Valentin Constantin

1. Particular features of European integration relations

2. On the European political deficit

3. National Constitution versus supra-national integration

4. Is year 2007 a realistic deadline for integration?

COMMUNITY LAW AND NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONS. THE ROMANIAN CASE

Forika Eva

LEGISLATIVE DELEGATION OF THE RATIFICATION OF INTERNATIONAL TREATIES. POLITICAL ASPECTS

Corneliu-Liviu Popescu

I. Introductory remarks on applicable juridical norms

II. The legal practice and case law of the Constitutional Court in the matter

III. Political stands taken by political parties

IV. Political standpoints of political leaders

V. Brief closing remarks

THE RESIGNATION OF A MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Gabriel Andreescu and Adrian Severin

OPEN ISSUES OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

Valentin Constantin

We shall try to demonstrate that it is not a mere coincidence that certain issues related to the integration process are still open and may overlap sensitive topics. Hence, the deadlines set by politicians are not based on hard facts. Our demonstration shall start from four remarks:
- Romania is preparing to open a new kind of lasting international relations - integration relations ;
- This situation occurs at a time when in the member states of the European Union some voices reproach a certain "political deficit" in the integration process;
- The norms of the Romanian Constitution governing international relations do not provide for integration relations. Is this a reason for the Constitution to be reviewed?
- Romania must provide political guarantees to its community partners. We find that the most important would be the ability to ensure structural agreement.

1. Particular features of European integration relations

It is indisputable that both the European Community and the European Union, whose central pillar is the Community, are unprecedented in the international legal order. Their particular political nature derives from their legal nature, the basics of which we shall sum up below.
Although the principle of subsidiarity, as formulated in Article 3B of the European Union Treaty, is a reverse federal principle, the Union remains, however, a political entity whose closest counterpart is the federation. We call it a reverse federal principle because in federal states, such as Germany, for instance, the federation's competence is general and that of the federal members is subsidiary. On the contrary, in the Union, the member states' competence is general and the Union's, subsidiary. The Community and the Union step in only when the treaties grant them powers in one field or another. It was the initial intention of its founders to place European integration in the federal category, and Jean Monnet's strategy was to start from accumulating the actual economic solidarity with a view to achieving "transfers of sovereignty" . As a matter of fact, the phrase "transfers of sovereignty" was first employed by Robert Schuman, if we are not mistaken .
Shortly after their establishment, community institutions (the Council, the Committee, and the Court of Justice), unified in 1965, started exercising - besides the competencies specifically granted by treaties - new powers defined as implicit competencies. Once confirmed by the Luxembourg Court of Justice, by virtue of its own powers - which may appear as excessive, as it is the sole instance competent to interpret institutive treaties - the institutions have made use of their implicit competencies freely. The implicit competencies have strengthened their autonomy and consequently have increased the amount of sovereign competencies that had already been explicitly transferred to them by means of treaties.
Ever since, community institutions have introduced a huge quantity of derived legal norms in the domestic legal systems of member states. Some of the most numerous are the unilateral documents issued by these institutions: regulations, orders, decisions, recommendations and references. Their implementation in the domestic law of member states gave raise to many debates, fuelled first and foremost by the constitutional law doctrine. In France, which was reluctant with regard to the institutions' ability to issue norms, derived community law was long debated and disputed.
Currently, any state that joins the Community and the Union must completely and unconditionally adopt the derived community law, that is, the whole acquis communautaire. It is an extensive "juridical operation" (come to think just at the 200,000 pages awaiting translation and at the current output of the Community of over 50,000 pages yearly) whose successful completion depends on the existence of an appropriate domestic framework, as the enforcement of community law does not allow for deadline extensions. Our legal framework, with methodological norms and enforcement instructions published only in exceptional circumstances within the deadlines provided by laws, are proof that our customs are grossly inconsistent with the European trend. To put it differently, the proper legal framework should have been established in the pre-accession stage, as the international relations opened between the candidate to the Community and the Union are mainly juridical rather than political international relations, requiring a quite high degree of specialisation.
Whenever an application for accession is submitted, it is assumed that the political debate at the national level has been concluded, that is, a point has been reached where national interests have already been defined as common interests and the foundation of the future international action of the state applying for accession has been laid. This action must be irreversible, loyal and united, because European integration is an irreversible process and only because institutive treaties do not provide for withdrawal from the Community and the Union. The relevant community law doctrine is unswerving in this respect. If the Committee has reasons to suspect the candidate of political feebleness, integration will be postponed sine die.
At this particular moment, what we find both characteristic and essential for our country from the perspective of community institutions is the chronic imbalance between norms and institutions. We are European as far as our legislative inflation is concerned; otherwise, we have remained exotic. We could not say that we have found a way to respond properly to institutional inefficiency and immobility. After all, immobility and inefficiency are clear symptoms, empirical matters. But the therapy Romania responds with is unilateral; it never leaves the normative area. We state this because diseased institutions are almost always administered more legal norms. Norms easy to assimilate are preferred (governmental ordinances and decisions), but these remain mere momentary solutions because in time institutions have become remarkably immune to norms. That is why we characterise this phenomenon as chronic, because numerous norms either are not enforced, are enforced tardily or in a customised manner, in areas either favoured or disfavoured, politically speaking. There are extensive areas or legal insecurity, such as the fiscal field, for instance.
The legal consequences of community relations are not exactly the hottest topics of public debate in Romania. Could this state of facts remain without consequences in the long run? Is an institutional revolution predictable?

2. On the European political deficit

This issue was illustrated extensively by Bela Farago ; we shall simply try to sum up the critical notes that are likely to crop up at some point in the Romanian public debate. The idea of political deficit reminds that of democratic deficit, a position in which many Euro-sceptics have placed the European Community. The democratic deficit or, in other words, a reduced degree of participation of the citizens of member states in the Union's actions, is probably real, but it has been addressed by electing directly the members of the European Parliament and gradually diminishes in the process of European construction, as the European Parliament gains more powers.
The thesis of political deficit claims first and foremost that the Union lacks a "sovereign power", an ultimate decision-making entity. There is no legitimate power, maintains Farago, where there is no holder of sovereignty. The quasi-sovereignty stemming from the exercise of community competencies leads nowhere, anyway not to a genuine political union. Currently, no political value can be attached to the Union's common foreign and security policy, or to its states' co-operation in the field of justice and domestic affairs, because they are mere expectations that have not been integrated, because these countries remain at the level of mere inter-governmental co-operation. There is no obvious autonomous will capable of imposing a common conduct. Actually, as opposed to the Community, which is a legal entity, the Union is not even a legal entity of international law. The political Europe of the Union remains no more and no less than an "institutionalised intergovernmental conference of member states" .
All these remarks could be acceptable, if Bela Farago did not infer from the political deficit the lack of legitimacy of the entire derived community law. He notes that the actual impact of community norms over sovereign states leads, in fact, to sovereignties "dismembered and sold by the apartment" . What happens in the Union is the opposite of sovereignty, which is, by its own nature, unique and indivisible and occurs in the absence of any form of political legitimacy.
As Olivier Beaud remarked, this kind of criticism is coherent only from the perspective of the nation-state. But this perspective is neither productive nor scientifically honest, as "the measuring standard for the European phenomenon should rather be the federation" .
Consequently, political legitimacy must be placed in the international law rather than in domestic law. It follows without doubt from the text of the Rome Treaty that the parties have chosen to give up the indivisible character of sovereignty and to exercise jointly a series of competencies, by means of their common institutions. The fact that a majority vote can force a state to enforce in its own national territory a norm it had rejected by its vote should not be taken for lack of democratic control and political legitimacy within the Community. What it actually means is that legitimacy or democratic control are international rather than national.
Is it plausible that an anti-European trend could develop in Romania, based on the features of the nation-state? A brief look at our Constitution can suggest an answer to this question.

3. National Constitution versus supra-national integration

We shall start by introducing the constitutional texts involved in our integration relations.

Art. 1 (1) "Romania is an independent, unitary and indivisible National State."
Art. 2 (1) "National sovereignty resides with the Romanian people, who shall exercise it through its representative bodies and by referendum."
(2) "No group or person may exercise sovereignty in one's own name."
Art. 11 (1) "The Romanian State pledges to fulfil as such and in good faith its obligations as deriving from the treaties it is a party to."
(2) "Treaties ratified by the Parliament, according to the law, are part of national law."

Article 2 Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Romanian Constitution reproduce word by word Article 3, Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the French Constitution. The theoretical conclusion drawn by our specialists in constitutional law is true from a juridical perspective: sovereignty is inalienable and indivisible .
Article 2 Paragraph 1 can no longer be regarded as having a clear meaning, or at least a single meaning. If sovereignty is national, it belongs to the eternal community of the living and the dead. And the people can be regarded as a holder that has its own limitations and cannot divide (dismember) and especially alienate sovereignty.
Under these juridical circumstances, it is debatable if our application to join the Community and the European Union is feasible. Our constitution admits neither laws whose force is superior to that of the Constitution - a typical feature of European norms - nor does it allow for the transfer of sovereign competencies to an organisation, therefore for dividing sovereignty and alienating part of it.
Discussions and arguments on the conflict between European norms (especially derived law) and national norms (constitutional norms included) have a long history in the French juridical community; they started in the 50s, with the ratification of the European Community on Defence. Subsequently, whenever the European construction designed an institutional leap or a significant expansion of competencies, the French juridical community felt the urge to discuss the need for a review of the Constitution, starting from the assumption that only a review of the Constitution could ensure the compatibility of the French domestic law with the development of the European system.
It is obvious that at the constitutional stage we have reached, the Constitution should be revised by introducing a norm similar to Article 24 of the German Constitution: "The federation can transfer by law sovereignty rights to international organisations". In Romania, the most recent initiative to review the Constitution tackled a minor issue from the perspective of European integration, namely it aimed to provide a constitutional guarantee of the right to own property. The initiators proved thus to be deeply Euro-sceptical, even though they probably did not realise it, because property already enjoyed solid international guarantees in Romania, instituted by means of the First Protocol to the European Convention. Such attempt to review the Constitution proves distrust in the effectiveness of European guarantees. What should be done with regard to property was to eliminate the interdiction for community subjects to own buildings in Romania.

4. Is year 2007 a realistic deadline for integration?

The Romanian judge is the safeguard of structural agreement, the one who guarantees that community norms are enforced uniformly and effectively on Romanian territory. After accession, the judge should also act as a community judge, enforcing all community norms directly applicable from the moment of their publication in the Official Journal of the European Community, more precisely from the moment the journal becomes available at the Luxembourg Office. But for the time being, the Romanian judge does not even subscribe individually to the Romanian Official Gazette.
In case of conflicts between a community norm and a domestic norm, the magistrate will have to make sure that the community norm prevails. The judge will be placed in an original and somewhat paradoxical position, having to cast aside a norm of domestic law, by virtue of which he functions as a judge. The Romanian judge is not yet familiar with specialised studies in community law, has no sources of information related to the doctrine and case law of community law, no serious training program to turn him into a community judge. A feature of the community system is to enable a domestic judge who judges a case where the parties invoke community norms to ask the Community Court of Justice for an interpretation related to the applicability of community law if he is not familiar with the significance or enforcement of community norms. It is obvious that an uninformed judge will take advantage of this procedure much too often. But the Community will not take the risk to block the Luxembourg Court with an avalanche of such requests.
Hence, even if all accession criteria were met, the very absence of a fully credible national jurisdictional system could stall the accession process. For any honest responsible analyst, the current stage reached by our constitutional and administrative case law is not exactly promising, at least on short and medium term.

