Illinois Global Review

Since the fall of communism in December 1989, Romania has been on a steady path of democratization. Today, Romania stands as a much more robust democracy than it did in the years following the revolution. It has a stable electoral process which consistently transitions power from administration to administration without violence. Additionally, Romania has joined the EU, recently becoming a member of the Schengen Zone, and NATO, which is currently expanding the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base into the largest NATO base in Europe.

Despite these tangible, positive steps, Romanian democracy is not without its flaws. Voter turnout, for example, is one of the lowest in the EU. Even in the highly controversial presidential elections of May 2025, voter turnout reached only 64.72%. Corruption is widely seen as an issue, ranking 70th in the world with a score of 45 out of 100, only 3 points above the global average. Romania also lacks quality in the rule of law; the Varieties of Democracy Project rates its rule of law as 0.69 on a scale of 0 to 1, making it the third lowest in the EU.

Yet, most concerning out of all these issues are the authoritarian legalist tactics used to attack multiple aspects of the independence of the judiciary. Using the convoluted hierarchical systems of the judiciary to hide its tracks, certain actors associated with the Romanian Social Democratic Party, Partidul Social Democrat (PSD), are increasingly politicizing the judiciary and hindering the efforts of the main anti-corruption agency in the judicial branch, the National Anticorruption Directorate, or Direcția Națională Anticorupție (DNA). These actions are a part of a larger effort by the Romanian political elite to evade anti-corruption measures, ‘legalize’ certain forms of corruption, centralize power in the hands of a single political party, and weaken the role of the judiciary in the system of checks and balances. Many of these issues are ‘flying under the radar’ because of Romania’s status as an EU member and relatively well-functioning democracy, but the following issues are ripe for exploitation by non-democratic actors.

Looking back to 2017, the PSD, which led the ruling government coalition, proposed legislation that would commute the sentences of those charged or convicted of crimes related to corruption and abuse of power. This legislation benefited the leader of the PSD, Liviu Dragnea, who had already been found guilty of attempting to rig a national referendum and was the subject of an ongoing DNA investigation. According to PSD Prime Minister Grindeanu, the reasoning behind this legislation was that it was necessary to reduce the overflowing prison population. Dragnea wasn’t the only beneficiary either; the list of beneficiaries includes former government ministers, businessmen, and local officials. In 2018, the PSD used its parliamentary majority to push through legislation that limited corruption investigations. Each of these attempts were met with protests, which culminated in the creation of an opposition government and the conviction and imprisonment of Liviu Dragnea.

More recently, the PSD has been forcing itself into different parts of the Romanian judicial system. Its interferences have been the subject of a new documentary titled Justice Under Siege, Justiție Capturată, by the investigative journalism organization Recorder. The documentary has aired on Romanian national television and has been one of the only spaces in which judges and prosecutors have spoken publicly about these issues. Its release alerted many to the dire nature of political interference in the Romanian judicial system and sparked protests in reaction.

One of the highest-level infiltrations of politics into the judiciary has occurred through the Superior Council of Magistrates, Consiliului Superior al Magistraturii (CSM). The CSM is the administrative body that controls the function of the entirety of the judiciary and is charged with assuring the independence of the judicial system. The council is composed of 9 judges and 5 prosecutors, each member being elected by their peers, respectively. Among its responsibilities is the power to decide promotions, appointments, secondments, disciplinary sanctions, reassignments, and delegations. In theory, this body, elected directly by those whom it governs, those who are committed to the independence of the judiciary, should be a self-sustaining protection of independence. Unfortunately, according to multiple sources who spoke to Recorder, judges are often told who to vote for in these elections and given compensations and rewards for their support. This has resulted in the portion of the CSM composed of judges becoming fractured, with Lia Savonea leading one of the factions.

Lia Savonea was a member of the CSM from 2017 to 2023, president of the body in 2019, and is currently the president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice. She has been repeatedly accused of close ties to the PSD. In 2017, when she first became a member of the CSM, she was one of the incredibly few in favor of the PSD’s judicial reforms, which received both public and institutional backlash. Her support also contrasted starkly with the extremely negative reaction of the judicial institutions themselves, among which were the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the DNA. Shortly after she was elected to the CSM, judges from 2 separate appeals courts, collectively, accused her of trying to damage the independence of the judiciary. Her support for PSD policies extended to the creation of the “Secția Specială”. Proposed by the PSD, “Secția Specială” would be a new agency which took over all investigations of judicial infractions, the creation of which was again widely opposed by the Romanian judiciary, civil society, and European Union institutions. As CSM president, Savonea advocated for the daughter of a PSD county councilor to become the chief of this new agency. Through her position in the CSM, she has promoted loyalists to court leaderships around the country, most significantly into appellate courts.

The most aggressive interventions in the judiciary are made through the intentional delaying of cases, until the statute of limitations is reached, forcing the case to be thrown out, or until a desired judge is assigned the case. This is accomplished through the systematic and repeated switching of judges. EU standards, to which Romania adheres, mandate that judges be assigned to cases randomly to prevent the arbitrary reassignment of cases or judges, preventing outside actors or the court’s leadership from interfering with cases. In Romania specifically, this is done using an electronic system that, for appellate cases, determines which two judges sit on the appeals panel.

The issue is that this system, which initially provides a randomly selected and impartial set of judges, is rendered ineffective after the irregular changing of judges. While there are lawful, reasonable circumstances under which a judge may be exchanged (ex. health, dismissal, retirement), the exchanges occurring on a large scale are those tied to promotions, delegations, secondments, and transfers. A judge may be assigned to a case, but several months later there may be a promotion or transfer, causing the panel to become incomplete. Upon the assignment of a new judge, the entire process must be restarted, as required by the European Convention on Human Rights. This changing of the judges occurs repeatedly until the statute of limitations is reached. Using this process many individuals charged or convicted with corruption have escaped punishment.

