks about Europe when it wants to explain away mistakes or to brag about some achievement well-received in Brussels - or if the country looks set to lose funds or credibility over some lapse in compliance with EU legislation. Perhaps the subject of EU membership was exhausted during the electoral campaigns before Romania’s admission. In any event, one year on, Romanian politicians are still behaving like outsiders.