Forika Eva

The study below is limited to presenting the demands imposed by community law on the domestic legal frameworks of each member state and the relevant experience of member states in adopting and adjusting domestic law to the requirements of community law. Further on, it sets out to analyse Romania's accession chances in the framework of its current Constitution.

Demands of community law on the domestic law of member states

Community law, which stems from the transfer of certain sovereign rights of member states to community institutions, is not super-national, which might have simplified the situation to a certain extent. It is part of the legal system established in each member state, which considerably complicates the matters. One could state that the legal framework of each member state has two complementary constituent parts: community law and the norms of domestic law. As opposed to the general international law, which does not regulate the relation between international and domestic law, community law imposes monism in the relation between community law and domestic law. The monism, which is only partially enshrined in institutive treaties (Art. 189 and Art. 177 of the EEC Treaty ), has been imposed by means of the case law of the Court of Justice of European Communities. The Court analysed the nature of Communities from the perspective of the Treaty which set up the European Economic Community and ruled as follows, following the logical trend on which community law is based : "by instituting a Community unlimited in time, with its own competencies, as a legal entity with legal capacity and more precisely with genuine powers, stemming from a limitation of competencies or from a transfer of state competencies to the Community, they (the states) have limited, although in restricted fields, their sovereign rights and established a body of laws applicable to themselves and to their subjects." "As opposed to ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty established its own legal order, integrated in the legal systems of member states since the coming into force of the Treaty and binding for their jurisdictions."
The case law of the Court of Justice regarding the relation between the community legal order and domestic law has established the features of community law, namely the autonomy of community law from the domestic legal order; the precedence of community law over domestic law and the effectiveness of community law in the domestic legal order, that is, its immediacy and the direct applicability of its norms.
By virtue of its autonomy from the domestic legal order, community law has discretionary powers in all the fields entrusted to the Community and its institutions and cannot be modified by norms of domestic law, while domestic law has discretionary powers in all the fields that are not regulated at the community level.
The precedence of community law is a principle which sums up the fact that community law as a whole - with no distinction between norms stemming from institutive treaties and derivative legal norms - takes precedence over domestic norms regardless of their force (constitution, organic law, ordinary law, order, governmental decision, minister's order, etc.). The primacy of community law does not represent a concession made by the constitutional law of member states; it is self-evident by virtue of its own nature, as a legal order mutually accepted by the states. This principle has consequences over both community order and the domestic legal systems; it is up to the domestic judge to make it work effectively.
The effectiveness of community law depends first and foremost on the circumstances in which it is implemented in the domestic law, governed by the principle of its immediate applicability, and secondly on the scope of its consequences over the legal order of member states, a field in which the direct effect of community norms is applicable.
According to the principle of immediate applicability, community norms acquire automatically the status of positive rights in the domestic order of member states. Any conversion of community norms into norms of domestic law, any reception procedure are forbidden and so are all domestic measures liable to spoil the integrity of community norms. With regard to primary community law, immediate applicability means less suppressing its formal reception, but rather neutralising its effects. As for derivative law, as well as the law stemming from the international relations of Communities, this is a field where the suppression of dualism acts to the fullest: the law which derives from the normative activity of community institutions imposes itself in the legal order of member states without transformation, reception or execution measures.
The fundamental distinction that governs the effects of community law over the domestic legal orders of member states is related to indirect versus direct community provisions. The direct effect of community norms means their capacity to generate by themselves rights and duties of persons who are subjects of community law. More to the point, the direct effect of community norms allows private persons to ask the national judge to ensure respect for the rights they have gained by means of a norm which has this quality, including interpretation of domestic law in accordance with community law and control of its consistency with community law. Also, the direct effect "punishes" the states that have not taken the necessary measures to enforce community law. This effect is ensured through the watchfulness of private persons who are interested in safeguarding their rights and who notify the domestic jurisdictions. It is worth mentioning that no one denies nowadays that certain international treaties - known as "self-executing" treaties - can produce such direct effects. A treaty or some of its provisions can be labelled as "self-executing" based on a criterion, namely the intention of the contracting parties, at the time when they conclude the treaty, to institute rights and duties for private persons, liable to be enforced by domestic courts. This intention is not presumed; it must arise from the text of the treaty. But, while the direct effect is an exception in public international law, it is the rule in community law. The case law of the Luxembourg Court established the actual criteria that must be met simultaneously for a norm to have direct effect: to be clear and specific, to be complete and sufficient, to be applicable unconditionally.
The direct effect of community norms in itself allows community law to produce the effects inherent to this principle only in the absence of any provisions counter to domestic law. The principle of precedence of community law over the domestic law of member states ensures the direct effect of community norms, even in the presence of contrary domestic norms.
One can therefore notice that the community legal order, part and parcel of the legal system of each member state, has a considerable influence over the initial component - the domestic law - of the legal order in these states. Although the precedence of community law has been accepted by community states once they have signed the institutive treaties, the adjustment of domestic law to the requirements of community law has been a lengthy and challenging process in many member states. The fact that this process is quasi-automatic nowadays is due on the one hand on the fact that domestic doctrines and case law are shaped by the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, and, on the other hand, to the legal changes effected by each member state in its domestic law with a view to ensure the reception and application of community law. Obviously, the most pressing issues were related to the constitutions of member states, to the extent to which these foundations of the legal systems of sovereign states did not meet the demands of the new structures. The debates focused on two topics:
A. consistency of the transfer of sovereignty demanded by institutive treaties with constitutional provisions;
B. the domestic, constitutional legal grounds that allow for the recognition of the general features of community law, including its precedence over any domestic norm, be it even subsequent.
While the first issue actually addressed the notion of state sovereignty, the second topic was based on psychological reasons , the "need" to provide eminently domestic legal grounds for a national judge to enforce community law under the terms imposed by institutive treaties or established by the Court of Justice of the European Communities.

The experience of member states in accepting and adapting domestic law to the demands of community law

