Volume 9 Numbers 1/2

Winter/Spring 2000

Constitutional Watch
     A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR

Romania - At the end of 1999, just a month before its Helsinki summit, the EU invited Romania to join its member-ship process. As a result, the government quickly turned to the Parlamentul (parliament) to push through a number of long-postponed laws the EU had been pressing Romania to adopt, such as legislation regarding civil servants. This law, ratified on December 8, grants tenure to high-ranking civil servants, many of whom were appointed after the 1996 elections. The law creates a distinction between political positions (secretary of state, cabinet minister, ministerial advisers, and the like) and professional, nonpolitical civil servants. Those in political positions will not receive tenure. The govern-ment struggled to win ratification of the legislation in time for the president to promulgate it before the EU summit, which began on December 12. Although Romania must pass scores of legislative acts to comply with the EU's acquis communautaire, the union has long pressed the government to pass this specific law in order to stabilize and depoliticize the bureaucracy. Administrative reform is essential to EU harmonization, and Romania was the last postcommunist state in Eastern Europe to adopt such a civil-service law.

In order to push the draft through the legislature, Radu Vasile's government fell back on an old tactic, utilized by previous governments, and tied the law's passage to a no-confidence vote. According to Art. 113 of the Constitution, the government may "assume responsibility before the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, in joint session, upon a program, a general policy statement, or a bill. The government shall be dismissed if a motion of censure, tabled within three days from the date of presenting the program, the general policy state-ment, or the bill, has been passed in accordance with provisions under Article 112." Vasile was confident that the opposition would not block the legislation, a move that would be interpreted as rejection of EU member-ship. Miron Mitrea, the vice president of the leading opposition party, the Party for Social Democracy in Romania (PSDR), stated that his government would repeal the new law immediately if PSDR won the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Although the law passed, the need for the govern-ment to resort to extraordinary methods to ensure its passage underscores the difficulties of legislating reform in Romania. The country's knotty legislative procedure often forces the government to take matters into its own hands and adopt legislation as emergency government ordinances (or decrees) or to tie it to no-confidence votes. The two houses are often at odds and ratify contradictory versions of legislation that must then be reconciled; this final compromise version, known as a mediation report, must then be accepted by both houses. In 1999, the Senate adopted 96 of the 212 pieces of government-proposed legislation and only 64 govern-ment ordinances out of the 132 proposed. These same problems threatened the government's recent drawn-out attempts at property reform.

The governing coalition failed to win adoption of two major property laws that have been held up in parliament for some time: the law privatizing state farms and the property-restitution law. The state-farm law was finally passed as an emergency government ordinance in order to meet a deadline for the World Bank's loan program, although rebellious Democratic Party (DP) senator Trita Fanita, who blocked the law during the fall Romania.session, still threatens to amend it when it reaches the Senate. Despite negotiations with the opposition medi-ated by President Constantinescu, the property-restitution law was again postponed. Controversy centers on the level of compensation the state will provide if restitution in kind proves impossible. The opposition favors a lower level than the bill entails, claiming that the state lacks the financial means to compensate owners.

On November 9, parliament finally adopted the long-disputed law on the restitution of farm lands, forests, and pastures, the so-called Lupu law, just before the Helsinki summit. Named after its author, Senator Vasile Lupu (Christian Democratic-National Peasant's Party [CD-NPP]), the law was debated for some time and proposes the restitution of land parcels up to 50 hectares (123.5 acres) in size. The law will affect between one and four million families.

The only other recent legislative success in Romania was the adoption of the final mediation report on the Law on Pensions. The law will be enacted in 2001, after the creation of the National Pension Fund. The Constitutional Court, however, blocked the law on the grounds that it cancels the higher pensions previ-ously granted to magistrates in the Law for the Functioning of Justice. According to Art. 144 of the Constitution, the Constitutional Court may initiate a review procedure if it suspects that a law violates the Constitution. According to Art. 145, a law that is rejected by the Constitutional Court is sent again to parliament. The Court's decision can be overruled by a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

The law on communist-era secret-service files pursued its inglorious route. According to the law, the political parties should have by now nominated persons for the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives, the board that will review requests for access to the files. (According to the law, the board is composed of 11 members who are nominated by parties propor-tionate to their representation in parliament. Board members serve six-year terms.) Scandal broke out when the Senate's judicial committee tried to block CD-NPP's candidate, Horia Patapievici, a famous anticommunist political writer, on the grounds that he was critical of the Romanian nation. The only reputed dissidents from the Ceausescu era who were proposed, former foreign affairs minister Andrei Plesu and poet Mircea Dinescu, also came under attack for having been members of the Communist Party. The law specifies that candidates may not be and cannot have been party members, making no special provision for former dissidents or opponents of the communist regime who either quit the party or were expelled. The parties finally drew up a list of nominees that is awaiting a final vote in parliament.

