Romanian Senate Committees Adopt National Integrity Agency Bill

Senators brought only one amendment to the ANI bill approved Monday by the Chamber of Deputies, so that union leaders will not be targeted by the new ANI law.

On July 19, the Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional the revised version of the law regulating the activity of the ANI, 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.