Analysing the experience of member states that have a significant record in addressing constitutional obstacles hindering the reception of community law, we shall notice that the first issue that has been raised was related to the constitutionality of the law on the ratification of the institutive or accession treaty. This issue was raised only in states that have established a system of controlling the consistency of laws with constitutional provisions, based on the control exercised by a higher instance.
France is a special case, as the 1946 Constitution under which the institutive treaties of European Communities have been ratified is no longer in force. The Preamble to the 1946 French Constitution stated in Paragraph 15: "with the reserve of reciprocity, France consents to all limitations of its sovereignty required by the organisation and defence of peace." Moreover, this fundamental law did not provide for any kind of control over the consistency of international treaties with constitutional norms, and when the decree on the publication of the Rome Treaty was challenged before the State Council (the highest instance in administrative matters) on grounds that the ratification law was unconstitutional, this appeal was declared inadmissible, based on the theory of government acts.
The preamble to the 1958 Constitution refers to the provisions of the previous Preamble, but the authors of the new fundamental law had a different perspective on the consistency of international treaties with constitutional norms. Besides the fact that Articles 5 and 16 attach special importance to national independence, warranted by the President, Article 54 institutes a prior control over the constitutionality of international commitments, in the sense that the ratification of treaties running counter to the Constitution is subordinated to a review of the fundamental law. The review of the Constitution requires either approval by referendum or a parliamentary vote with a majority of 3/5 of the votes cast .
This control mechanism could not work retroactively. Thus, the French Constitutional Council stated in the decision dated 19 June 1970 that the Paris and Rome treaties, "ratified and published according to regulations, fall from that moment under the incidence of Article 55 of the Constitution." According to this text, "Treaties or agreements ratified according to regulations take precedence over the laws upon their publication, with the reserve that each treaty or agreement be enforced by the other party."
As for the community treaties ratified and published after 1958, as well as the community decisions made on the basis of Articles 138 and 201 of the EEC Treaty , that the Constitutional Council has assimilated with international commitments subject to ratification or approval, they have already passed the constitutionality test and are sheltered from any charges of unconstitutionality. Derived community law benefits from "complete immunity", as the Constitutional Council does not place them among the documents to be subjected to the procedure provided by Article 54.
Finally, although it seems that the Community has reached a stage where no constitutional obstacles will hinder the reception of community law in France, we wish to mention a decision that forecasts such difficulties in the event of France's advancement towards a speedier integration. Thus, in a decision dated 30 December 1976 , the Constitutional Court differentiated between limitations of sovereignty authorised and unauthorised by the fundamental law. This could lead to the conclusion that the constitutional instance believes that important transfers of sovereign powers in favour of a genuinely autonomous authority will require a previous review of the Constitution.
Article 24 of the German Constitution provides: "The Federation may transfer sovereign rights to international institutions by legal means" and Article 23 makes specific reference to this possibility with regard to the European Union. Still, the wording of this article and the existence of very well developed constitutionality tests made it possible to challenge the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the European Communities as well as to discuss the limits of the transfer of sovereignty.
The first problem was solved by the Federal Constitutional Court, by means of a decision dated 18 October 1967 , which recognised that the ratification of institutive treaties was valid, emphasised the autonomy of community law and ruled that community regulations must not be subjected to a constitutionality test, as they are not issued by the German public authority. In the opinion of the Court, it fell outside its competencies to improve or complete the community system of jurisdictional protection, as this "would blur the borderline between the internal jurisdictional competence and the super-national jurisdictional competence and would lead to unequal legal protection in the member states."
This decision has not prevented the German doctrine and case law from discussing the limits of the transfer of sovereignty, considering that such transfer should have been subordinated to "the structures that make up the constitution in force in the Federal Republic of Germany" and in particular to the observance of "provisions related to fundamental rights." Initially, the Constitutional Court embraced this approach, providing a restrictive interpretation of Article 24 of the Constitution, based on the principle of congruence and thus diminishing the authority of community law. According to the principle of "structural congruence", the national judge cannot enforce the norms of community law unless the institutional organisation of Communities is consistent with the essential principles of the Constitution, in particular with the principle of separation of powers. The principle, often invoked by German jurisdictions, has been rejected both by the Federal Constitutional Court and by the Community Court of Justice .
However, the principle of "congruence" was not abandoned for good, as long as the grounds for the decision pronounced by the German Constitutional Court on 29 May 1974 in the case Solange-Bechlus contained references that seemed to relate to this principle, although this was not the main ground the decision was based on. The decision Solange I brings back in the spotlight the idea that the constitutionality of international treaties must be tested, as the Constitutional Court, departing from its previous position, expresses reservations with regard to the precedence of community law over the fundamental rights of German citizens, guaranteed by the Constitution . Reaffirming the principle that community law generally takes precedence over domestic law, the Court affirmed, however, its competence to examine the consistency of community provisions with constitutional norms related to fundamental rights and to declare them inapplicable, if the case may be, as long as no document adopted by an assembly elected by direct universal vote at the Community level recognises the fundamental rights guaranteed by the German Constitution. Meanwhile, the Karlsruhe Court refused to take into consideration the case law of the Community Court of Justice related to the protection of fundamental rights in the community legal order.
A decision dated 25 July 1979 signals a certain departure from the previous doctrine . In this decision, the German Constitutional Court declined its competence to provide an interpretation of Articles 92 and 94 of the EEC Treaty based on constitutional provisions as long as the Community Court of Justice had ruled on the same case, specifying that it "leaves open" the answer to the question on the validity of principles stemming from the decision of 29 May 1974, given the changes occurred at the European level. Only as late as 1986 did the Federal Court give up the reserve of unconstitutionality, noting that its demands had been met by means of the express references of the Luxembourg Court to the European Convention on Human Rights and of the Joint Declaration on the Observance of Fundamental Rights. The Federal Court declared that it would not test the consistency of derived community law with the domestic law in this respect, but that it would preserve the possibility to step in at any time if the standard of community guarantees on fundamental rights were lowered. This capacity was reaffirmed by means of a decision of 12 May 1989: "To the extent to which a norm violates the standard of fundamental rights in the community law, the Court of Justice would grant legal protection. If the level of protection of imperative fundamental rights cannot be thus ensured in the constitutional sense, the Constitutional Court can be notified."
In Italy, the opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the laws on the ratification of international treaties was due to the political situation at that particular moment. Article 11 of the Italian Constitution of 27 December 1947 allows for the transfer of certain national competencies, providing that "Italy... shall consent, under the reserve of reciprocity with other states, to limitations of sovereignty required by an order that ensures peace and justice among nations; it shall support and favour international organisations that pursue this aim." However, at the time when the institutive treaties were about to be ratified, the political forces in office did not hold the parliamentary majority required to review the Constitution and subsequently to ratify the treaties by constitutional law. That was why they resorted to an ordinary law, which could be subjected to the test of constitutionality. The ratification of the Rome Treaty by ordinary law was recognised as valid by means of the decision of 24 February-7 March 1964 - Costa/E.N.E.L. -, the Constitutional Court ruling that Article 11 of the Constitution was a "permissive norm" which authorised Italy to join the Communities, but did not grant to the "execution law" (the reception law) a higher value than that of other laws . The decision of 16-27 December 1965 - San Michele - confirmed the thesis that Article 11 was a permissive norm, regarding the community legal order as a foreign order, different from the Italian one . In order to separate them, the Court forbade the judges to contrast the provisions of community regulations and the constitutional provisions, emphasising the importance of the resort to the Court of Justice of the Communities.
The decision of 18-27 December 1973 - Frontini - is an important step in the development of Italian case law. The Court analysed the community phenomenon and defined the Communities as a new standing supra-national inter-state organisation, as a legal entity with international representation powers. National and community legal orders are presented as "autonomous separate legal systems, although co-ordinated by virtue of the distribution of competencies established and guaranteed by treaty." The community jurisdictional guarantees are regarded as satisfactory and the Court eliminates the possibility that it could be notified in order to rule on the consistency of community regulations with the Italian Constitution. The Court reserves itself at the most the possibility to step in, in the event of "aberrant" interpretations of the treaty that might run counter to the fundamental rights and the principles of the Italian legal order. This was simply a theoretical contingency, as a residual possibility to exercise control . This decision seemed to cast away any doubt regarding the consistency of the community legal order with the Italian fundamental law. The Granital judgement of 1984 did not invalidate this opinion, either .
Later on, by means of a decision issued on 13-21 April 1989, the Court defined its conception regarding the relation between community law and the fundamental rights established by means of domestic norms . The Court stated that the legal protection system for the rights and interest of private persons in the community legal order was "broad and effective"; the "essential element" of this protection system was represented by the fundamental rights stemming from the common principles of law of the member states. The Constitutional Court added: "This does not mean that the Court can be deprived of its power to check, by means of testing the constitutionality of the execution law of the treaty, whether any provision of the treaty, as interpreted and applied by the community institutions and bodies, is not counter to the fundamental principles of our constitutional order or does not prejudice the inalienable rights of persons." It is worth mentioning that the constitutional reserves are still maintained.
The next issue focused on the recognition of the precedence of community norms over any other domestic legal norms. The process of recognition of this feature of community law had two stages: recognition of the precedence of community norms over prior laws and consecration of the primacy over subsequent domestic norms. The latter stage was much more difficult to complete, in the attempt to find solutions that meet the demands of both domestic and community law, such as the prior abrogation of conflicting laws, which are declared unconstitutional by the competent instances. Finally, an inevitable conclusion was reached, namely that dualism and monism cannot coexist in community law. Eventually, the primacy of community norms over subsequent domestic laws was accepted, based on the specific nature of the community legal order.
Belgium was a dualistic state; according to its case law, the provisions of an international treaty could be disregarded on the basis of a subsequent opposite law. As the primacy of community law was not constitutionally acknowledged, the first solutions in the Belgian case law followed the trend established with regard to international treaties. The cornerstone was the decision pronounced by the Court of Cassation on 27 May 1971 in the case "Société des Fromageries Franco-Suisse Le Ski." The Belgian government was sentenced by the Court of Justice of European Communities for the institution in 1958 of a tax counter to Article 12 of the EEC Treaty. Following this decision, the tax was eliminated on 1 November 1964, but the decision was not retroactive. The trade companies that asked the domestic jurisdictions for a reimbursement of the amounts paid from 1958 to 1964 were turned down on the basis of the law of 19 March 1968, which provided that the payment of taxes is final and cannot be challenged before any authority. The Court established:
o firstly, the precedence of international law over domestic law. According to the conclusions drawn by the General Prosecutor, "the states' obligation not to create a norm of domestic law incompatible with international law must be based on the superiority of the conventional norm of international law over the norm of domestic law. Denying the superiority of the international legal regulation amounts to denying its very existence." The High Court stated: "where there is any conflict between a norm of domestic law and a norm of international law with direct effects over the domestic legal order, the regulation established by treaty shall prevail and its precedence result from the very nature of conventional law."
o secondly, the precedence of community law on the grounds emphasised by the Luxembourg Court, namely the specific nature of the community legal order: "this is valid a fortiori where there is a conflict... between a norm of domestic law and a norm of community law; indeed, the treaties that make up community law have instituted a new legal order, for the benefit of which the member states have limited the exercise of their sovereign rights in the fields ruled by the treaties."
In France, the monism enshrined in Article 55 of the Constitution should have prevented any discussions on recognition of the precedence of community law. Actual solutions have not always been satisfactory. With respect to international law, this constitutional provision has not prevented the French jurisdictions from hesitating whether to proclaim the superiority of treaties over the laws. The Matter doctrine has been for a long time illustrative for the position adopted by national jurisdictions. According to this doctrine, whenever a conflict arises between a treaty and a prior law, the latter is abrogated by the force of the treaty. However, in case of a conflicting law subsequent to the treaty, the judge must first try to reconcile the two positions by means of interpretation. If the conflict cannot be thus solved, all the judge can do is enforce the subsequent law, because "according to the principle on which our legal institutions are based", the judge "knows no other will but the law's."
Still, the case law with regard to community law is a far more intricate matter. The Court of Cassation gave up the Matter doctrine in the decision pronounced in the case of Jaques Vabre on 24 May 1975 and stated the precedence of the EEC Treaty over domestic laws on the basis of the specific nature of the order it institutes, making concomitantly reference to Article 55 of the Constitution: "the treaty of 25 March 1957 which, by virtue of the above-mentioned constitutional article (Art. 55) has higher authority than the laws, institutes a separate legal order, integrated in the legal orders of member states; due to this specificity, the legal order it has created is directly applicable to the appellants of these states and is imposed on their jurisdictions; consequently, the Court of Appeal ruled legitimately and without overstepping the bounds of its competencies that Article 95 of the Treaty should have been enforced in this case, excluding Article 265 of the Customs Code, although the latter text was subsequent."
The decision of the French supreme instance is very important because it has fuelled a very vocal doctrinaire dispute in connection with the grounds for the superiority of community norms: Article 55 of the Constitution or the specific nature of community law. Subsequently, in the decision pronounced in the Von Kempis case, the Court of Cassation acknowledged the precedence of the provisions of Article 52 of the EEC Treaty over the provisions of the Rural Code - issued prior to the Treaty - based exclusively on the direct applicability of the community norm .
However, the State Council refused for a long time to acknowledge the precedence of community provisions over the subsequent law, on grounds that this would mean testing the constitutionality of the community norm. This kind of control can be exercised neither by the French administrative judge nor by the criminal judge. Eventually, by means of a quite recent decision , the Council has given up its traditional perspective and recognised the primacy of the EEC Treaty over the domestic law, be it even subsequent. Although the decision assimilated the community treaty with an ordinary international treaty, and the grounds for its precedence over the domestic law are not the ones established by the case law of the Luxembourg Court of Justice, the importance of this decision is undeniable.
In Italy, the recognition of all the features of community law faced a strong opposition, due to the strong dualistic tradition and to the lack of explicit constitutional regulations on the relation between international conventional law and domestic law.
The decision pronounced in the case Costa/E.N.E.L. on 7 March 1964 proves a strong dualistic trend; it rules that the execution (reception) law of the EEC Treaty cannot be granted precedence over the domestic law by means of which the treaty was inserted in the domestic legal order, which was an ordinary law . The Italian practice, which subordinates the effects of community law to the abrogation of the conflicting domestic law, was reproved by the Court of Justice by means of a decision dated 13 July 1972 . Another intolerable procedure from the perspective of the unity and consistency of community law was the reproduction of regulations in domestic laws.
The decisive step towards bringing domestic practice in line with the community requirements took shape in the decision pronounced in the Frontini case , by means of which the Constitutional Court implicitly recognised the precedence of community regulations over the prior law, insisting on the specific nature of community law and in particular on its direct applicability: "in accordance with the logical trend of the community system, regulations must not be subject to domestic measures with a reproductive character... and least of all to substitute them, depart from them or repeal them."
However, in a decision dated 22-30 October 1975, the same Court ruled that a conflict between an Italian law and a set of community regulations questions the constitutionality of that law, because, by running counter to the regulations, it implicitly violates the provisions of Article 11 of the Constitution . Following the same logical trend, the Court reached the conclusion that, as opposed to the procedure employed in the case of a prior law which runs counter to a community norm, a subsequent law incompatible with the community law cannot be dismissed by the judge that rules on the merits of a case; the Constitutional Court must first declare it unconstitutional . This procedure was reproved by the Court of Justice of European Communities by means of the Simmenthal decision. The decision stated that leaving the solution of a conflict between community law and a subsequent domestic law up to "an authority other than the judge called to ensure the enforcement of community law" is incompatible with the "requirements inherent to the nature of community law", "even if the obstacle thus raised to complete the effectiveness of this right is only temporary."
The Constitutional Court complied with the Simmenthal decision only in 1984, by means of the decision pronounced in the Granital case . The Constitutional Court decided that the Italian judge can fail to apply a domestic law which runs counter to the directly applicable community law based on his authority, without having to send that law back to the Constitutional Court. Still, the decision expresses two reserves: the possibility to subject to its control an interpretation of community provisions, counter to the basic principles of the Italian legal system and to fundamental rights; its competency to rule in cases of gross conflicts between an Italian law and the community law.
The ensuing decisions pushed Italy forward towards bringing it in line with the demands of community law. Decision 113 of 19 April 1985 specified that community law, which is applicable directly, includes not just institutive treaties, but also the legal norms deriving from them and the results of the interpretative decisions of the Court of Justice of Communities. By means of Decision 168 of 18 April 1991, the Constitutional Court complied with the community case law and acknowledged the direct applicability of a community norm, effective since the expiry of the deadline until which Italy was supposed to issue the norms provided by this norm, by declaring inapplicable the domestic norms running counter to its provision, as of the same date. The decision established only the vertical direct effect of clear, precise and complete norms, which led to much criticism in terms of doctrine. At the same time, although we appreciate the significant evolution of Italian case law, we must mention, nevertheless, that the constitutional reserves raised in the Granital case have not yet been eliminated.
With regard to monistic states, it should be reminded that the principle of primacy, although accepted fairly easily in these states, has not been established on the basis of the specific nature of community law, but rather on the basis of constitutional norms, an attitude which could prejudice the advancement of this process. Finally, the full-fledged primacy of community provisions over constitutional provisions has still not been recognised in the states where the control over the constitutionality of laws in organised.
The other features of community law have been accepted fairly easily in all member states. The autonomy of community law has not been vocally challenged and compelled recognition, sooner or later, in each member state. The direct effect of community norms took a while to be recognised, in particular in dualistic states and especially with regard to its implications related to national jurisdictions, known in the doctrine as the "communisation of the functions of national jurisdictions." Eventually, this principle has come to be acknowledged in all the member states of the Community. The immediate applicability of community law met significant resistance only in Italy, where the practice consisted in reproducing community texts, even regulations. This practice has been, however, abandoned.
To conclude, if we analyse the obstacles encountered by the community member states from the perspective of the features of domestic law, we can state that the constitutional obstacles occurred in states that have a system of control over the constitutionality of laws . Starting from the experience gained by member states, we can foresee an extensive doctrinaire dispute on the constitutionality of community provisions if Romania joins the European Union. Although the very notion of control of the constitutionality of community provisions is nonsensical, as a higher (a community) norm cannot be subject to control on the basis of a lower (domestic) norm, the legal consequences of integration, which can be interpreted by the supporters of unrestricted sovereignty as gross violations of the constitutional principle of sovereignty of the Romanian state, will inevitably fuel these disputes.
The legal consequences of Romania's potential integration in the community structures would amount to:
- giving up the sovereign competency to legislate in fields that fall under the community's competencies;
- giving up the reception by means of laws of international norms in the domestic legal system;
- modifying the structure of its domestic law, so as to introduce a community component that would take precedence over all current domestic laws, constitutional norms included, with all the consequences it entails.
Even at first glance, these consequences lead to the question:

