Romania’s Constitutional Court Rules Revised National Integrity Law Unconstitutional

The decision of the Court will be forwarded to the head of state, the Parliament and the prime minister.

Last week, Basescu challenged with the Constitutional Court the revised version of the ANI law, citing breaches of certain constitutional provisions regarding law adoption procedures and the powers of the two chambers of the Parliament.

In the notification sent to the Constitutional Court, the head of state said the revised law adopted in the Chamber of Deputies, following his reexamination request, was forwarded to the Senate, which adopted a different version of the law, eliminating most of its provisions, including those on setting up wealth checkup commissions.

Senators also rejected Basescu’s request to extend to three years the one-year deadline by which checkups targeting wealth statements can be prescribed, as well as the proposition making it mandatory for high officials to state whether any of their relatives run businesses on taxpayer money.

Romania’s Parliament has 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 weakens the agency’s powers.