The financial independence of the Romanian Parliament

• Author: Verginia Vedinas, Gabriela Condurache
• Pages: 392-401

The financial independence of the Romanian Parliament1

Professor Verginia VEDINAȘ2

Assistant lecturer Gabriela CONDURACHE3

Abstract

Romania4 is a unitary state and constitutional democracy5 organised under the

principle of the separation of powers between the three branches of government –

legislative, executive, and judicial – and th e checks and balances between them. Since its

creation in 1862, the Romanian Parliament has traditionally been a bica meral legislature,

except during the communist era, a period during which it only had a single house. The

desire to put an end to the top-down policies that characterised the communist era was an

impetus for Romanian voters to return the legislature to its former bicameralism by

recasting the R omanian Parliament as a legislatu re composed of two houses, the House of

Representatives and the Senate.6 Senators and representatives are elected to four-year

terms by universal suffrage in free, secret, and equal popular elections. Both

representatives and senators are elected via the same voting mechanism, that is, by party-

list proportional representation.7 The manner in which the two houses are organised and

function, as well as their funding, is set out in the Constitution and in a number of

legislative and regulatory texts. In a first part (1), this article will analyse the rules for

creating, implementing, and auditing th e budgets of the two houses – which are the result

1 The French version of this article was published under the direction of Professors Michel Lascombe

et Aurélien Baudu in the French magazine Gestion et finances publiques, no. 5, Sept-Oct. 2018, pp.

78-83. Moreover, this article was the subject of an intervention in the framework of an

international symposium on "Public funding of parliaments in Europe: financial autonomy in

debate (s)", organised by the EU Court of Auditors, Sciences PO Lille and the University of Lille,

Luxembourg - Court of Auditors of the EU, on 22 and 23 March 2018.

2 Verginia Vedinaș - Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, Romania, prof.verginia.

vedinas@gmail.com.

3 Gabriela Condurache – PhD, assistant lecturer in public law, CERAPS (UMR – 8026), Université

de Lille, France, gabriela.condurache@etu.univ-lille2.fr.

4 Romania neighbours Bulgaria to the south, the Republic of Moldova to the east, Ukraine to the

northeast, Hungary to the northwest, Serbia to the southwest, and the Black Sea to the southeast. Its

territorial area measures 238,391 km2 (92,043 sq. mi.), and it is home, according to the latest

census data from 2011, to a population of 20,121,641 inhabitants. The country’s official language

is Romanian (a Romance language). Its currency is the “leu” (plural: lei): 1 euro = 4.5 lei

(Condurache G., Le pouvoir local roumain, 2013, 92 pp., ISSN 2112-5953, online at

http://www.ola-europe.com/index.php?eID=tx_nawsecuredl&u=0&file=fileadmin/user_upload/

ressources/monographie/mono_fr/mono_roumanie_fr_2013.pdf&t=1458126144&hash=9e2729

abfe2c954c94e43397bea6d1f4, consulted on 1.09.2018)

5 Article 1 of the Romanian Constitution of 8 December 1991 as amended by Law 429 of 23 October

2003 (amendment approved by a national referendum held on 18-19 October 2003).

6 After bitter debate as to whether Romania’s Parliament should be unicameral or bicameral among

members of the Constitutional Assembly tasked with drafting Romania’s first post-communist

constitution, champions of a bicameral parliament were successful in pleading their cause. Article

58, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution of 8 December 1991 provides that “the Parliament is co mposed

of the House of Representatives and the Senate”.

7 After the December 2016 elections, Parliament numbered 465 members (329 representatives and

136 senators), down 123 from December 2012 (588 members of Parliament – 394 representatives

and 176 senators).