Who’s afraid of the DNA? (2)
Since 2013, when prosecuting corruption became “hot” in Romania, the National Anticorruption Directorate has successfully investigated thousands of corruption cases. Politicians, ministers, public servants of all kinds, businessmen and business owners, policemen, military and Secret Service officers, priests, professors, doctors and health professionals, judges, prosecutors or lawyers make up the varied, and always surprising spectrum of those who entered through the wooden doors of the DNA’s headquarters and emerged in handcuffs. More importantly, thanks to the DNA’s efforts, shady moguls whom everybody had thought untouchable, such as Dan Voiculescu, Adrian Nastase or Gigi Becali, turned out not to be immune to Justice after all.
This encouraged Romanians to keep fighting for the rule of law. The country where in 1999 two thirds of the population thought that all or most public servants were corrupt is the same country where a whopping 59.8% of Romanians trust the DNA, compared to other institutions such as the Parliament (12.6%) or the Government (22.6%). At the same time, according to a report published by the European Union, the Romanian corruption prosecution office is in the top 5 anti-corruption EU institutions and “has achieved impressive results in solving high and mid-level corruption cases”.
Laura Codruta Kovesi
Such impressive results would definitely have not been achieved without Laura Codruta Kovesi. In 2013, Kovesi, Romania’s Attorney General, was appointed Head of the DNA. She had been the first woman and the youngest Attorney General in the history of Romania, as well as the only public servant to have held this office for the full length of her mandate. A former basketball player with a prosecutor father, Kovesi soon managed to transform the DNA from a sluggish, unimpressive institution into a staunch ally of the citizens and the state.
In 2015, a record year for the war on corruption (embezzlement, bribe giving or taking, money laundering, forgery, aiding and abetting criminals, etc.), 5 times more ministers and MPs were sent to court than in 2013, out of the over 1,250 defendants investigated for high and mid-level corruption acts that year. The DNA also instituted precautionary measures worth half a billion euros, equal to the funds allocated for highways in 2016, 2017 and 2018 taken together. In April 2016, President Klaus Iohannis renewed Kovesi’s mandate for another three years.
Not everybody was thrilled at the DNA’s success. The opposition had long said that the DNA’s activity was politically motivated and that it should be disbanded. Therefore, there were plenty of reasons to worry when the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the party with the most corruption investigations and convictions, won local elections by an overwhelming majority in June 2016. Key PSD figures began to talk about a potential amnesty law based on an amended penal code to reduce overcrowding in prison — something they claimed had been imposed by the European Court of Human Rights, which would have also fined Romania €80 million per year unless the issue was solved. They also doubled down on the mud-slinging against the DNA and the Romanian Judiciary, stoking fears of an upcoming attack on Justice.
On January 18th, 2017, two weeks after the PSD Government was sworn in, it became clear that there were more than enough reasons to be afraid. President Klaus Iohannis participated for the first time at the government’s weekly press conference to announce that “there are two elephants in the room and no one is talking about them: the amnesty emergency decree and the penal code amendment emergency decree”. Thus he broke the news that the Government had been trying to pass the two laws over night, rendering the fight against corruption in Romania ineffective. The decrees decriminalised cases of official misconduct if the damage amounted to less than 200,000 RON (38,000 GBP) and would have potentially helped Liviu Dragnea, PSD’s President, to avoid prison and have his sentence suspended, thus eliminating the only obstacle standing in the way between him and the Presidential Palace.
When the decrees were ultimately passed overnight on January 30th, thousands of people gathered up in the street in the main Romanian cities to protest both the content of the decrees and the way they had been passed. Every day, more and more people demonstrated in temperatures well below 0 °C, until on Sunday, February 5th, 600,000 protesters in Romania and the diaspora joined forces to make their voices heard when they cried out “Let DNA come get you!”. It was the largest protest in Romania since the Revolution in 1989. Eventually, the emergency decree known as OUG 13 was abrogated and the Minister of Justice, Florin Tudose, resigned.
The latest assault on Justice
However, the PSD Government’s attempt to introduce more favourable conditions for corrupt politicians did not stop. The govrenment has been trying to change the structure of the Judiciary in 3 fundamental ways, which would remove Kovesi from the DNA and sap the power of the fight against corruption: a) having the Minister of Justice appoint the chiefs of prosecution offices such as the DNA or DIICOT; b) subordinating the Judiciary Inspection, which investigates and proposes sanctions for prosecutors, to the Minister of Justice; and c) undermining prosecutors’ autonomy by enabling their superiors to invalidate decisions taken by case prosecutors on grounds of legality, as well as content.
Romania’s successful fight against corruption has turned the country into “the last bastion of political rationality in Eastern Europe”, the very opposite of democratically backsliding states such as Poland or Hungary. However, Romania’s progress is under threat, as shown by Jean-Claude Juncker’s warning when he said earlier this week that “the rule of law is not optional in the EU”. There’s no doubt he was obliquely pointing out that the pressure exerted on the DNA and the Judiciary in the past year by the Romanian Government has not gone unnoticed by the European Union.
Hopefully, this will count for something.