The delegation of judges is also a tool used to control what judges sit on a panel. These delegations are determined by court leadership and the CSM and are intended to temporarily transfer a judge from one jurisdiction to another for a period of between 6 months to 3 years. Once a delegation's duration has elapsed, it is not uncommon for the visiting judge's delegation to be extended by 6 months, every 6 months. This allows for a judge’s delegation, which may have been repeatedly extended, to be terminated early or not extended further, without justification. This phenomenon occurs often despite the judge’s desires otherwise. Judges which spoke to Recorder described transfers to courts or to completely different sections within a court, like in the case of Marian Vanghelie, where 6 months before the statute of limitations expired, one of the two judges was transferred to the statistics department the CSM, without an explanation. It has caused many judges to feel that they are simply pawns of the CSM and of court leadership.

The case of Marian Vanghelie is a particularly flagrant example of this phenomenon. Vanghelie was charged by the DNA in 2015 on charges of tax evasion, money laundering, accepting bribes, and abuse of office. In May 2021, the Bucharest Court found Vanghelie guilty and sentenced him to 11 years and 8 months in prison and ordered the repayment of over €15 million. After his sentencing, when the case moved to the Bucharest appellate court, concerning patterns arose. Over the course of the appeal, occurring between 2021 and 2024, judges were changed a total of 5 times. These changes occurred for a variety of reasons, ranging from a promotion, to three separate transfers, including the unexplained transfer to the statistics department of the CSM, to the non-extension of a judge’s delegation, despite their expressed wish to stay at the appeals court. This combined with other delays initiated by Vanghelie including a postponement because he couldn’t find a lawyer, pauses in proceedings because of medical issues, and the repeated re-administration of evidence and witnesses meant that by July of 2024, the statute of limitations was reached and the evidence had become time-barred. In 2025, the Bucharest Court of Appeals would overturn the 2021 decision and acquit Vanghelie of money laundering and abuse of office and reduce the amount he would have to repay to €3 million. What should have been a major success for Romanian anti-corruption efforts turned into a travesty. Both prosecutors and judges who spoke to Recorder stressed that this example is not one isolated instance, rather it represents the common attitudes and happens to many cases.

Even the DNA and its prosecutors, responsible for bringing many of the cases filed against corrupt officials, have found themselves to be the target of inexplicable firings, replacements, and appointments of questionable leadership. In 2018, Laura Codruța Kövesi, at the time chief prosecutor in charge of the DNA, was forced out of her position by the PSD Minister of Justice in a move widely seen as a political reaction to her successes in combating corruption. A subsequent trial by the European Court of Human Rights found that her removal was illegal. The position of chief prosecutor was left empty until Crin Bologa was appointed in 2020. Despite receiving positive feedback from the Minister of Justice, he was not endorsed for a second term and instead replaced by Marius Voineag in 2023.

The chief prosecutor of DNA, has the power to select, reassign, transfer, or remove prosecutors and can assign chiefs of sections, giving them a high degree of control over who is conducting what investigations. In this role, Voineag, who had previously helped cover up a former prime minister’s plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, took an especially direct role, keeping a close eye on all investigations being undertaken. This high level of involvement was legal, but multiple prosecutors revealed to Recorder that this was nothing more than an effort used to block certain investigations. The phrase ‘nu se vrea’ (it's not wanted), was used by prosecutors to label investigations that Voineag didn’t want continued. If a prosecutor continued to investigate an ‘undesired case’, their requests for assistance or information would be ignored by the chiefs of section, appointed by Voineag, making the continuation of the investigation impossible and stalling it until it was abandoned. Additionally, certain prosecutors were either fired or had their cases reassigned and closed without resolutions. In reaction to Voineag’s new policies, there was a mass exit of prosecutors, an exodus which was especially concerning considering the popularity and prestige surrounding the DNA.

The efforts outlined previously represent intentional attempts to disrupt and pervert the function of the judiciary within Romania and should be considered tools of an authoritarian legalist agenda. The authoritarian legalist presence in Romania is more nuanced because it does not have a trend of autocratization that can be pointed to, such as in Hungary or Russia. We see only individual instances of leaders such as Savonea and Dragnea using such tactics, like promoting loyalists to positions of power and using popular support as a source of legitimacy for anti-democratic reforms, in line with the methods outlined by authoritarian legalism expert Kim Lane Scheppele. While the situation has not reached outright constitutional attacks, as discussed by Scheppele, the current situation is only one step removed from this reality. The politicization of the CSM, the switching of judges, and the hindering of DNA investigations produce an unequivocal weakening of the judiciary and its independence. To call these actions simply corruption would be naive; one must consider the context in which these perversions occur. So far, Romania has been lucky that its ruling governments have only tried to push judicial reforms and not constitutional amendments. This theoretical situation could very soon become a reality. Not only does the PSD continue to enjoy broad public support, but far-right, neo-Nazi, and anti-democratic parties are growing. The second largest party after the PSD (21.96%) in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies is the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, AUR (18.01%). Other far-right parties control a combined 13.82% of parliament according to the Romanian Election Authority. The possibility of an anti-democratic government coming to power in Romania cannot be disregarded. If such a party comes to power, it will most definitely use the weaknesses created by the PSD and others to centralize power, one of the first goals of authoritarian legalists like Putin and Orbán. Despite their theoretical ideological differences, it is not impossible that these parties collaborate. On May 5th of 2026, the PSD, supported by AUR, caused the pro-EU governing coalition to collapse. These weaknesses mean that it only takes one anti-democratic party to take power and dismantle all of Romania’s progress towards a consolidated democracy.

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