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A constitutional crisis, the first since 1996, erupted on December 14, the day after the Helsinki summit. CD-NPP decided to withdraw its support from its own party member Prime Minister Radu Vasile. Vasile, who came to power after former prime minister Victor Ciorbea (CD-NPP) was forced out of office in the spring of 1998, was on bad terms with his party. Vasile received more support from Petre Roman's DP. In this latest turn of events, the pro-Ciorbea wing of CD-NPP fought for Vasile's dismissal. His fate was sealed by an agreement between the party and President Emil Constantinescu, who was never on good terms with Vasile, according to which CD-NPP would ask all of its ministers to resign. The National Liberal Party (NLP)- as one of several parties in the ruling coalition-soon followed suit, and by the end of the day, more than half of the ministers in the Vasile government had resigned, and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) and DP announced they would then do like-wise. Vasile refused to resign and was soon dismissed by presidential decree. The president promptly asked Mugur Isarescu to form a new government.

The president's action then came under strong attack from the opposition parties, which accused Constantinescu of violating the Constitution. Indeed the Constitution stipulates that the president can fire a minister but remains silent regarding the premier. Article 85.2 of the Constitution reads: "in the event of govern-ment modification or vacancy of office, the president shall dismiss and appoint, on the proposal of the prime minister, some members of the government." Constitutional Court president Lucian Mihai refused to comment on the dismissal, claiming it was not within the Court's competence to review the matter. (According to Art. 2.1 of the Law on the Constitutional Court, the Court reviews the constitutionality of the laws, the standing orders of parliament, and the statutory orders of the government.) In the end, DP persuaded Vasile to resign in exchange for his nomination as Senate president. Vasile's potential move to head of the Senate came after DP leader and Senate president Petre Roman was named the minister of foreign affairs in the new government, thus leaving the position vacant. But, ultimately, the anti-Vasile faction in CD-NPP blocked the deal, and Vasile was expelled from the party and thus was left officeless.

The party's travails continued and, after failing to hold a general assembly in January, CD-NPP split into two factions. The Vasile wing withdrew from the party and formed the new Popular Right Party (PRP), which currently has 10 deputies in parliament.

Isarescu's nomination was approved on December 21. The new government is almost identical to its prede-EAST EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW 32.WINTER/SPRING 2000 33 cessor, the only exception being the foreign affairs port-folio, which is now headed by Roman. The only important modification in the lineup was the appoint-ment of four deputy prime ministers from the existing ministers, one for each coalition member, a consolation prize for the party leaders compelled to accept a techno-crat as prime minister. Mugur Isarescu, 51, was an economist and professor of finance at the Bucharest Academy of Economics. He has been the director of the national bank since 1990 and was recently elected to a new term before his nomination to the premiership.

Immediately after his appointment, Isarescu announced a series of measures meant to bring about the country's long-delayed economic recovery. The tax rate on corporate profits was lowered from 38 to 25 percent, new incentives were put in place for exporters, and the value-added tax was also cut from 22 to 19 percent on selected products and services (on others it was increased from 11 to 19 percent). The government is hoping to bring about, for the first time, economic growth: a modest 1.3 percent of GDP is the target, together with an inflation rate of 27 percent and a deficit of 3 percent of GDP. Isarescu kicked off his recovery program by downsizing his own government: half of the administrative staff will be dismissed in February and March, cutting the government to only 300 employees.

This is an election year, however, and it is unclear if the prime minister has the political will to resist growing demands to raise wages. In December, Romania was paralyzed for a week by a rail workers' strike, which was terminated only by a court order. For the first time since the last elections, polls reveal that a majority of the popu-lation believes that the country is headed in the wrong direction: 67 percent report a decline in living standards compared with 1998. Emil Constantinescu is now the third choice for president, ranking after Ion Iliescu and Teodor Melescanu, while Melescanu's Alliance for Romania, a faction that split from Iliescu's party in 1997, now ranks third in the public's party preferences.

It is unclear when the elections will be held. According to the electoral cycle, a local ballot should occur this summer (the last elections were in June 1996), and a parliamentary one in the fall. The electoral law has not yet been revised by both chambers, and it seems that the earlier attempt to increase the threshold from 3 to 5 percent will not succeed after all. The NLP announced that it will run candidates separately in the local elections, and the Democratic Convention, the once-predominant portion of the ruling coalition that used to consist of five parties, will now include only CD-NPP and the Green Party. These two parties can count on only about 18 percent of the vote. The new government may postpone elections for a few months as it is banking on some eleventh-hour success to boost its chances.

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