Reform of the Romanian Judiciary and the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism – Considering the Practice of the Romanian Constitutional Court

Abstract

Romania, an EU Member State since 1 January 2007 was subject to a Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification following the rules set forth by the European Commission’s Decision 2006/928/EC. This specific rule of law mechanism covered the functioning of the judiciary and the fight against corruption. Any method by which a Member State is monitored based on vague, subjective, and imprecisely measurable criteria is likely to cause political friction and scientific disputes. In the case of Romanian justice reform, there were more than simply disputes. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and Romanian Constitutional Court interpreted the situation differently. Beginning from an element of justice reform in Romania – the establishment of a special prosecutorial section to investigate crimes committed by judges and prosecutors – this study proposes to analyse these differences from a strictly scientific viewpoint, while raising some fundamental issues of European integration: the transfer of sovereignty, the concept of the rule of law, constitutional identity, and the competition of the Union’s regulatory power with that of Member States, as reflected by this fundamental disagreement between the CJEU and the Constitutional Court of Romania.