Transparency International Romania - Policies and studies

Advocacy

Once the UN Convention against Corruption and regional conventions establishing the ALAC Centres entered into force, TI advocacy efforts achieved considerable results, preparing the field for future efforts. In this direction, TI Romania continues its advocacy actions at central and local level, stressing the strategic aspect of advocacy and intending to actively involve in attaining the proposed objectives. TI Romania undergone various advocacy actions with a view to reform the judiciary, the public administation, fight against corruption and money laundering, which are some of TI Romania areas of concern

Transparency International Romania has repeatedly highlighted the importance of the High Council of Magistrates’ mission in reforming the judicial system and in ensuring its independence as an essential ground for offering a professional judicial public service in accordance with the European standards.

The 23rd of July 2008 European Commission’s Report raises attention on a series of vulnerabilities within the judicial system per se, but also within the High Council of Magistrates, which is supposed to be the guardian of the independence of the justice. As a consequence of the above mentioned report and as a measure for remedying the signaled deficiencies, the High Council of Magistrates has demanded Transparency International Romania for a series of proposals and observations that would support the High Council’s activity.

As a matter of fact, Transparency International Romania’s analysis documents released by now, as for instance the Study regarding the Magistrates’ perception on the independence of the judicial system 2007 or the National Anticorruption Report 2008, have already raised attention on the same shortages, but they haven’t yet been solved.

Under these conditions, TI Romania considered some recommendations and formulated a set of tools aiming at improving the High Council of Magistrates’ activity and at reforming the judicial system as a whole.

The measures proposed by TI Romania make reference to:

Legislation aiming , first, at unifying of the judicial practice and conceiving of framing norms which would establish minimal standards concerning the drafting and statement of reasons of the judicial decisions. Secondly, at providing measures in order to clarify the constitutional status, the role and mission of the prosecutors and to encourage them to issue coherent solutions. Third, regarding the Courts’ administrative organization- employment, task sharing, and emplacement of minimal standards for a good administration in the archive, registration and graft departments.
Human resources policy regarding combating corruption at the level of recruitment procedures and of promoting judges and prosecutors, changing the mechanism of designation and revocation of the Public Minister’s and General Prosecutor’s board, organizing training sessions, enlarging the application sphere of the 571/2004 Law.
The impact of the new Codes of penal and civil procedures, in the sense of a constitutional analysis of the recently added dispositions; the necessity of a corresponding law on judicial functioning.
Enforcement of the High Council of Magistrates’ capacity regarding the fulfillment of its responsibilities: transparence improvement, enhancement of its jurisdictional activities, independence guarantee.

Advocacy activities are crucial to impacting a systemic change so as to increase public integrity, reducing corruption and improving the justice system. Meeting public integrity objectives is an essential element of Romania's efforts to integrate into the European Union.

One of the activities implemented by TI Romania with a view to improve the public integrity climate is the signing, in 2004 of a Memorandum of understanding with the Government of Romania, establishing a common anticorruption platform, which determined the passing of laws that directly impact on the Romanian national integrity system. These laws and normative acts are as follows:

Law no. 365/2004: the ratification of the UN Convention against corruption, which involves that the executive assumes the task to make an impact analysis, as well as provide implementation instruments such as an evaluation of the necessary implementation resources and an implementation calendar.

Law no. 571/2004: drawing up and adopting a legal frame that ensures whistleblowers' protection, starting from the premise that the participation of public servants is key to the growth of public integrity.

Ammending Law 161/2003: the ammendment expands on the definition of the conflict of interests and includes in the law unitary standards for incompatibilities and restriction of exceptions. The ammendment improves substantial and procedural law regarding the monitoring and control of assets, and it also sets the groundrules for the creation of a unique and efficient institutional infrastructure to apply the law. The normative act project was drawn up by the Ministry of Justice, promoted by the Government and passed by the Chamber of Deputies. However, it has not been passed by the Senate as well, therefore it has not become effective. The only part of the ammendment that has become effective through a government ordinance, EO no. 14/2005, is the one regarding the more complete and efficient monitoring of declarations of assets and interests.

Modification and completion of Law 78/2000: the range of corruption crimes was expanded through the addition of the wider range of corruption in the public sector. This was accomplished by the passing of Law no. 521/2004, which incriminates as corruption any act of abuse in office if it is committed for the purpose of personal gain or gain for another party.

Law no. 477/2004: this law was passed so as to expand the regulations imposed by Law 7/2004 regarding the Code of Conduct for public servants and other categories of employees in the public sector, or providing public services.

Law no. 480/2004: this law increased the level of responsibility among prosecutors, by ensuring transparency of prosecutors' activity. This was accomplished by modifying the Procedure Code by introducing the stipulation that prosecutors must send to all interested parties, in full and automatically, copies after decisions to not prosecute

The advocacy landmarks of 2005 have been:

Law no. 350/2005.: this funding normative act puts forth a methodology based on competitiveness for granting non-returnable funds to NGO's. The project was based on the European Committee Regulation No. 1605/2002 and the Romanian Government's Ordinance OUG 60/2002.

Aligning interior regulations of Ministeries with the stipulations of Law no. 571/2004. Although the Ministeries did not respect the 30-day deadline from the date of the law's entering effectiveness, at TI Ro's request for information regarding specific alignment modalities, they used the 30 days t ogive a response in connection with the alignment of their regulations to the requirements of the law.

Continuing efforts to set up an Integrity Agency; however, these efforts have not been finalized with the passing of a specific law.

The advocacy landmarks of 2006 have been:

Fulfilling all the commitments assumed by Romania after the first round of GRECO evaluation in 2002, which addressed a number of shortcoming in public policies or aimed to improve the general normative frame. The last thing due on this list was accomplished by the passing of Law no. 356/2006 in August, by which the Penal Procedure Code was aligned with the Penal Code stipulations regarding penal responsibility of juridical entities.

Organizing a series of public debates on the theme "Public Policies regarding the National Integrity Agency" on 6 July and 24 October 2006, in partnership with Member of the Chamber of Deputies, Mr Bogdan Olteanu. Both debates have focues on discussing the principles of public policies related to the National Integrity Agency and their objective was to identify the most efficient mechanism for asset control, conflicts of interests and incompatibilities.

Both events benefited from the participation of Senate and Chamber of Deputies parliamentary group leaders, as well as members of the executive - the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior Affairs and Public Administration - representatives of the civil society and the mass media; they also enjoyed the support of the TI Secretariat.

However, no normative act could be adopted, although the Minister of Justice proposed a project in this sense, and the subject has been widely debated for over two years.