How can Romania join the community structures given its domestic legislation?

The provisions of the 1991 Constitutions related to international relations and the general international law (Articles 10 and 11 ) do not exclude any category of international treaties from the range of treaties Romania can conclude. Consequently, in principle, the accession treaty could be concluded under the conditions imposed by Law No. 4/1991 on the Conclusion and Ratification of Treaties. The Government has the duty to initiate negotiations with a view to initiate a treaty, therefore the inception of negotiations is a political decision. The legislative step in only when it comes to the ratification of a treaty that has been signed. With regard to the ratification or the passing of treaties, Article 4 of Law No. 4/1991 provides: "International treaties signed on behalf of Romania, as well as agreements and conventions signed by the Romanian Government, related to political and military Cupertino, those that require the adoption of new laws or reviews of the laws currently in force, as well as those that involve political or financial commitments or are related to issues regarding the political and territorial regime of the state or the status of persons, civil rights and liberties or the participation in international organisations, as well as specifically provide them shall be submitted to the Parliament to be ratified by law.
The provisions of Paragraph 1 regarding ratification by the Parliament shall also be applicable to the accession to international treaties provided in this paragraph."
Consequently, the Treaty on Romania's accession to the European Union should be ratified by the Parliament by law. As Article 72 Paragraph 3, as well as the other constitutional texts which provide for the compulsory adoption of organic laws do not include ratification laws in this category, the ratification of the accession treaty to the European Union would require the adoption of an ordinary law.
Ordinary law should include provisions regarding the transfer of sovereign competencies of the Romanian state to the community institutions and community law, acquis communautaire included, would gain precedence over any norm of domestic law. Consequently, the law would include provisions running counter to many constitutional norms , namely to:
- Article 1 Paragraph 1 which mentions the sovereign character of the Romanian state, which "highlights the full decisional power of the Romanian state as contrasted with any other political forces or structures inside or outside the country;"
- Article 11, which provides implicitly the conversion of international law norms into domestic norms, that will gain the legal force of the domestic document by means of which they are inserted in the domestic legal order;
- Articles 72 and 107, that implicitly establish the legal force of laws;
- Article 15 Paragraph 2, which implicitly establishes the precedence of a subsequent law;
- Article 58 Paragraph 1, which provides: "Parliament is the supreme representative body of the Romanian people and the sole legislative authority of the Country;"
- Article 78 joint with Article 107 Paragraph 4, "Laws shall be published in the Official Gazette and come into force on the day of publication or the date provided in its text;" "Decisions and orders adopted by the Government shall be signed by the Prime Minister, countersigned by the Ministers who are bound to act to carry them into execution, and shall be published in the Official Gazette of Romania. Non-publishing entails non-existence of a decision or order. Decisions of a military character shall be conveyed only to the institutions concerned.
Could anyone invoke the unconstitutionality of this ordinary law?
Given that the ratification law produces both domestic and international effects, we believe that the possibility to exercise control a priori and a posteriori over the constitutionality of this law should be analysed separately.
With regard to the control provided by Article 114 letter a) of the Constitution, this is possible, as the ratification document is not in force yet, therefore it has produced no legal consequences either at the domestic or at the international level. The Constitutional Court would reach the conclusion that the law, in the form adopted by the Parliament, is unconstitutional, and the Parliament would be bound to "re-examine" it.
Could we talk about a re-examination of the ratification law? Obviously not, as, once signed, it means that the treaty has been negotiated, hence the Government has obtained the most favourable condition possible. Therefore, the Parliament could choose not to ratify the treaty - which would lead to the presumption of incompetence of the bodies entitled to negotiate international treaties on behalf of the Romanian state -, to review the Constitution or to adopt the ratification law in the same form, with a majority of two thirds at least, in which case, according to Article 145 Paragraph 1 "In cases of unconstitutionality, in accordance with Article 144 subparagraphs a) and b), the law or standing orders shall be returned for reconsideration. If the law is passed again in the same formulation by a majority of at least two thirds of the members of each Chamber, the objection of unconstitutionality shall be removed, and promulgation thereof shall be binding" and will come into force upon its publication in the Official Gazette or upon the date specified in the treaty.
What could be the effects of the ratification law adopted according to the provisions of Article 154 Paragraph 1 of the Constitution?
Firstly, it would express the consent of the Romanian state to be bound by the accession treaty signed by its plenipotentiaries. From that moment on, the state's international commitment becomes indisputable, unless one could invoke its nullity based on one of the grounds regulated specifically and limitatively by the 1969 Convention on the Treaty Act .
All the consequences of accession become effective as soon as the ratification law comes into force: the treaty takes precedence over any domestic norms.
Can the constitutionality of the ratification law be tested by way of exception? The answer is again negative, as the principle of the immediate applicability of community law neutralises the effects of the formal reception carried out in dualistic states. The norms introduces in the domestic law by means of the accession treaty are community law norms which are enforced as such. The only instance that can rule on these norms is the Court of Justice of European Communities.
This is how a treaty ratified by means of an ordinary law, which contains provisions that run counter to the Constitution, can be legally concluded without reviewing the Constitution.
What would happen to constitutional provisions that are inconsistent with community norms? Is a prior review of the Constitution imperative only in order to bring the Constitution in line with the provisions of the accession law? For aesthetic considerations or for the sake of strictness, yes. But not necessarily for legal considerations. The constitutional provisions hinted at become inapplicable from the moment the accession treaty comes into force. The inapplicability will be limited to the field of community law; the Constitution will remain the fundamental law in the domestic law in a strict sense, and will also be applied with regard to the other norms of international law.
A review of the Constitution would be justified by the need to settle the relation between domestic and international law, as the provisions currently in force are ambiguous in this respect. Some authors avoid providing a solution to this issue, others state that Romania has adopted a mainly monistic system ; actually, the provisions of Article 11 of the Constitution disguise a genuine dualism . This preference is entirely justified from the perspective of absolute sovereignty.
On this occasion, the state sovereignty could also be reconsidered function of today's dynamics of international law. It is indisputable that the norms of international law regulate certain social relations whose legal regulation has become imperative. Nowadays, international law is past the stage where it could be completely separated from the domestic law of a state. We must accept that humankind has reached a stage where it is no longer made of separate populations, grouped in various states, but a society governed by a unitary legal order: international law. In our opinion, the only conception that does not stray from reality is monism, that is, the primacy of international law. The essence of monism consists of the fact that the development of legal orders follows step by step the development of sociability: as and to the extent to which new relations are established among the legal subjects of a distinct and so far more or less isolated political community, a new order, in which new legal rules govern these relations, will emerge (Ubi societas ibi jus). These legal rules govern new situations and represents a super-order in relation with the pre-existing and subjacent orders that it co-ordinates.

Corneliu-Liviu Popescu

I. Introductory remarks on applicable juridical norms

The main constitutional provisions related to international treaties and legislative delegation are Art. 91 Paragraph (1), Art. 11 Paragraph (2), and Art. 114 of the Constitution, respectively.
According to Art. 91 Paragraph (1), the President concludes on behalf of the Romanian state treaties negotiated by the Government and submits them to the Parliament for ratification within 60 days. Art. 11 Paragraph (2) provides that international treaties ratified by the Parliament, according to the law, are part of national law.
By correlating the two constitutional norms, it follows that there are three types of international treaties:
1) international treaties concluded on behalf of the Romanian state, where the state's consent to become legally bound by the treaty has two steps: conclusion of the treaty by the President, by means of a decree countersigned by the Prime Minister (Art. 91 Paragraph 1 and Art. 99 Paragraph 2) and ratification by the Parliament;
2) international treaties ratified by the Parliament, where the state's consent to become legally bound to observe the treaty is effected through ratification by the Parliament;
3) other international treaties the Constitution makes no reference to.
The law on international treaties required by Art. 11 Paragraph (2) of the Constitution is Law No. 4/1991 on the Conclusion and Ratification of Treaties. This law is prior to the Constitution and many of its provisions run counter to the fundamental law and therefore have been repealed.
According to Law 4/1991, international treaties, whether signed on behalf of Romania or requiring only ratification, are ratified by the Parliament in accordance with the law.
The law makes no difference between the two types of international treaties in terms of ratification procedure. The issue is whether the Parliament's competency to ratify treaties by law can be delegated to the Government to be exercised by means of governmental order.
Legislative delegation is an institution regulated by Art. 114 of the Constitution. The Parliament can enable the Government by law to issue orders (equal in force with any law) in matters other than those covered by organic laws. If desired, the Parliament can request by means of the enabling law that the orders issued on the basis of this law be subsequently submitted to the Parliament for approval, according to the law.
Law 4/1991 provides neither for the type of law by means of which the Parliament ratifies an international treaty nor for the Parliament's competency to delegate the ratification of international treaties to the Government. This is not an omission, as both the different categories of laws and the legislative delegation and orders are legally instituted by the 8 December 1991 Constitution. In order to find solutions to these matters, we must resort directly to the text of the Constitution.
According to Art. 72 Paragraph (1) of the Constitution, the Parliament passes constitutional laws, organic laws and ordinary laws. We shall not analyse here constitutional laws, by means of which the Constitution is reviewed and which are equal in force with the fundamental law - as legislative delegation does not apply to this field. At this point, we shall just mention incidentally that the ratification of an international treaty by means of a constitutional law is entirely constitutional.
Strictly speaking, laws fall into two categories: organic laws and ordinary laws. Organic laws are adopted exclusively in fields listed specifically and restrictively in the Constitution, that make up the field covered by organic law, while ordinary laws regulate directly all the other social relations. The two types of laws are equal in force, being directly subordinated to the Constitution.
When it comes to laws on the ratification of international treaties, the obvious logical constitutional solution - in the absence of any distinctions or adverse provisions - is an ordinary or an organic law, function of the matter regulated by the international treaty it ratifies.
If we go on to discuss whether legislative delegation is applicable to international treaties, we shall note that the only constitutional restriction in this field is that it should not interfere with the area governed by organic law. By way of consequence, it follows that it is permissible in all matters governed by ordinary law, including ordinary laws on the ratification of international treaties. No constitutional provision prevents the Parliament from commissioning to the Government its power to ratify international treaties, whether they are international treaties signed on behalf of Romania or other international treaties that require only ratification, if they regulate issues which do not overlap the field governed by organic laws.
On the other hand, it is of no consequence whether the requirement that an order on the ratification of an international treaty be submitted to the Parliament for approval is introduced in the enabling law, as both situations are constitutional. In all cases of legislative delegation, it is up to the Parliament to request that the order be subsequently submitted for approval or not, at the time when the enabling law is adopted. The Constitution indicates no specific field in which the approval of orders issued on the basis of an enabling law is compulsory or, on the contrary, forbidden.
It should be mentioned that legislative delegation applies only to the Parliament's competencies, more specifically to the ratification of international treaties, either concluded on behalf of Romania or other treaties that require only ratification. Legislative delegation does not apply to the President's competence to conclude international treaties on behalf of the Romanian state by means of decree countersigned by the Prime Minister, because this is his competency (jointly with the head of the Government) and does not come within the Parliament's province.
To conclude, it is constitutional to delegate the ratification of all international treaties except for those governed by organic law.

