Financiarul

The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) has not repealed the entire article in the Senate’s Regulations that regards the procedures of dismissing the Senate chairman, and consequently the dismissal procedure has not been abrogated, Senator Mircea Andrei of the ruling Democratic-Liberal Party (PD-L), a member on the Senate’s Juridical Committee, told a news conference on Wednesday.

He added that CCR ruled as unconstitutional only the first two paragraphs of Article 30 that mention the possibility of dismissing the Senate chairman on a motion of one third of the total number of senators, for violation of the Constitution or serious and repeated violations of the Senate’s Regulations, while the remaining were kept in force.

Andrei also said that the considerations of the CCR are not mandatory, but the provisions of its rulings, meaning that the statement of the court that the Senate chairman may be dismissed only by the group that appointed him to office is not mandatory.
He argued that the provisions in the Senate’s regulations mentioning the preservation of the political algorithm in the dispensation of offices in keeping with the composition of Parliament as resulting from elections are ‘unconstitutional and a hindrance to law making by the majority.’

‘We have asked officials of the opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) when they insisted on independents being replaced not to open the Pandora’s box because that will lead to pressure being put on the Senate’s Regulations as they are now. It is clear that the regulations currently do not cover all the possible situations of party disputes.
It is possible that what is happening today in relation to the dismissal of the chairman will further lead to a new regulation concerning keeping or not keeping the political algorithm,’ said Andrei.

‘We will exercise our senatorial right, according to Article 85 of the Regulations, so that our petition, which will be forwarded to the Standing Bureau for being included on the agenda of the plenary session in accordance with Article 30 (4), will be drawn up by the senators and not parliamentary groups.
This is no political decision, because we are talking about violations of the Regulations, an abuse of the office of the Senate chairman perpetrated by one of our colleagues.

We, as senators, may ask that this abuse be penalised and the penalty for abuse of office in any democracy is dismissal. Nobody can censure the right of the parliamentarians to settle by vote any problem notified to the two chambers of Parliament,’ PD-L Senator Iulian Urban said in his turn.
Urban mentioned that if the decision to dismiss Mircea Geoana as Senate chairman is taken by a plenary decision, the decision cannot be challenged at the Constitutional Court, because this is regulated under a decision of CCR.

Chief of the PD-L Senate group Traian Igas, who is also chair of the Regulations Committee, said the modifications to be brought to the Regulations, including those resulting from being declared unconstitutional by CCR, may not be approved because the committee cannot operate. Igas said that the senators of the opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL) do not attend the works of the committee, which precludes the committee from working for lack of a quorum.

Igas told a plenary session of the Senate on Tuesday that he will start a procedure for suspending PSD’s Mircea Geoana from the office of the Senate Chairman, mentioning later on that he will ask for Geoana’s dismissal.