EC Report Calls on Romania to Speed up Judicial Reform

The EC progress report said that "Romania has not been able to keep the momentum of reform it had established by mid-2009." File Photo

The EC has called on Romania to work towards further judicial reform including speeding up the court system in the interim EC report on Bulgaria and Romania released on Tuesday.

The EC progress report said that "Romania has not been able to keep the momentum of reform it had established by mid-2009."

In the first half of 2009, Romanian parliament adopted new civil and criminal codes, despite opposition from some political parties, but implementation remained difficult because of the insufficient capacity of the judicial system and contradictory jurisprudence.

Romania's next step was to be the adoption of new civil and criminal procedure codes, but that was delayed because of the electoral campaigning in the second half of the year.

"Romania continues to take some steps to improve the consistency of jurisprudence; however a general and continuous publication of all court decisions has not yet been achieved. Other initiatives to improve the efficiency of court procedures by re-balancing workload among judges and by a transfer of administrative tasks to legal clerks have been launched; however concrete results can not yet be demonstrated," the report states.

However, the report commended the "continuously convincing track record" of Romania's anti-corruption directorate in the investigation and prosecution of high-level corruption cases. It also praised the "further consolidation of the results of the National Integrity Agency in the administrative follow-up to incompatibilities, conflicts of interest and unjustified wealth."

The agency was set up at the EU's request to watch over civil servants and ensure that there were no conflicts of interest or illegal accumulation of wealth.

"As regards the duration of the court phase, trials in high-profile cases remain lengthy. In all cases concerning high-level defendants, exceptions of unconstitutionality were raised at least once. Although the Constitutional Court has rejected virtually all such claims to date, many cases have been delayed by more than six months whilst the trial is suspended pending resolution of the unconstitutionality exceptions. Two alternative legal amendments to restrict the suspensive character of exceptions of unconstitutionality have been pending in parliament since September 2009," the report said.

The Commission called for consensus among political parties and the judiciary to create wide support for the necessary reforms, in particular the swift adoption of the draft criminal and civil procedure codes as well as the necessary implementing legislation and impact studies.

"The Commission will continue to support Romania in this endeavour and provide its next in-depth assessment of progress by summer this year," the EC said.