“”We have seen progress in some areas but there is still more work to be done. Romania has met some of our recommendations, but there is not enough progress yet on others. I count on the Romanian Government to pursue the necessary reforms, and to avoid backtracking, so that we can work together towards the goal of ending the CVM under this Commission’s mandate,” said Commission first vice-president Frans Timmermans.
The Commission’s report acknowledges that Romania has made progress regarding certain recommendations within the CVM, such as ensuring the entry into operation of the PREVENT system, a system which entered into operation in June and is designed to prevent conflicts of interests in public procurement procedures.
However, progress was hindered by political turmoil. “Progress in addressing the January 2017 CVM recommendations has been affected by the political situation. Within a nine months period since the January 2017 report, Romania has seen two governments, while growing tensions between state powers (Parliament, Government and Judiciary) made the cooperation between them increasingly difficult,” the report reads.
“While progress in meeting some recommendations was advancing well, the reform momentum in course of 2017 was lost overall, slowing down the fulfilment of the remaining recommendations, and with the risk of re-opening issues which the January 2017 report had considered as fulfilled. Challenges to and questioning judicial independence have also been a persistent source of concern,” the report adds.
The report also mentions the emergency decree that decriminalized certain corruption offences and the proposal on a pardon law that the previous Government wanted to pass in January and which prompted Romania’s biggest protests since the fall of the communist regime.
According to the Commission, even though certain benchmarks are closer to fulfillment, “the Commission cannot yet conclude that any of the benchmarks are at this stage satisfactorily fulfilled.”
The Commission will re-evaluate Romania’s progress towards the end of 2018.
The CVM was set up at the accession of Romania to the European Union in 2007 to address shortcomings in judicial reform and the fight against corruption. The European Commission set four benchmarks and made twelve key recommendations for Romania to follow so as to lead to the conclusion of the CVM process.
The four benchmarks are judicial independence and judicial reform, integrity framework and the National Integrity Agency, tackling high-level corruption and tackling corruption at all levels.