Romania has made very little progress to put in place measures to prevent corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors and to address the concerns raised by its controversial judicial reform, says the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body (GRECO) in two reports published today.
Consequently, GRECO calls on the Romanian authorities to take determined action to achieve tangible progress as soon as possible. It welcomes, in this context, that on 4 June the Romanian Prime Minister announced the intention to abandon the controversial judicial reforms.
In a compliance report assessing progress in implementing measures recommended in 2015 to prevent corruption in respect of MPs, judges and prosecutors, GRECO concludes that Romania has only fully complied with four of thirteen recommendations, whilst it has partly implemented three and not implemented six (see the Romanian version of the compliance report).
In a follow up report evaluating compliance with the recommendations issued in an ad hoc report concerning the judicial reform prepared under its urgent evaluation procedure in 2018, GRECO finds that the Romanian authorities have only implemented one out of five recommendations (see the Romanian version of the follow-up report).
With respect to MPs, GRECO points out that the Romanian authorities have not yet reviewed, as requested, the rules and practices of the legislative process. Despite GRECO’s appeal to limit the use of emergency procedures to exceptional circumstances, the authorities continued resorting to them for adopting important legal amendments.

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