Romania – The Vagaries of International Grafts on Unsettled Constitutions [chapter]

Bogdan Iancu
2019 National Constitutions in European and Global Governance: Democracy, Rights, the Rule of Law  
The report observes thatwith context-driven caveatsthe Romanian Constitution could be categorised as representing 'legal' or post-authoritarian constitutionalism. The report outlines weaknesses in Romanian constitutionalism, including issues that have necessitated the EU post-accession monitoring procedure. At the same time, it also documents a number of ways in which EU law has caused strain on the constitutional culture. In particular, it emerges that many of the key adverse impacts of EU law
more » ... explored in the present research project were raised by Romanian courts. For example, the Romanian Constitutional Court was the first to annul the national law implementing the EU Data Retention Directive, and a lower instance court was the first, in Radu, to send a question about the presumption of innocence and liberty in the context of the automaticity of extraditions in the European Arrest Warrant system to the ECJ. The constitutional adjudication by the Constitutional Court is marked by a high proportion of annulments, especially on substantive grounds. The report also outlines the adjudication regarding the European Commission and IMF austerity programmes, social rights and the economic emergency regime. Regarding the discourse, the report makes insightful observations about the way the constitutional language and logic are changing through EU and transnational law, e.g. as regards the adaptation of the proportionality analysis from protecting the individual to benefitting commercial freedom. The report observes that the older methodological predilection for 'simplistic legal positivism with a thin Marxist sauce' (Czarnota) has been replaced by an equally simplistic and often instrumental internationalisation.
doi:10.1007/978-94-6265-273-6_22 fatcat:js4pnpm2wnbnhaajqzealmanga