On Wednesday 1 February, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker and his First Vice President, Frans Timmermans, expressed their concern regarding the situation in Romania, following the adoption of an emergency decree by the government of Sorin Grindeanu, to reduce the penalties for corruption.
Although the Commission presented a rather optimistic report on Wednesday 25 January regarding the progress made by Romania within the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) (see EUROPE 11711), this time the two European leaders expressed their “great concern”.
In a press release, the two European leaders stated, “The fight against corruption needs to be advanced, not undone. We are following the latest developments in Romania with great concern… The irreversibility of the progress achieved in the fight against corruption is essential for the Commission to assess whether at some point monitoring under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) could be phased out.”
The CVM report published last week acknowledged the achievements so far made by prosecutors and judges in Romania as part of the fight against high-level corruption. At the same time, it explains that any steps which undermine this progress, or have the effect of weakening or shrinking the scope of corruption as an offence, would have an impact on any future assessments. The Commission will examine the decisions adopted by the Romanian social democratic government in more detail, next week. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)