EU-driven judicial reforms in Romania: a success story?

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the European Union (EU) and domestic actors on the development of judicial quality (rule of law) across two key dimensions: judicial capacity and judicial impartiality. It argues and shows empirically that although the EU has been crucial in eliciting change in the judicial capacity dimension, it was largely unsuccessful in changing aspects of the judicial impartiality dimension. The author concludes that the EU's involvement in Romania through accession conditionality has been of limited success: that is, the EU had a considerable impact on improving de jure judicial quality, but it was unable to affect rule implementation and thus failed to create de facto judicial quality. Methodologically, this article makes use of a detailed case-study method with process-tracing. Data are drawn from a number of primary and secondary sources such as official governmental documents, reports, surveys and scholarly literature relevant to the topic.

Keywords:

• Romania
• EU
• conditionality
• Europeanisation
• rule of law
• judicial reform

Acknowledgements

I thank my wife for her support. I also thank Ron King, Geoffrey Pridham, Claudiu Crăciun, Mihaela Cărăuşan, Martin Brusis and the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and feedback.

Notes

The terms rule of law and judicial quality will be used synonymously in this article.

On the distinction between de jure (laws on the books) and de facto (factual enforcement in practice), see Hayo and Voigt (2007).

The safeguard clause was introduced after the conclusion of accession negotiations in 2005 and prolonged EU leverage on Romania beyond the signing of the Accession Treaty (December 2004). The clause included the possibility of delaying Romania's accession by 1 year and required, among other reforms, the development of a strategy for the reform of the judiciary.

The CVM, which was introduced in December 2006, should ensure continuing judicial and anti-corruption reforms through enhanced monitoring after accession. It is a post-accession support tool without a specific period of application, which refers to the monitoring of four benchmarks. While three benchmarks address corruption issues, one benchmark refers to judicial reforms. (European Commission 2009a, p. 6)

See Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy on the Reform of the Judiciary 2005–2007 and Action Plan to Implement the National Anti-corruption Strategy for 2005–2007.

It is reported that Romania has ratified 45 Conventions for Harmonisation of EU legislation (Schumer 2000).

The harmonisation with the EU acquis required a modification of the civil and penal codes and the obligation to conform to international obligations (respect of human rights).

Interview with Nicholas Cendrowicz, EU Commission official, Brussels, March 2006.

See Action Plan to Implement the National Anti-corruption Strategy for 2005–2007.

Official Journal No. 63, 22 July 2005.

Interview with Monica Macovei, Romanian Minister of Justice, 2004–2007, Brussels, June 2011.

Interview with an anonymous Romanian judge, November 2010.

Interview with Gabriela Baltag, President of the Neamt County Court, Piatra Neamt, November 2010. Interview with Corneliu Bârsan, Judge at the European Court of Human Rights, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, June 2011.

http://www.globalintegrity.org.

For an overview, see Schwarz (2009).