Romanian Union Leaders Required To Submit Wealth Statements – Amended Integrity Bill

The committee also decided to reintroduce the provision allowing the Agency to conduct its investigations as late as three years after the public servant leaves office, as well as the provision concerning a single wealth statement, both requested by Prime Minister Emil Boc on behalf of the Government.

Democrat liberal deputy Daniel Buda said the new Integrity Agency bill will adhere to the principles and spirit of the initial bill adopted by the Chamber. He added the committee will be careful to make the bill meet the Constitutional Court’s requirements.

The committee has until Friday to work the bill into a form approved by the Constitutional Court and put it up for debate in the special plenary session scheduled for next week.

Prime Minister Boc, who attended the meeting on Tuesday, supported the National Integrity Agency bill’s return to the form initially adopted by the Chamber of Deputies and asked the committee to reintroduce the provisions previously rejected by the Senate.

On July 19, the Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional the revised version of the law regulating the activity of the ANI law, after President Traian Basescu challenged the revised normative act’s constitutionality. In his contestation, Basescu cited breaches of certain constitutional provisions regarding law adoption procedures and the powers of the two chambers of the Parliament.

Romania’s Parliament had amended the law regulating the country’s integrity agency, a EU-required anticorruption body that screened public officials’ wealth and recommended prosecution for alleged illicit gains in a move to tackle endemic corruption, after the country’s Constitution Court found the initial law unconstitutional. The new law, however, considerably weakened the agency’s powers and the European Commission said in its monitoring report the revised law was a significant step back in the country’s fight against corruption.