II. The legal practice and case law of the Constitutional Court in the matter

1. The legislative delegation of the ratification of international treaties has been enforced since 1993. The laws that enabled the Government to issue orders during parliamentary recesses included provisions that delegated the Government to ratify international treaties.
The Government has been enabled to issue orders by means of the following laws: Law No. 58/1993, Law No. 4/1994, Law No. 72/1994, Law No. 1/1995, Law No. 81/1995, Law No. 130/1995, Law No. 65/1996, Law No. 142/1996, Law No. 134/1997, Law No. 221/1997 and Law No. 148/1998.
2. The Constitutional Court had the opportunity to rule on the constitutionality of the delegation of powers for the ratification of international treaties with respect to three such laws: Law 58/1993, Law 221/1997 and Law 148/1998. Each time, a group of parliamentarians raised an objection of unconstitutionality before the Constitutional Court before the enabling law was promulgated.
The Court pronounced the following decisions in this matter: Decision No. 43 of 8 July 1993, Decision No. 718 of 29 December 1997 and Decision No. 105 of 13 July 1998.
On each occasion, the Constitutional Court made the right decisions, ruling that it was constitutional to enable the Government to ratify international treaties by means of orders, if the issues the former regulate do not come within the province governed by organic laws.
However, in our opinion, the (implicit) solutions were wrong, namely: delegation of ratification is constitutional only if it does not apply to international treaties concluded on behalf of the Romanian state; delegation of ratification is constitutional because it refers exclusively to financial, banking or technical agreements; delegation of ratification is constitutional only if the enabling law requires that the treaties be subsequently submitted to the Parliament for approval.

III. Political stands taken by political parties

The stands taken by political parties (including the organisations of ethnic minorities represented in the Parliament) on the delegation of the ratification of international treaties are very interesting. We shall present below only those political stands that have produced legal effects, that have been voiced either during the adoption of the enabling and approval laws, in the issuance of orders on the ratification of international treaties or at the time when the constitutionality of enabling laws was challenged.
1. In 1993, the National Peasant Christian-Democratic Party, the Democratic Party and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania - all opposition parties at that time - considered that legislative delegation for the ratification of international treaties was unconstitutional.
Hence, deputies of these political parties notified the Constitutional Court, which pronounced Decision No. 43/1993, ruling on the constitutionality of the enabling law (which became Law No. 58/1993) by means of which the Government was delegated to ratify certain international treaties.
According to the objection, it is unconstitutional to delegate the Government to ratify financial and banking treaties in an emergency procedure, as this activity is part of the organic competency to control and approve the Government's international activity, which cannot be delegated.
After 1996, when these parties came into office, they promoted in the Government and adopted in the Parliament four such enabling laws (Law 142/1996, Law 134/1997, Law 221/1997 and Law 148/1998). Some of their provisions delegate the Government to ratify international treaties.
On the basis of these special enabling laws, the Government in which these three parties were represented has issued orders for the ratification of international treaties. Some of these ratification orders have already been approved by the Parliament (where these parties had the majority of votes) by law. The other orders are pending in the Parliament. None has been rejected.
It should be mentioned that no representative of these parties - either parliamentarians, the presidents of the two Chambers of the Parliament or members of the Cabinet - claimed before the Constitutional Court that the enabling laws or the laws by means of which the governmental orders were passed were unconstitutional. Moreover, when the constitutionality of two such enabling laws (which became Law 221/1997 and Law 148/1998) was challenged, the presidents of the two Chambers of the Parliament and the Government sent their points of view to the Constitutional Court, urging that the objections of unconstitutionality be dismissed as unfounded.
Thus, in the case regarding the enabling law passed as Law No. 221/1997 (decision No. 718/1997 of the Constitutional Court), the President of the Senate and the Government asked that the objection be dismissed as unfounded.
In his opinion, the President of the Chamber of Deputies stated that the enabling laws on the ratification of international agreements by means of governmental orders could not be unconstitutional, as the ratification was effected through an ordinary law and therefore could be delegated to the Government, on condition that the ratification order be submitted to the Parliament for approval.
The President of the Senate claimed that the objection was unfounded. He counteracted the criticism that the ratification of international treaties cannot be delegated to the Government by saying that, in accordance with Law 4/1991 on the Conclusion and Ratification of Treaties, international agreements of exceptional importance, such as political and military co-operation, the state's political and territorial regime, civil rights and liberties, etc. are all bound to be submitted to the Parliament for ratification. It followed clearly from the fields listed in the enabling law that it referred to agreements, not to international treaties signed on behalf of the Romanian state.
The Government appreciated that the objection was unfounded, showing that no constitutional provision stipulates that the ratification of agreements is a field governed by organic law; hence, the Government can ratify international agreements by means of orders.
In the other case, when the Constitutional Court pronounced Decision No. 105/1998 with regard to the enabling law that became Law No. 148/1998, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the President of the Senate and the Government also asked that the objection be dismissed as unfounded.
The President of the Chamber of Deputies was of the opinion that the objections of unconstitutionality raised in this case were unfounded, as international treaties are ratified by means of ordinary laws and any legal obstacles to legislative delegation in this field have been removed.
The President of the Senate considered the objection unfounded. He showed that the criticism related to the ratification of international treaties should be rejected, because there are no grounds to regard it as unconstitutional. The objections raised with regard to the enabling law are also unfounded, as long as governmental orders on the ratification of international treaties, conclusion of agreements, etc. will be submitted to the Parliament for approval - hence the enabling law observes all constitutional requirements.
The Government appreciated that the objection was unfounded. The argument that the ratification and conclusion of international agreements should have been the Government's concern in a different period was regarded as groundless, as it did not make reference to any violation of constitutional norms.
To conclude, the political stand taken by these political parties on the constitutionality of the legislative delegation of the ratification of international treaties has changed.
2. The political parties in power in the period 1993-1996 went through the same change of opinion, only in the reverse sense.
From 1993 to 1996, the Government formed and supported by the Party of Social Democracy in Romania, the Party of Romanian National Unity and the Great Romania Party initiated draft enabling laws and issued orders on the ratification of international treaties. The Parliament in which these parties had the majority of votes adopted all the enabling laws (7 such laws, namely Law No. 58/1993, Law No. 4/1994, Law No. 72/1994, Law No. 1/1995, Law No. 8/1995, Law No. 130/1995, Law No. 65/1996) and all the laws by means of which these orders were passed.
The parliamentarians of these parties, the presidents of the two Chambers and the Government did not raise any objection of unconstitutionality to the enabling laws or to the laws by means of which the orders on the ratification of international treaties were adopted.
Moreover, the Chamber of Deputies and the Government asked that the objection of unconstitutionality raised in the case regarding the enabling law which became later Law No. 58/1993 (Decision No. 43/1993 of the Constitutional Court) be dismissed as unfounded.
The Chamber of Deputies showed in its point of view that it is not unconstitutional to enable the Government to ratify or approve urgent financial and banking agreements, as the ratification of such agreements does not come into the province of organic laws, in accordance with Art. 72 Paragraph (3) of the Constitution.
According to the point of view expressed by the Government, it is constitutional to enable the Government to ratify financial and banking agreements, as this matter is regulated by organic law.
It is obvious that as long as they stayed in office, these parties considered that the legislative delegation of the ratification of international treaties was constitutional.
However, as soon as they became opposition parties, their senators and deputies raised two objections of unconstitutionality, challenging two enabling laws (which became Law No. 221/1997 and Law No. 148/1998).
Thus, in the case regarding the enabling law currently known as Law No. 221/1997, in which the Constitutional Court pronounced Decision No. 718/1997, several senators challenged the constitutionality of the enabling law.
The objection asserts that the provisions related to the ratification of international agreements were unconstitutional, on grounds that it is impossible for a single entity to be competent to conclude, carry out, ratify and supervise the carry out of international agreements. Ratification of international agreements is an exclusive prerogative of the Parliament and cannot be delegated.
In the case regarding the enabling law currently known as Law No. 148/1998, in which the Constitutional Court pronounced Decision No. 105/1998, several senators and deputies criticised the enabling law, claiming that it was inconsistent with constitutional provisions.
The petition signed by the senators raised an objection, criticising the Government's lack of concern for the 17 international agreements, ratifications and accessions listed in the enabling law that should have been on the Government's agenda up to that moment.
The petition submitted by the deputies challenged the legal provisions according to which the Government is enabled to issue orders through which Romania ratifies, joins or commits itself to various international agreements, conventions or amendments. The deputies declared that these provisions are unconstitutional and inconsistent with Art. 91 Paragraph (1) of the Constitution, which provides that the President ratifies treaties on behalf of Romania and that international treaties that involve financial commitments are submitted to the Parliament for ratification. The President's prerogatives, regulated by the Constitution, cannot be commissioned to the Government.
It follows that, once turned into opposition parties, they consider that it is unconstitutional to delegate the ratification of international treaties.

IV. Political standpoints of political leaders

With regard to the specific standpoints of the political leaders, we shall mention only those who held public functions before and after the 1996 change of power and who have changed their mind about the constitutionality of legislative delegation for the ratification of international treaties.
Their opinions followed the same evolution as that of the political parties they were part of.
1. A first category includes the political leaders who signed the objection of unconstitutionality in 1993 and embraced the reverse opinion after 1996.
For instance, Mr. Ion Diaconescu, in his quality as President of the Chamber of Deputies, submitted his point of view to the Constitutional Court in 1997 and 1998, stressing that the delegation of the ratification of international treaties is constitutional.
Similarly, Mr. Mircea Ciumara and Mr. Gavril Dejeu were ministers in the governments that initiated draft enabling laws, issued ratification orders and expressed viewpoints regarding the constitutionality of legislative delegation in this field after 1996.
The other category includes political leaders whose opinions evolved the other way round. They held public functions from 1993 to 1996, supported the delegation of the ratification of international treaties and employed this procedure to the fullest, but signed objections of unconstitutionality after 1996.
Mr. Adrian Nastase was President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1993, when this Chamber stated that legislative delegation in this field is constitutional.
Nicolae Vacaroiu, Ion Predescu, Aurel Constantin Ilie, Petre Ninosu, Dan Mircea Popescu, Doru Ioan Taracila, Liviu Maior, Marin Cristea, Dumitru Popescu, Florin Geogescu were members of the governments that initiated draft enabling laws, issued ratification orders and expressed viewpoints regarding the constitutionality of these legislative delegations that they submitted to the Constitutional Court.
Mr. Ion Iliescu distinguished himself through his separate position: although he signed both objections of unconstitutionality after 1996, he never acted in the period 1993-1996 to remove the practice he regards now as unconstitutional. He did not send back to the Parliament for review or challenge before the Constitutional Court any of the enabling or approval laws, on the basis of his presidential competencies and of his constitutional role to safeguard the observance of the Constitution, that he could have made use of had he considered that the fundamental law had been violated.

