The status of civil servants - between aspirations towards professional excellence and political interference

• Author: Anamaria Groza
• Position: Faculty of Law, University of Craiova, Romania
• Pages: 502-514

The status of civil servants - between aspirations towards professional

excellence and political interference

Lecturer Anamaria GROZA1

Abstract

The Romanian society has, as a national objective, a public administration outside

the political influence and the recruitment of competent and performant public servants.

One of the instruments to realize this objective is, no doubt, the legal status of the public

servants. This study is aimed to identify and analyse the elements of vulnerability witch the

Law 188/1999 concerning the public servants and the project of the Administrative Code

contain, from the perspective of the political influences. The main issue of the study is to be

aware of the institutions, procedures and factors witch make fragile the legal status of the

public servants, allowing, by example, the political parties membership of the public

servants or their recruitment in absence of a national competition, organised by an entity

specialised in the development of the public function in Romania. The project of the

Administrative Code brings remedies only in part for the existing problems, while amplifies

others. O very difficult, actual and vulnerable matter is the policy of salaries of public

servants, in the context of the Decision n. 794/2016 of the Constitutional Court. The

research has an explicative, but also a critic character. Also, solutions are offered in order

to increase the degree of accomplishment of a competent, transparent and political neutral

administration.

Keywords: civil servants, Romanian administrative law, Administrative Code,

depoliticization, public administration.

JEL Classification: K23

1. Analysis from the perspective of Law no. 188/1999 on the Civil

Servants' Statute

The civil servant is the main human resource in the central and local public

administration. "If the official is weak, incompetent, bad faith, poorly remunerated,

the result of his work will be worthless, of quality." If the official is competent,

fair, professional, responsible in relation to his work, the result will be successful,

beneficial for the official, but also for the citizens who benefit from his services."2

1 Anamaria Groza – Faculty of Law, University of Craiova, Ro mania, anamariagroza80@gmail.com.

2 Verginia Vedinaș, Cât de drept este cu funcționarii publici statul de drept?, „Revista de Drept

Public”, no. 3/2012 p. 13.