Social Democrat deputy Mihai Fifor said on Monday that the wording of the letter the government sent last week to the president of the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) amounts to "a heavy-handed interference" with constitutional justice and an "obvious" breach of the separation of powers.
"We know Ilie Bolojan has dictatorial reflexes, that's no longer a surprise to anyone. But this time he has gone too far. Perhaps someone should whisper in his earpiece that Romania is still a democratic country, a member of the EU and NATO. You can't help but seriously question whether the prime minister is all right when you read the letter the government sent to the president of the Constitutional Court on February 6. The way this official document is formulated represents a heavy-handed interference in constitutional justice and an obvious violation of the separation of powers. When a prime minister signals to a court what consequences a decision that doesn't sit well with the government would have, we are no longer talking about loyal cooperation between institutions. We are talking about political pressure," Fifor wrote on Facebook.
He stressed that constitutional judges are not subordinate to the prime minister, and that if the political majority is dissatisfied, it has the option of amending the law through Parliament.
"Does the prime minister even grasp how dangerous the idea is that the will of the Executive should outweigh the Constitution? This is the logic of a dictatorial regime. In a democracy, the government does not send warnings to the Court and does not condition justice on financial or political objectives. Constitutional judges are not subordinate to the prime minister. That is why the Social Democratic Party firmly denounces this conduct. In a democracy, justice is not done on command. Judges must not serve anyone's interests. They must defend the Constitution and the laws of the country. And if the political power is dissatisfied, it has the democratic path of amending the law through Parliament. It has no right to intimidate. If a PSD prime minister had even dared to think of such a gesture, Bolojan's USR-aligned 'resisters' would have stormed Victoria Palace in the name of the rule of law. Their silence today does not make the act any less serious," the PSD lawmaker said.
In his view, "a red line" has been crossed. "Such a slip must be exposed and firmly sanctioned. Accepting it would mean normalizing the idea that the Executive can dictate, even indirectly, how a court should rule. And once that happens, the separation of powers no longer exists. With its disappearance, democracy and the rule of law disappear as well, and dictatorship takes over," Mihai Fifor argued.
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan last week notified the Constitutional Court about the consequences of postponing a ruling on magistrates' pensions. He had previously announced he would notify the Court about the potential impact of a delay. According to the prime minister, if the CCR postpones its decision, there is a "very high" risk that Romania will lose funds under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).
Bolojan noted that access to NRRP funds depends on meeting the milestones Romania has committed to. "One of them, milestone No. 215, concerns magistrates' pensions, where almost 230 million euros are currently withheld. From the discussions our teams had with the European Commission last week, the Commission considers that this milestone has not been met. So the idea that it has been fulfilled is false," he said.
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