V. Brief closing remarks

The political changes occurred in 1996 were followed by a change in the political and legal views of some political parties and leaders with respect to the topic of our study, namely the legislative delegation of the ratification of international treaties. This change of opinion can be noticed - obviously in opposite ways - both at the political parties and leaders in opposition until 1996, who acceded to power afterwards, and at the political parties and leaders who followed this path the other way round.
From a political perspective, it is hard to assess which of the two trends - criticising the delegation of ratification while in opposition and using it once in power, or the other way round, resorting to it while in power and criticising it afterwards - is the most deceptive.
However, in both cases, it is regrettable that the constitutionality of legislative delegation of the ratification of international treaties, a legal institution that holds an important place in Romania's foreign policy, which requires consistency and honesty, is upheld or denied once political leaders and parties change sides by coming into office or losing political power.

Gabriel Andreescu and Adrian Severin

We immediately place things in a moral rather than a pragmatic perspective

Gabriel Andreescu: The secret services and the intelligence agencies… I believe it worthwhile to move to our next topic bearing these words in mind. The topic that I am suggesting is your so-called "resignation." Dismissal is not yet a common practice. You quit the Foreign Affairs Ministry in December 1997, about one year after you had been appointed there. It all started with an interview published in the daily Azi in September 1997. The interview was extremely critical of Petre Roman, an unnamed but otherwise obvious target, and included some shocking references to the existence of foreign secret service agents inside the press and Romanian political groups. Let us look now at this issue from a deeper angle, if I may say so, let us get closer to the real stake of that confrontation. In other words, let's define first of all the context. Can you name the "stake" of your intervention in Azi?
Adrian Severin: Of course. My target were the actions of the forces that tried to keep Romania within the international grey area.

G.A.: And what was their strategy for keeping Romania within the grey area?
A.S.: In order to remain a "grey country" we had to be hostile towards our neighbours and especially towards Hungary; we had to be eternally fearful and retractile in our relations with Russia; we had to be nationalistic in our dialogue with the United States and the EU. In other words, we had to be a country watched with suspicion by everybody, disliked by everyone, a country that everybody should keep at bay. We had to be a country which, because it had no allies, could not demand anything. A country incapable of expressing successfully any aspiration. A country without a clear programme for integration in the family of solid democracies.
This is where the actions that I aimed at in my interview led to. Of course, everything was orchestrated with great ability. The people aiming at our downfall employed the discourse of national dignity in external politics, and reproached us that we are not proud enough, that we did not grab the US by the lapels, that we failed to defy Russia, and that we did not slam the door in Europe's face. Nobody said that the real aim of all this was actually to bring the country to its knees. Everybody said we want dignity. Dignity by means of a provincial discourse, by means of anachronistic and retrograde attitudes which, politically and culturally, are a sure road to exclusion. Dignity by means of aggressive acts which place us in the midst of an unequal balance of forces and will lead us to an unavoidable defeat. Under such circumstances I have asked - and did so repeatedly - our secret services to neutralise these actions. Of course, I have often discussed the issue with the President.

G.A.: And what was President Constantinescu's opinion?
A.S.: He was always extremely concerned about these things. He often shared my apprehensions, as well as information which he had access to as head of the state. He often provided specific examples, names of people that appeared in documents which he had received from the special services and who were engaged in hostile acts directed against the state's fundamental goals. To the extent that the President was misinformed and manipulated by means of such information, I have been misinformed and manipulated as well. But I could not simply embrace the thesis that the information was meant to manipulate me, or to manipulate him for that matter. So I have to assume that the state of surprise which he publicly exhibited as he found out about my statement - or, to be exact, as he found out the details of my statement - was engineered for the public: he had already had access to that information.
But I did not stop here. All this information, which should have normally been discussed by the head of the state and the people involved in one way or another with the defence of the national interest and national safety, including the Foreign Minister (who was also the vice-prime minister), has been corroborated with other data. With, for instance, information which I was in a position to receive, and have actually received from my foreign partners. Of course, these people could also try - at least some of them could - to misinform me. But this was the very reason why I was trying to corroborate information - to minimise, if not rule out, the risk of manipulation. Besides this type of information, I have directly asked for, as a matter of my natural relation with the special services, data which could provide a firmer grasp of reality. I found out that such data existed and that, in my opinion - maybe I am easier to persuade, although I certainly do not feel that way - it could prove with 90% accuracy the involvement of opinion makers in the acts which I had made reference to, and which no one had attempted to neutralise.

G.A.: This evidence, or part of it… could it be introduced in a court of law?
A.S.: Of course not. Most of this evidence was not judicial evidence. But this was not a matter of doing justice. The point was to defend our interests. I was not pursuing the punishment of those involved. If such had been the case, they should have been brought before a court. However, we immediately place things in a moral rather than pragmatic perspective. Of course, those who transgress against the state should eventually be punished. There is a whole philosophy which explains why sanction is necessary. But this was not my job. For me the real issue was to protect a policy which I considered vital to the state's interests and against which several groups of interests and their representatives acted illegitimately. Of course, everybody has the right to voice his or her opinion about something, but nobody has the right to undermine a certain policy when he or she does not have the democratic authorisation to do so. I do not refer here to the parliamentary opposition - which can of course debate anything at any time -, but to a shrewd and perverse shaping of public opinion so that the latter should oppose the values promoted by the government.
I have had, for instance, several disputes which I could characterise as unjust with the PDSR concerning the Treaty with Ukraine. But, from all I know, I could not at the time reproach the PDSR leaders anything besides the demagogic discourse in which the Opposition sometimes engages merely to show off its disagreement with the government. I had no additional information and I saw in the Opposition's talk nothing more than a Power-Opposition game, which of course is not always elegant, mature and wise in Romania. But other people tried to block the treaty in different ways.
I do not know if I've been clear enough. The Opposition, not being a hidden opposing force, is assumed to attack the government, to place itself in a different position. That this is not always for the best is an entirely different matter. But people expect them to act like this. A statement made by the Opposition will be regarded with a certain amount of circumspection, will be seen as a counterpart to the statement made by the Power. This is not annoying. But it is an entirely different matter when lying prophets and pseudo-analysts use hidden tactics to say which of the two is right. The problem is not that they voice their opinions, but rather that they orchestrate a violent campaign which involves the public opinion and induces people to think that they are an ally not to a party or another, but to a cause which is fought for from under a neutral, patriotic, well-meaning banner. Of course, the opposite is the case. This system of manipulation is especially dangerous.
Back to the main topic - everything I knew led me to the conclusion that some groups or persons acted so as to block a certain foreign policy, not because their political beliefs dictated that way but because they were patronised by interests alien to the country's own. I did then what others had done so many times before. Bratianu did it, and Titulescu did it a while back; Poland's Minister of Defence did it at the same time with me, in the very day before Poland became part of NATO. Others did it after me, the President among them. They said the same things. Nobody reacted in the same way, though. There were no scandals. Recently, none other than the US Secretary of State said, without giving any names, that among the journalists accredited by the State Department there are some involved in espionage - they collect secret information or act to the purpose of manipulating the public opinion.
What I did then had a double or even a triple purpose. I thought the Romanian public opinion should be informed about this phenomenon so that it should not swallow uncritically everything it was being served. It should stop believing everything they are told. Secondly, I thought it is a positive pressure exercised upon the special services. By "positive pressure" I mean a way of forcing the inert to budge and encouraging those that were kept back to work on the issue. Some thanked me, privately of course, because this public debate authorised them to act in ways that they had been discouraged to pursue. They realised, for instance, when they tried to look deeper into the things that I had brought into discussion, that structures that had entered our special services before 1989 were dismantled immediately afterwards…

An invisible confrontation

G.A.: Such as?
A.S.: I'd rather not give names.

G.A.: Then let me mention one example: the dismantling of the anti-KGB service. The information that I had immediately after December 1989 as a CFSN member concerned the break-up of this group and the spreading of its specialists throughout the country. The author of this measure was none other than Nicolae Militaru, the new Minister of Defence at the time, one of the ex-subjects of this service.
A.S.: Well, this is your example, not mine. I do not want to suggest that Romania has to prove its Russo-phobia. Not even its Sovieto-phobia - an attitude of hostility towards the Soviet Union as it existed until 1991, two years after the revolution in Romania. We have to have friendly relations with our Eastern neighbours. But our defence against secret services such as the GRU and the KGB, which are allegedly operating on the territory of our country, is not an act of hostility. It is interesting that such a structure existed during Ceausescu's reign, when we were allies within the Warsaw Pact and the CAER, and that it was dismantled as we started to move towards NATO. It was natural to assume at that point that the Russian Federation would not be very excited to abandon, without leaving behind a form of surveillance, a country that was righting itself in that direction.
Again, I insist on the fact that these problems should not be dealt with passionately or hysterically. They should not lead to popular feelings of resentment or enmity toward another state. We have to understand that every country promotes its interests by any means available. That every country is in principle legitimate in the attempt to promote its interests, and that, therefore, the game has to be accepted as such. But when you become part of the game and you realise that it is inevitable, you also have to deal with your own interests. Just as I am not bothered, as a matter of principle, that Russia protects its interests on Romanian territory, Russia should not be bothered that I am defending my own interests, also on Romanian soil.

G.A.: Mr. Severin, let us draw a distinction for our readers: Russo-phobia is the attitude of hostility towards the Russian people and needs to be condemned. This has been made explicit in the press several times. But the attitude of the Russian state, of the Russian Federation, against the enlargement of NATO structures is another matter. This line of policy has been presented in detail.
The kind of arguments put forward by Russian officials are to be encountered in an almost identical fashion in the discourse of some Romanian anti-Western media. (I would also add the fact that the opinions of the representatives of the Russian State with regard to Russian foreign policy, such as their opposition to the extension of Western intergovernmental structures, does not even represent the true interests of the Russian Federation.) It is clear that the latter may either play the Russian game in spite of themselves or, on the contrary, they may have certain tasks to accomplish. The plan of the Russian special services, and this is pretty obvious, is to oppose the NATO expansion, and they will act to this purpose within and without the Romanian territory. Irritation against this type of politics is nor Russo-phobia but KGB-phobia or FSB-phobia.
A.S.: I agree. After all, we know very well that the official Russian point of view is strictly set against the NATO enlargement. And the official Romanian point of view is diametrically opposed. Let us admit that both countries have correctly evaluated their own interests and that their policies perfectly express the interests of the two nations. An unhappy context has been created, in which the national interests of the two countries are completely at odds. Since we are dealing with fundamental interests it is obvious that both countries will employ whatever means are available in order to promote them. Naturally, nobody wants a military conflict, and a violent confrontation is doubtlessly unnecessary. Nevertheless, a confrontation exists and it is waged in invisible ways. Each party has to take steps for protection. It is not obvious why we have not taken such steps. In my writings I have gone so far as to accuse the United States of being less active than Russia in promoting their interests in Romania. Russia was visibly more interested in creating a current of opinion in its favour.
But in our case we are talking about creating a trend of opinion ourselves, one in favour of the Romanian position, rather than merely lulling the public opinion to sleep. This is what it is all about. Of course, we can go further and discuss the issue of economic interest groups, which have their own agenda and want Romania integrated "in a particular way" in the mondialising markets.
We can look at these things from other points of view. We can pursue the line of reasoning even further. Let us say that the Russian Federation is not in any way involved in the promotion, in Romania, of interests opposed to the Romanian ones concerning NATO. This still does not justify the decision to dissolve defence structures since an invisible struggle can always be started. Especially since, for instance, a certain Polish minister points out that there are similar problems in his country, since Hungarian officials suggest that they have similar apprehensions concerning their own country, etc.
This is the reason why, after realising not only that we are largely ineffective but also that we have dismantled our "fighting gear" for this kind of confrontations, I had to press the alarm button.

