PNL protests against PSD-backed AEP's new party law

In Romania, three people can currently found a party, but the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) would raise the threshold to one hundred, and since the rules are being rewritten anyway, it would also take over registration from the Bucharest Court. The Liberals announced on Friday that they want none of this, since the AEP happens to be headed by Adrian Țuțuianu, a former PSD senator.

The three-person threshold has some history behind it. Romania once required 25,000 founders for a party, until the Constitutional Court — thanks to activist Dan Masca from Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhely), later founder and chairman of the POL party — ruled in 2015 that this was unconstitutional, and since then three people have been enough to start one. The draft published by the AEP in August would require one hundred Romanian citizens with voting rights, and both men and women would have to be among the founders. Țuțuianu points to the example of other EU countries, but according to Expert Forum, the fact that the register contains many barely functioning or hard-to-reach parties does not make it clear why it should be made harder for parties now being formed. A dusty register is easier to clean up than it is to round up another ninety-seven people.

The bigger debate is about
who would sit at the gate

The August version would have left both the registration and the dissolution of parties to the AEP, but by late September Țuțuianu was already saying that the authority could only initiate dissolution, while the decision would remain with the judiciary. Registration would still be handled by the AEP, and according to Țuțuianu this is also backed by the Superior Council of Magistracy. Under the original draft, a rejection could be challenged at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, meaning that anyone who today takes their application straight to a judge would, under the new system, only get there by contesting the authority's decision.

According to the PNL, the electoral rules should be drafted in a special parliamentary committee in which every parliamentary party has a seat. The Liberals also promise their own proposal for making the leadership of the AEP politically independent and for setting up a multi-party supervisory board. On Friday the authority rejected the claim that it serves the PSD's interests, pointing out that it has been consulting for months with parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties, civil society organizations and university experts. The Liberals' objection nevertheless still stands: if party registration is to be entrusted to the electoral authority, it would be worth first agreeing on who appoints the head of that authority, and how.

Fallow