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29th Mar 2024

Romania to slow anti-corruption fight, minister warns

  • Monica Macovei feels unloved even among minister colleagues (Photo: Romanian government)

Romanian justice minister and anti-corruption campaigner Monica Macovei has warned in an interview with EUobserver that now that Romania is a member of the EU, Bucharest's clampdown on corruption will slow down, saying her own prime minister "shows the wish of non-involvement."

Just days after Romania became an EU member on 1 January, Ms Macovei has said that political support for reforms is visibly waning, with the parliament and judges all appearing unwilling to reform further, despite warnings from the European Commission.

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Ms Macovei is highly regarded in Brussels for having succeeded in shaking up the largely unreformed judiciary and for putting an end to the impunity era of the political class.

Asked if political support for reforms is shrinking now that Romania is an EU member, she said "If I think of the parliament's actions in 2006 regarding different anti-corruption legislation, and in some cases even within the government, yes."

"There is less enthusiasm for anti-corruption measures than in 2005."

A former civil rights activist, Ms Macovei has no political affiliation and enjoys the support of president Traian Basescu, who won the 2004 elections on an anti-corruption platform.

Highlighting her isolated position, she said "I think among the members of this cabinet and my colleagues in the Parliament, nobody loves me. I saw that while we were nearing the date of accession and being certain of this date, the anti-corruption measures were more and more unwanted and criticised."

Key agency delayed

As an example, she mentioned delays in the creation of the Agency for Integrity, a planned independent body designed to verify conflicts of interests among politicians and civil servants.

The draft law setting up the agency has been pending in the Romanian parliament since April 2006, despite the European Commission repeatedly stressing its importance.

Ms Macovei said "conflicts of interests are a huge source of corruption. We need an institution to look into the grey area, which was never covered by an institution so far."

But the Romanian parliament meanwhile watered down the draft law to an extent that "we might end up with an Agency with no teeth," Ms Macovei warned.

EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn last month wrote a letter urging prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu "to persuade" MPs to agree to a powerful Agency for Integrity – but Mr Tariceanu answered that he cannot influence the parliament due to the principle of separation of powers.

"To me, it shows the wish of non-involvement," Ms Macovei said criticising her own prime minister. "There is no such thing as the full separation of powers between government and parliament, because then no government could ever fulfil its programme."

Old political class

Ms Macovei welcomed the European Commission's regime of monitoring corruption in Romania, which is continuing even though the country is now an EU member.

"In my view, it's good to stay in touch with the Commission and to have periodical reports, in order to ensure that these reforms have a 'happy end,'" she stated.

Ms Macovei suggested that some "public pressure" by Brussels would be good in the face of a political class unwilling to endorse deeper reforms.

"I see things very clearly: when it's about their personal assets, their friend's assets, their incompatibilities and conflicts of interests – when it's personal, they don't care about anything else," she said.

"We have a political class that has not been investigated, neither controlled, nor subjected to standards for 16 years and they want to continue like this."

Test on judges

Although the first high-ranking officials, such as former prime minister Adrian Nastase, have been charged for corruption, the real test will be the handling of these cases by Romania's judges, Ms Macovei stressed.

"I'm not too happy to notice that in many of these cases there are lots of postponements", she said.

When it comes to MPs, their cases are tried by the Supreme Court – an institution which Ms Macovei suggested is not fully detached from the political class.

"Here we have judges, appointed for life by the former president Iliescu without formal procedures, any criteria, any transparency," she said pointing to the court's president being a former counsellor to president Iliescu.

"These people could have at least sentimental or psychological attachments to the party who promoted them into the Supreme Court", Ms Macovei stated.

Click here to see the full interview

Full text of the interview with Monica Macovei

This article contains the full text of an interview with Romanian justice minister Monica Macovei by Valentina Pop, European Affairs editor with the Romanian daily newspaper "Romania libera," conducted for EUobserver on 3 January.

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