G.A.: Have you noticed, after your intervention, any reaction from the targeted groups, from the "adversary" if I may use this word?
A.S.: Of course, especially since I knew very well in what direction I aimed my statement. I referred to mass media people, to opinion-agents rather than to intelligence agents - I have pointed this out a million times. I aimed not at people who were spying in order to collect information, but to opinion-makers who used their position to engage the Romanian public opinion and to exploit the citizens' good faith against Romania's interests. I watched them and I saw their restlessness. They were extremely agitated. I know that some of the targeted persons packed their bags and were ready to leave the country. These things are now known to me - back then they were known to the people in charge.

G.A.: Have the latter notified you?
A.S.: Of course they did. These were things which we used to discuss among ourselves. But at one point they told me that I was right so I had to write my resignation. Which was, obviously, a contradiction.

Debating under the Pressure of the Press

G.A.: Looking from the outside, all one could see was a press campaign directed against you.
A.S.: The campaign… Not everyone of those who started this campaign was hostile to me or acted because they felt themselves targeted. This was not the case. I can provide an example that I am familiar with: the newspaper Ziua. Ziua, hunting for sensational news like most other newspapers, pressured me to disclose extraordinary stories for its reading-public. They wanted names, which was both useless and irrelevant, as well as impossible for legal reasons. After all, I can watch a person committing a murder and know very well that he or she was the perpetrator but still lack the evidence to bring him or her before the court. All I have is my own testimony, which is legally not enough, but sufficient for me. If what I want is to prevent that person from committing a murder rather than to punish him or her, my best strategy is to announce that there is a criminal operating on our alley, in this or that particular quarter. So people should stay home at night, or walk in pairs, or be careful…

G.A.: Or call the police…
A.S.: Or call the police and put more police-persons on our street. Some officers working in the field have told me that I had aimed too well at the target so everybody started to scream and to work together against me by using the available means - those of the public scandal. But it's not simply that these people have felt themselves targeted - which, after all, was a sign of the failure of our mission. Likewise, it was not merely the fact that we had become a cat wearing a collar with bells around its neck, and were thus unable to catch any mice. In other words, the solidarity of those that felt themselves targeted was not the main problem. This did not surprise or frighten me. What did surprise and frighten me was the lack of solidarity among the others.

G.A.: Who are these others?
A.S.: The political class. The party leaders.

G.A.: Whom did you expect to act solidarily?
A.S.: I expected first of all the solidarity of the President, and the solidarity of the political party leaders in the government coalition.

G.A.: Probably you excepted the PD leaders, since you had attacked Petre Roman rather harshly in your interview.
A.S.: Well, you can see it this way. I don't know… You may look at things this way too. Since we are talking about the PD, it is maybe worth mentioning that Petre Roman was in fact the only one who has consistently spoken against me apropos the last part of the interview. The political council of the party, which met in the absence of Petre Roman (who was then abroad) decided unanimously that my position should be supported after a meeting with the other vice-presidents. The meeting took place at the Ministry of Transportation, in Traian Basescu's office.

G.A.: Was this a meeting to discuss your position?
A.S.: Precisely for that reason. They wanted to talk to me, to find out more details and reach a decision as to the party's position. The greatest part of my interview had been concerned with the party's own problems. But this is not what we discussed. We discussed the final part, the one referring to the false opinion-makers, to the agents of influence that President Constantinescu is complaining about these days and who affected the national interest. Once the scandal-bubble had burst, they had the right to discuss the matter with me and to see to what extent we could correlate our actions. They decided to support me. At that same moment Mr. Ciorbea, faced with a wave of questions from the mass media, demanded his own explanations in a long and painful government meeting. On that occasion Mr. Basescu, I remember this well - we have an official stenographic recording of the government meeting -, declared the firm support of his party for me.
But after Petre Roman returned he started all over again: he argued I had to make public the evidence and, if not, to resign or something to that effect.

G.A.: Let us pause at the government meeting in which your case was discussed. What were the positions of the other ministers?
A.S.: In the Romanian government of that period many people were for the first time ministers. They behaved as if they were in the Opposition. They were frightened by the press. They discussed under the pressure of the press. Here's an example of how far things could get. Some important decision was adopted in a certain way at a certain moment, after which Mr. Ciorbea, following a habit he displayed only too often, re-opened the debate and finally managed to change the initial decision. Meanwhile, after the initial decision had been made, the government's speaker left the conference room in order to inform an eager press about the answer. In order not to upset the representative of the press by prolonging his wait, the speaker immediately announced the decision. When he returned, he found out that we had just changed the decision that he had announced. Desperate about the situation, the members of the government decided that in such circumstances we should go back to our first decision rather than annoy the press.

G.A.: This is terrible. This shows that people do not understand that the government is the government and bears the responsibility for the authority of the state; while the press is the press, and its responsibilities are altogether different. The press is only metaphorically a "force in the state." It has to be respected, but its interference with the executive's business can only hurt the Romanian institutional system.
I have been told stories about ministers who receive calls during government meetings from newspaper-persons, then leave the room to express their opinions, to provide the press with information, and sometimes even to find outside-encouragement to uphold one position or another.
A.S.: I can confirm this, but to me this is, in the end, of secondary importance. On the other hand, a minister who did not service the press in this way was not as sympathetic to, and as protected by the press as the others.

G.A.: Did Mr. Ciorbea criticise you?
A.S.: He did utter all sorts of criticisms, but he was not as severe as other ministers, the most violent of whom was Mr. Ion Caramitru. Nevertheless, things started well, in spite of this cannonade, when Traian Basescu announced the decision of the Political Council of the PD.

G.A.: Was there a formal decision of support by the Political Council?
A.S.: Of course. A clear-cut decision of support. They said: "He knows what he is talking about, this is a real problem in the exercise of his function, we will not abandon him, we will not turn our backs on him, and the government should do the same. Let us get this over with."
Traian Basescu made a nice statement, I have to say. But within a few hours it was completely annihilated by Petre Roman's statement on the airport as he was returning from some place. He said then an altogether different thing. He did not even have the excuse of not knowing about the previous decision, of which he had been informed on the phone. He nevertheless decided to ignore the Political Council's decision in the absence of any statutory power to do so. This is the dialectics, if we may call it that, of PD's position toward the whole story.
I also have to add that President Constantinescu warned me, several times, with respect to the fact that the greatest pressures for my elimination from the government came from Petre Roman rather than other members of the coalition or of the Opposition.

G.A.: You said "greatest pressures." This means that Mr. Roman's pressure was not the only one.
A.S.: Probably not. I know for sure, though, that Mr. Ionescu-Quintus, Mr. Sergiu Cunescu, Mr. Ion Diaconescu and Mr. Marco Bela did not make such pressures, or at any rate no statements - except, probably, under the impact of the initial confusion - which were unfavourable to me. I also know that, even during a government session which I did not attend, they pleaded vehemently for me. The greatest part of the foreign policy commission, which had representatives from all parties, supported me. The only one speaking against me, in a slightly strident fashion, was Mr. Melescanu. With his exception, I cannot say that any party in the Opposition was firmly against me.

G.A.: But this is a little strange, Mr. Severin. On the one hand, most part of the government, with exceptions of course, supported you. On the other hand, President Constantinescu warned you. What exactly happened that made things go worse?
A.S.: At a certain point the President told me: "I shall make a statement to cool down the spirits in the press. I will say that I shall give the special services a certain amount of time to check the information, to see to what extent the information is or is not confirmed. After that, we shall see what we have to do."
I pointed out that the real issue is not to see what we shall do, whether the data is or is not confirmed, and then move along. I asked him not to consider punitive measures in case some things are not confirmed. My request was motivated by the fact that we both knew that we had been informed with respect to the things that I had in mind in my statement.

G.A.: You mean the incriminating evidence?
A.S.: In only one case was there legally acceptable evidence, as opposed to merely "information".

G.A.: When did you realise that your resignation was possible?
A.S.: How should I put it… Considering my talks with the President, with the leaders of the political parties and with the Political Council of my own party I considered the whole affair clear enough. I thought everything was well understood.

G.A.: Didn't you try to discuss with the special services the cases of the individuals that you had implicitly accused in public?
A.S.: The individuals that I targeted were people about whom I had already discussed with the President on the basis of information that he already had. They were already known to our special services. I did not want to make any statements that should involve these agencies. In other words, I refused to transfer the pressure upon our intelligence services.
This is why my answer to the question "Why have you not first informed those services?" has always been rather vague. The point is that those services had all the information that I had. But because they should be protected I took all the pressure upon myself. In that context, the President's amendment that if the data which I had provided turned out to be unfounded I had to answer politically was, in my opinion, a dangerous and rather lame finish. Things actually turned out exactly this way.

G.A.: Was it simply a lame idea or rather a premeditated statement?
A.S.: I cannot say whether it was premeditated. Back then I felt that the President wanted a happy ending for the entire chapter. But today, looking back, I feel that my resignation had to take place, one way or another. Any reason was all right as long as it led to the desired outcome - namely that I should be removed from my position as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

I was uncomfortable because I was too predictable

G.A.: Excuse me, was the aim to remove you, or a Foreign Minister who had a particular policy-line?
A.S.: When I said "I should be removed" I did not, of course, think about me as an individual. I meant an unconformable individual, but not because this individual was mean, angry or unpredictable. Rather, I was unconformable precisely because I was too predictable in pursuing my goals, the foreign policy principles and ideas that I held. Looking back I realise now better than I did in 1996 that the PD offered no support and had no intention to let me become Minister of Foreign Affairs in the coming government. When I refer to the party I do not mean its members, who were glad to have a representative in an important position, but to the small circle of party leaders. Petre Roman himself, who was present several times at the negotiations for the new government, even stated that "we can do without the Foreign Affairs Ministry." But at that point in time my authority within the party and the interests of Mr. Petre Roman were of such a nature that one could not start a fight to keep me outside the Ministry. I somehow conquered my position in the government, naturally with the assistance of some of my colleagues who took part in the negotiations, among whom I should mention Victor Babiuc. On the other hand, Mr. Roman effectively fought for Victor Babiuc and Traian Basescu. At a certain moment our negotiation partners suggested the very honourable position of Minister of Justice for Mr. Babiuc and the Telecommunications or the MLPAT for Mr. Basescu. But since the two were keen on Defence and Transportation, respectively, great efforts were made to secure these positions for them. I may say that the CDR representatives made almost no objections against my going to the Foreign Affairs. The objections came, to my genuine surprise, from representatives of the Civic Alliance: Mr. Bacanu and, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Blandiana.

