Eight Western powers including Germany and the United States have said they are deeply concerned the decree could undermine Romania’s partnerships in the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
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Romania’s Social Democrat government on Sunday anulled a decree that would decriminalise some graft offences, an embarrassing u-turn for the country’s new prime minister in the face of week-long mass protests and worldwide rebuke.
After repealing the decree yesterday, Grindeanu asked the justice minister to prepare a draft law to be sent to parliament for debate and approval.
He is banned by law from serving as prime minister because he was handed a two-year prison sentence in April 2016 for vote-rigging.
Saturday saw a noisy march by tens of thousands of people, holding banners, waving flags and blowing whistles and vuvuzela horns, to the parliament building where they formed a human chain. While S&P Global Ratings said risks to Romania’s investment-grade status are now balanced, it warned that the turmoil could dent investor confidence and harm growth.
Victor Ciorbea, who had previously supported the government’s edict, said that he would tell the constitutional court that the measure risked “taking out of the reach of criminal law nearly all the public administration”.
President Iohannis has also filed a challenge to the constitutional court, which is due to rule…
After the repeal of the decree, people began to gather in front of the government headquarters in the capital calling on the government to resign, and the crowd quickly ballooned to hundreds of thousands.
Another protester, Marius, said it was important to maintain the pressure on the government. Grindeanu said the 200,000 lei threshold that sparked fury may be dropped in talks with parties and he’s considering whether to fire the justice minister, whose communication he criticized as “poor”.
An emergency ordinance decriminalizing abuse in office was published at 3 a.m.in the official government monitor and will soon automatically become law. You could take this week’s events in Romania, change the names and the locations, move around a few of the details, and the end result would probably be the same: protests.
At 9 p.m., protesters turned on their cell phone lights and pointed them at the sky, creating a sea of bright pinpoints. While Dragnea’s criminal conviction prevented him from becoming prime minister himself, many view him as the real power behind Romania’s new PSD-controlled government. “We need to see a commitment that the fight against corruption is still on”.
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The order, hastily adopted late on Tuesday, triggered some of the biggest nationwide demonstrations since Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist rule ended in a popular uprising and a Christmas Day firing squad in 1989.
