The year 2018 in Review

Roxana Vasile, 05.01.2019, 14:06

An extremely agitated political year

The
Romanians who had expected a peaceful cohabitation between the President and
the Government, saw their hopes shattered in 2018 as well. The war between the right-of-center
President Klaus Iohannis and the leftist government coalition formed by the
Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats and ran by
Viorica Dancila since January 29th, reached a climax.

Even
if in 2018 Romania celebrated 100 years since the creation of the Romanian
unitary state, the two sides were unable to end hostilities. Supported by the
Liberals, president Iohannis, who in June had already announced his intention
to run for another presidential mandate, criticised almost the entire activity
of the Government and of the parliamentary majority all throughout the year, including
the changes brought to the justice laws, the Criminal Code and the Code of
Criminal Procedure, the preparations for taking over the rotating presidency of
the EU Council, the new salary law, the public pension law, the transfer of the
obligation to pay contributions to the welfare fund from employers to
employees, the idea of relocating the Romanian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv
to Jerusalem and the budget adjustment.

Klaus
Iohannis challenged at the Constitutional Court the unconstitutionality of a
record number of legislative changes and re-sent to Parliament for
reexamination a large number of laws. Moreover, he repeatedly asked for the
resignation of either Viorica Dancila, or of the entire Government, invoking
their lack of competence. In fact, the opposition parties – the National
Liberal Party, the Save Romania Union and the People’s Movement Party – filed
two no-confidence and several simple motions, all of which were rejected. In
November, President Iohannis accepted the government reshuffle proposed by the
PM, with the exception of the ministers of development and transport, and that
is why the Constitutional Court of Romania ruled that the president did not
fulfill his constitutional responsibilities when failing to acknowledge the
vacancies created by the resignation of the two ministers.

Justice, one of the main reasons for
division within Romanian society

The
eye of the political and social storm in Romania in 2018 was the justice
system. At the end of the year, Minister Tudorel Toader announced he would submit
to President Klaus Iohannis the request for the dismissal of Romania’s
Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar. In February the same year, Tudorel Toader
had called for the dismissal of the head of the National Anticorruption
Directorate, Laura Codruta Kovesi. For months
in a row, Klaus Iohannis vehemently opposed the measure, but in July, forced by
the Constitutional Court, he signed the decree for dismissal. He rejected, however,
the appointment of Adina Florea for the office left vacant by Ms. Kovesi,
invoking legal compliance conditions, and that is why the National Anticorruption
Directorate is even today run by an interim head.

Seen
as the spearhead of the fight against corruption until Laura Codruta Kovesi’s dismissal,
in 2018 the Directorate sent fewer cases to court. The number of acquittals,
however, went up, corroborated with the fleeing abroad of high-ranking
dignitaries, who had received definitive sentences and whose extradition the
Romanian state did not manage to obtain. Other rulings of the Constitutional
Court, including the one establishing the illegality of the 5-judge panels,
affected trials and sentences too, and many convictions previously received by
well-known figures were suspended. The Social Democratic Party – PSD and the Alliance
of Liberals and Democrats – ALDE saw this as a victory against the so-called
illegitimate parallel state which, in their opinion, is trying to oust the
lawfully elected political power by using fabricated criminal cases created
also with the help of some secret protocols signed with the intelligence
services, whose existence was also revealed in 2018. MPs in the opposition and
part of the civil society say, on the other hand, that this is an obvious
attempt of the Social Democrats to take control of the judiciary, so that some
of them, starting with their leader Liviu Dragnea, would not be brought to
justice.

One
of the biggest street protests against PSD and against the Government was
definitely the one held on August 10 in Bucharest, when gendarmes used teargas
and water canons against protesters. Military prosecutors opened an
investigation into the matter after hundreds of protesters filed complaints
against the gendarmes. The latter said they only did their job, in keeping with
the law. In Brussels, the European Commission and Parliament warned the ruling
coalition that the independence of justice, the observance of the rule of law
and the fight against corruption regressed in the past year.

A good year for Romanian
agriculture

In
2018 Romanian agriculture reported extraordinary results, as it ranked first in
Europe in terms of corn and sunflower production, while its cereal crop,
totaling 31 million tons, put the country third in Europe after France and
Germany. Authorities say that subsidies paid on time, the technology used by
farmers, the extension of irrigated areas and the anti-hail protection led to
this result, in spite of difficult weather conditions. Also, agriculture and
rural development drew European funds, being the sectors with the highest
absorption rate at national level. These exceptional results were overshadowed,
however, by the African swine fever, the most serious animal disease Romania
has been faced with after WWII.

Also in 2018…

The
retrospective of 2018 in Romania is not complete without mentioning that the
main international financial bodies, such as the IMF, the World Bank, the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Commission as
well as the main rating agencies issued moderate forecasts regarding Romania’s
economic growth, the biggest in the EU so far, and warned of the risk of a
higher budget deficit. Also in 2018, in the month of October, around 21% of the
citizens with the right to vote, that is 3.9 million people, took part in a
referendum on the revision of Romania’s Constitution, in the sense of
redefining family as a freely consented marriage between a man and a woman and
not between spouses, as it is at present. 91.5% of the participants in the
referendum voted in favor, but the voter turnout was below the 30% threshold
needed for the referendum to be valid.

Also
in 2018 Romania said good bye to some outstanding personalities, such as Doina
Cornea, a symbol of the anti-communist resistance, film director Lucian
Pintilie, historian Neagu Djuvara, sports journalist Cristian Topescu and
football player Ilie Balaci.