Romania has taken positive steps to reverse the bad trend seen between 2017 and 2019 in the fight against corruption and judicial reforms, but it will remain subject to the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, which has applied to it and Bulgaria since 2007, as long as it has not met all its obligations.
This is the conclusion reached by the Commission on Tuesday 8 June in its new report assessing the quality of anti-corruption and justice reforms in Romania.
“Since the last CVM report published in 2019, the situation has shown a positive trend. The Commission welcomes the fact that a new impetus has been given in 2021 to reforms and to repair the backtracking of the 2017-2019 period”. Romania is even on the point of meeting a number of recommendations.
In May 2019, the Commission had threatened the country with the use of its rule of law mechanism due to a series of measures weakening the fight against corruption (see EUROPE 12253/15). Its October 2019 CVM report was therefore very negative (see EUROPE 12354/3).
In its latest edition, the Commission notes several concrete steps forward on the relevant criteria (independence of the judiciary, fight against corruption, status of the National Integrity Agency). It thus reports on progress in the Romanian parliament on lifting the immunity of MPs when they have been ministers.
Progress has also been made on the control of public procurement. However, it notes continuing problems with the independence of the judiciary since the establishment of the Criminal Investigation Section within the judiciary (SIIJ).
“With the Justice laws as amended in 2018-19 still in force, the concerns of damage to the functioning of the justice system remain. In particular, the existence and the functioning of the SIIJ remains a serious concern”, writes the European Commission, referring to new cases of pressure on magistrates and concerns about the lack of objectivity in the selection of cases for criminal investigation.
While the SIIJ is less active in ongoing high-level corruption cases, it continues to intervene in other corruption cases by disrupting their course.
At the same time, “pressure on the human resources of the judicial institutions continues to increase. This is due to the combined effect of the absence of new entries into the profession in 2019 and 2020, an increasing workload per judge and per prosecutor, and an increasing number of retirements”.
But “a further deterioration in the situation was avoided when the government and parliament took steps to delay, then postpone, then repeal the entry into force of problematic provisions concerning the possibility of early retirement for civil servants”, the report adds.
The CVM is a tool used by the EU-27 to make their decisions on Schengen membership.
Link to the report: https://bit.ly/2TaNm6q (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)