Renate Weber Would Deserve a Putin Award: Are We Losing the SAFE Program?

On Thursday, Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled by a vote of five to four that a constitutional legal conflict exists between parliament and the government, because the already-ousted cabinet of Ilie Bolojan had adopted an emergency government ordinance on the SAFE program. SAFE is the EU loan program through which Romania can access several billion euros, to be spent not only on weapons and military equipment but also on defense-related infrastructure, such as railway and highway development. It is not yet known what the consequences of the ruling will be, but once again the letter of the law has overridden its spirit, and the end result could be that Putin goes on sending drones over the Black Sea unimpeded, while Romania loses the funds meant to strengthen its own defense.

The ruling was initiated by Sorin Grindeanu, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and leader of the PSD, who at the time had even threatened to file a criminal complaint against Bolojan. According to the Constitutional Court's statement, the Bolojan government, "exceeding its constitutional role," exercised its power to issue emergency ordinances, since under Article 110(4) of the Constitution a government that has been ousted by a motion of no confidence may only take the administrative measures necessary to manage current affairs. The court argued that if an ousted government could decide for itself what counts as urgent, it would also be deciding for itself how long its legislative powers last — meaning that, ultimately, it would not be parliament overseeing the government, but the government overseeing the legislature. The ruling is final and generally binding. On the same day, the Constitutional Court postponed its decision on the separate petition in which Ombudsman Renate Weber challenged the ordinance itself, calling it unconstitutional. The fate of the SAFE ordinance therefore remains uncertain, and ultimately hinges on what the judges decide to do with Weber's petition.

Renate Weber — whom the PSD has kept in her post for years despite her mandate having expired — is doing the Russians such a favor with this that she could personally request a medal from Putin, and would likely get one. In her petition of May 12, she argues, among other things, that the final version of the ordinance was never reviewed by the Legislative Council, that because it affects property rights it should have been approved through an organic law, and that the emergency government ordinance was published in the Official Gazette on May 8, even though the Bolojan government had already been ousted three days earlier, on May 5, meaning it no longer had the right to issue ordinances. I cannot say how solid her legal arguments are, but this last one is particularly weak, since a piece of legislation like this is not drafted in three days — it is clearly the result of a long preparatory process. Although, according to Grindeanu's own petition, the government added twelve new articles to the draft on the morning of May 5, the very day of the no-confidence vote, the substance of the ordinance had been ready much earlier, and it serves the country's defense, not the political ambitions of an outgoing government. This ruling is a textbook case of the letter of the law overriding its spirit — and this time the result does not strengthen the rule of law, but rather Moscow, whose drones have struck commercial ships near the Romanian coast in recent weeks.

What's more, this is the same Constitutional Court whose ranks include such unimpeachable figures as Csaba Asztalos, and which found nothing unconstitutional in the amendment written into the integrity law specifically to target Dominic Fritz. According to G4Media, this vote too showed that the court has a PSD-friendly majority. Since SAFE is an EU program tied to deadlines, it could easily happen that Romania loses the whole thing because of one foolish but sufficiently malicious bureaucrat whom the PSD is keeping in her post illegally.

Ugar