European Dimension of Legal Education. A comparative study of the Romanian Law curricula and EU Law syllabus

• Author: Brindusa Camelia Gorea
• Position: Associated Professor, PhD, 'Dimitrie Cantemir' University of Targu-Mures
• Pages: 146-153

European Integration - Realities and Perspectives

2012

146



European Dimension of Legal Education.

A comparative study of the Romanian Law Curricula and EU Law Syllabus

Brindua Camelia Gorea

1

Abstract: Our purpose is to provide a detailed view on the European legal education system in Romania.

There are few papers on EU legal education policy in Romania. We try to fill this gap in some extend, as a

part of a larger research we conducted in the past 3 years. Our s ources of evidence were: the Romanian

legislation; a representative number of law curricula and EU law syllabus and a res earch survey of Romanian

students, EU law professors and legal practitioners. We found out that the “traditional” Law specialization is

more desir ed by the potential students than the European Law specialization. Nevertheless, Romanian law

schools have enough di scretion to introduce more EU law disciplines. By targeting the weak parts of the EU

legal education system, our s tudy may reveal its benefits to law professors, legal researchers, responsible

factors within the Romanian law departments and even to the Romanian legislator. This paper provides a

short explanation of the ascension and development of EU legal studies in Romania, an overview of the key

issues in the law curricula and the EU law syllabus and r ecommendations on the reforming the EU legal

education in Romania.

Keywords: EU legal studies; legal education policy; curricular choices

1. Introduction

On January 1

st

2007, Romania joined the European Union, along with Bulgaria. It was the latest

expansion of the EU, considered by the European Commission as part of the same wave (the fifth) i.e.

enlargement of the European Union in 2004.

The Romanian Constitution (§ 32 (6) – “Right to education”) warranties the autonomy of any

university. Nevertheless, EU legal education – like any other form of public education – is, to some

extent, under state’s control and command. The academic autonomy and discretion is not

unconditional; universities have to follow the national policy of public education. Likewise, the

academic teaching staff is following state decision and has to comply with state regulations. On the

other hand, the teachers are subordinated to the universities in a lower extent being just their

employees; regarding the way of teaching, they enjoy almost full discretion.

Although Romanian higher education institutions are independent, autonomous entities, the Romanian

state imposes the minimum standards to provide a certain quality of academic studies.

First of all, the general frame of the educational system is set by the Romanian Constitution and the

organic law on education, No 1 / 2011. Nevertheless, the kind of normative information needed for

this study is to be found not in such general laws, but in lower-ranking provisions like governmental

and ministerial acts, emphasizing and interpreting the normative acts (Tomuleiu et al. 2010).

Moreover, in view of the academic education, in 2005 was established The Romanian Agency for

Quality Assurance in Higher Education (RAQAHE), an autonomous public institution of national

1

Associated Professor, PhD, “ Dimitrie Cantemir” University of Targu-Mures, 3-5 Bodoni Sandor Street, Targu-Mures,

Romania, +(40) 744357878. Corresponding author: brindusagorea@yahoo.com.