February 27, 2019 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 27.02.2019, 20:09

REACTIONS Romanian politicians had various reactions on Wednesday after the
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) in the European
Parliament had granted 26 votes to the former chief of Romania’s main
anti-corruption agency (DNA), Laura Codruta Kovesi who is running for the seat
of chief prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Kovesi was
followed by French Jean-Francois Bohnert with 22 votes and Andreas Ritter of
Germany with one. Kovesi has also mustered the largest number of votes 22, in
the Committee on Budgetary Control. The future chief prosecutor of the European
Prosecutor’s Office will be appointed after negotiations between the community
legislature and the Council of the member states, which has previously granted
more points to the French candidate. The opposition in Bucharest hailed Kovesi’s
success and criticized the ruling PSD-ALDE coalition for ‘having betrayed
Romania’ by masterminding a smear campaign against the Romanian candidate. PSD
and ALDE have underlined the vote in the LIBE committee was a perfect proof of
‘how the political factor can influence this choice’ adding the Romanian
Social-Democratic MEPs have voted against Kovesi in response to the abuses she
committed while heading the DNA in Bucharest. The European Prosecutor’s Office is
to be an independent and decentralized prosecution office of the European Union
with competences for investigating, prosecuting and bringing to justice crimes
against the EU budget, such as fraud, corruption or cross-border VAT fraud.
This body is due to begin activity by the end of next year.

TROOPS Nearly 500 servicemen from the US ground troops deployed to Europe and
their equipment are to arrive at the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase in
south-eastern Romania at the end of this month. According to a communiqué
issued by the Romanian Defence Ministry, the US troops are to remain in Romania
nine months after which they are to be replaced by other units so that a
continuous rotation of troops in Europe is achieved as part of the US
commitment to providing security in NATO’s eastern flank. The US servicemen
will join their Romanian counterparts for various multinational drills. In
another development over 1100 troops are to attend the first multinational
exercise staged by the Romanian Navy in 2019 entitled ‘Poseidon 19’. The event
will bring together warships from Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain and Turkey.
A Puma Naval helicopter, two MIG 21 and two F-16 fighter jets belonging to the
Romanian Air Forces are to participate in the exercise.

JUSTICE In 2018 big pressure was
exerted on the Romanian justice system and moves to change the justice laws and
the criminal codes continued, said Wednesday Romania’s prosecutor general
Augustin Lazar at the Public Ministry assessment meeting. He added that last
year politicians did their best and managed to dismiss the chief prosecutor of
the National Anticorruption Directorate. The prosecutor general underlined in
his speech that the proposals of the General Prosecutors’ Office
representatives were ignored when legislative amendments were passed. According
to Lazar, some of the amendments run counter to Romania’s international
obligations and the European bodies confirmed the appropriateness of the Public
Ministry’s stand on the matter. Prosecutors had to deal with 1.7 million files
in 2018 of which they solved more than 500 thousand. Attending the assessment
meeting, the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said that Romanians wanted to
have a country without corruption. The interference of the political factor in
the judiciary has become more visible, he added. Today’s meeting is taking
place in the context in which hundreds of magistrates from across Romania are
protesting against the new modifications brought to the justice laws through an
emergency decree.

(translated by bill)