Romania picks fight with Brussels over corruption monitoring

Requests for information about court cases dubbed ‘totally inappropriate.’

Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă demanded Jean-Claude Juncker explain why the European Commission had asked for information on individual corruption cases in her country.

Dăncilă wrote to the Commission president on Wednesday to find out why it had demanded to know the state of play in pending corruption cases against politicians and businessmen, including former Prime Minister Adrian Năstase, media mogul Dan Voiculescu and businessman Gheorghe Copos.

The Commission had asked for “a short description of the state of play” and the next procedural steps in the prosecution in these specific cases in a 2012 letter to the Romanian government. There have been other requests, the government said. The requests formed part of the corruption monitoring scheme the Commission made Romania and Bulgaria sign up to when they joined the EU in 2007.

Dăncilă said she found the requests “totally inappropriate and not in line” with the scheme, called the Corruption and Verification Mechanism.

Her Social Democrat Party leader, Liviu Dragnea, himself the target of corruption accusations in cases pending in court, went further when speaking to reporters on Monday, calling it “a brutal interference in Romanian justice.”

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He said the demands could be interpreted as a push by the Commission to find the people involved guilty. “We find it unprecedented, very serious,” said Dragnea, who is also president of the lower chamber of the Romanian parliament.

A Commission spokesman said the demand “was part of the usual technical exchanges” under the corruption monitoring program. One of the measures that Romania is monitored on is conducting professional, non-partisan investigations into allegations of high-level corruption, according to the spokesman.

The 2012 document was made public on Sunday night in a TV show aired by Antena3, a channel owned by jailed businessman and former politician Voiculescu.

Recent Romanian governments have called for the Corruption and Verification Mechanism to end before the country holds the presidency of the Council of the EU next year. Juncker promised to terminate it before he leaves office next year, but recent changes made by the Romanian parliament to judicial laws have thrown this into doubt.

The scheme was introduced for Romania and Bulgaria because they still had progress to make in judicial reforms and anti-corruption measures when they joined the EU, according to the Commission.

More than a decade on, the scheme is seen by some in the Romanian government and parliament as a form of discrimination, given that other EU members such as Poland and Hungary have implemented controversial changes to their legal systems. The former is facing sanctions from the Commission over its judicial reforms.