G.A.: This is interesting. I knew that the debates concerning the structure of the government took place among the representatives of political parties alone.
A.S.: Of course. I was referring to positions voiced in the press, in public statements in Romania Libera. Since at that point the AC was a member of the Convention, there occurred a certain misunderstanding. Namely, that there was a certain resistance within the CDR against my becoming a Minister of Foreign Affairs. This is absolutely false - I will name those in important positions or those active in the negotiations: Mr. Constantinescu, Mr. Diaconescu, Mr. Ciorbea, Mr. Ionescu-Galbeni, Mr. Remus Opris; and Mr. Mircea Ionescu-Quintus, Mr. Tariceanu, Mr. Stoica from the Liberals - had no objections. I could even read a certain satisfaction on their faces, since they expected the position to be demanded by Mr. Petre Roman. Such a request would have embarrassed them, considering Mr. Roman's temperament, his unpredictable behaviour as well as the fact, obvious to the more informed of us, that his external connections are by far not as important as Mr. Brucan likes us to believe.

G.A.: Did you discuss with Mr. Bacanu?
A.S.: When I talked to him - we met by pure chance at the Parliament - he explained that he had nothing against me, but that he believed that it would be much better if I took care of the European Integration Department, the chief of which was, at that time, not a member of the government. In his opinion, a person such as Mr. Alexandru Herlea would have been much better in the position of a Minister of Foreign Affairs since he could make the MAE a more credible institution.

G.A.: You recall, perhaps, that at the time we discussed about the campaign waged against you by the press. You were the only future member of the government against whom a serious campaign was staged. Adevarul deserves the laurels for this.
A.S.: Adevarul launched a violent attack, claiming, among other preposterous things, that I lived in an apartment which they presented as a villa - they actually showed a picture of the entire block. They printed on the first page a series of statements concerning my alleged intention to demand the satisfaction of claims made by the national minorities of this country, claims which they described as unjust and anti-Romanian. There also appeared false information about the fact that Ankara, Kiev and Moscow had slammed the doors in my face. The attacks were not directed against the way in which the negotiations were unfolding but against my inadequacy for the position, and formulated a long series of criticisms.

G.A.: I recall the campaign in Romania Libera, where the most vocal enemy was Octavian Paler. His idea was that a man like you had no place in the MAE. Just like Adevarul, he seemed to have a personal stake in your appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. I cannot dissociate his behaviour at that point from future allegiances, such as his support for Mr. Magureanu. Mr. Virgil Magureanu, one of the most terrible characters in the post-December years, bears on his shoulders the responsibility for the Tg.-Mures dead, for the victims of the miners' crusades in June, 13-15, 1990 and September 1991, to which one should add the responsibility for turning Romania into a Cinderella of Europe. This same person was presented by the RL columnist as an individual whose patriotism "is not understood by the Romanian political class."
Something relevant and to a certain extent funny happened when, suddenly interrupting the series of editorials in Romania Libera, Octavian Paler took up a new issue: the necessity of a truly national party. A few days after that, Mr. Magureanu's Romanian National Party emerged on the political arena.
In my own opinion the campaign led by these newspapers against you as leader of the MAE is an expression of the presence of Romanian special services in the life of Romanian society.
A.S.: When you say "special services", are you referring to the Romanian ones or are you speaking about special services "in general"?

G.A.: First and foremost about the Romanian ones.
A.S.: Of course, I am also thinking about the Romanian ones but not necessarily about them alone. Of the individuals you mentioned or we both mentioned I could imagine some expressing not only Romanian interests, not even those of Romanian special services or Romanian group interests, but the interests of outside groups.

G.A.: But let us go back to the delicate issues. You said "I could imagine". Is this simply a feeling or more than a feeling?
A.S.: I would not like to be in the position to have to prove such a statement in court. I do not find it natural to gather evidence myself, as long as we have agencies which are supposed to do precisely this. It is natural that people should try to influence the policies of a country which sees itself as being strategically and economically important. We are either a big fish, and then everybody tries to catch us, or we are a small fish and then nobody looks at us. We cannot both be a big fish, and not be looked at. Under such circumstances, there's an invisible fight going on and a man who has been several times a minister in the position that I have occupied has to know these things. He does not have to - I'd say: he does not have the right to - reveal the details to the public. The phenomenon itself has to be publicly announced: this is a minimum of transparency that we owe to our fellow-citizens. It is in their interest to be aware of these things. The individuals who orchestrate such a campaign may change each and every day, so naming them and their positions is not like telling an absolute truth. Unfortunately people have been told that the essential thing is to find out the names, and their natural curiosity made them swallow this line.
They want evidence. I am a piece of evidence. I am a piece of evidence that involves witnesses. I should have been called and auditioned as a piece of evidence. That this piece of evidence should have been corroborated with other evidence, that's another matter altogether. However, if you have a witness in a trial who says he saw someone committing a murder, and are unable to corroborate this evidence with other pieces of evidence because there are no such pieces of evidence, you may acquit the defendant but you do not jail the witness. Maybe only if you can prove that he had a hidden agenda and committed perjury in court.
In this particular case I became, from a witness who was warning people, the accused himself. This metamorphosis would not have been possible without a hysterical campaign. And this campaign did not occur simply because we have hysterical journalists, but because a well-thought strategy had been put together. As always, some people who acted in good faith have been exploited without knowing it. The big noise that accompanied my debut in that ministerial position was like the lightning that announced the thunder that came a few months later.
I clearly remember the interviews I gave to the foreign press. They asked me about the most important ideas of my future foreign policy - if I was going to be a minister, as people expected. Those interviews, which had been published in the foreign press, were republished in Romania in a slaughtered form, with sentences completely taken out of context, just to show that I was about to betray the country's interests. Nobody bothered to think about the simple fact that if I wanted to betray the national interest I would have kept my mouth shut tightly and would not have uttered dangerous things, and would have chosen other channels to communicate with the people that were supposed to use me. Nobody even thought about the fact that the published material was a mystification.
This debut, or rather this avant-premiere, and then the opening moments are all extremely relevant for an understanding of what really happened, aren't they? If I remember correctly, no other Foreign Affairs Minister since 1990 was welcomed with such a salvo of criticism. Not Mr. Sergiu Celac, not Mr. Adrian Nastase, who at that time was a young and almost unknown politician, not Mr. Melescanu, about whom they said he was a great technocrat who was going to put our foreign policy on a solid basis. Not even Mr. Plesu, who admitted his lack of knowledge in this field, and who said that he was giving it a shot without any prejudices precisely because he is an ignoramus in these matters. Mr. Roman was criticised even less. Maybe it would be interesting to see why of all foreign ministers I mentioned he was the only one to enjoy the enthusiastic support of Adevarul.

G.A.: Wouldn't it have been a good idea to invite the responsible men and women of the press to an open debate about the foreign policy issues that were the subject of scandal-columns in their newspapers? A debate about the country's national interests, about the way that these interests can be best served by means of foreign affairs?
A.S.: I have discussed with directors or editors-in-chief throughout the entire period that we're looking at. They had received a bunch of false news, information and documentation. Not only was this information untrue, it also hindered the development of our foreign relations. As we discussed, some of them seemed very sensitive to the issues that I was raising. Since it was a matter of national interest and not just a fad, a small neighbourhood scandal, they revealed their sources. A journalist does not usually do this, but I believe that at that point their decision to come forward was correct because, I repeat, it was a matter of national interest. On this occasion I found out that among these sources were institutions of the Romanian state, individuals actually working within those institutions.

G.A.: That is to say, individuals who should have known better.
A.S.: In their capacity they should have known the truth, but they conveyed untrue information. This information was leaked deliberately, not by mistake. It was not divulged because the inquiring journalist was an able one, but on purpose. And it was leaked by institutions called not only to manage secret information, but also to guard it, to keep it away from the public's ears.

G.A.: Could we attribute a pecuniary interest to these leaks?
A.S.: My answer is in the negative. No, to my knowledge this information was not paid for.

G.A.: Then was it pure intoxication?
A.S.: If a pecuniary interest is missing one has to ask oneself as to the true reason. The answer can only be one, at least for someone who judges things the natural way: they wanted to create a certain trend in the public opinion, a certain image. The people who did this were making politics. Some employees of our public institutions also wanted to make politics - they steered the public opinion so that it should put pressure on the state's policies, and move them in one particular direction. How well organised all this was I cannot say simply because I do not know. I know, though, that at least some of the leaders of special agencies in Romania opposed such machinations.

The President asked me to change a few names in the appendix

G.A.: OK. So the ball started rolling downward faster and faster. The "fatal" scandal was set free by the interview that you gave to Azi. It seemed that everything started here but, as we have seen, it had actually started prior to this moment.
A.S.: That is what I tried to emphasise. The hunt had started a while back and any type of weapon or ammunition was good if it could annihilate the hunted. Eventually, the interview was chosen as a pretext for an action aimed at an outcome that was, after all, only remotely connected to that particular "crisis". I also tried to show that my statement in Azi was a necessary gesture.

G.A.: It is still not apparent why you chose that particular moment for a revelation.
A.S.: The interview had been given in August. Madrid had taken place in July, but the interview was published in September. The time-gap was simply an issue of the way Azi was managed.

G.A.: Was the interview suggested to you, or was it asked from you?
A.S.: Both. The first idea, which did not actually belong to me, was an interview on matters of internal affairs, since I had not voiced my opinions on internal issues for more than half a year. Not consistently, that is. Many leaders of the party thought it unbecoming for a politician, for a party leader, to deal exclusively with foreign affairs when there were so many questions about internal politics to be answered. And that included the party's inner life. To the questions that I received I added several others, some of which allowed me to develop my views, while the others enabled me to discuss topics such as the one that we are discussing now. The questions were asked in written form and I answered them in writing also. I wrote the answers by hand and sent them to the newspaper like that. They were published a few weeks later.
It follows that the moment when the interview came out was basically random, though I had written it between the NATO summit in Madrid and the UE summit in Luxembourg. The latter had already been scheduled for a few months later. It was also close to the National Convention of the PD, which had taken place a few weeks before.
The party-politics part of the interview is nor relevant to our discussion. As for the other issues, they were discussed under the influence of our experience before Madrid, as well as under the influence of the coming great event of Romanian foreign affairs for 1997: the meeting of the European Council in Luxembourg. It had become clear that no important reform in Romanian foreign affairs - and when I say that I do not have in mind putting people out of the jobs or changing the organisational chart, but the substance of foreign policy - could be realised because several groups of interest would immediately strike back. Some of these "groups of interest" had their residence and their roots in Romania; some others had their roots in other places. They worked against us first and foremost by means of "opinion-makers": the mass media and the political parties. They advanced their goals through NGOs, through other organisations, through parties and party leaders (of course I do not mean to involve the parties as a whole). Some journalists, but not their journals as a whole, or the editors' office as a whole, were also involved.
However, only a few individuals had immediate, free access to the mass media or to the political parties. They were always visible and they were enough for the task. As said, it was quite clear that any rapprochement in Romanian-Hungarian relations would immediately be attacked with manufactured arguments. I knew this was not a mistake. Of course, some people simply attacked them because they thought they were wrong. I could disagree, but they still had the freedom to express their views. But others did it because they wanted to hurt Romania's future. Our pro-Western positions were also under siege: one instance was that very important moment when regret was expressed for the persecution of Romanian citizens of German origin. Any tactics connected with certain foreign-policy strategies were as a rule immediately undermined.
I've gone through the same experience as the President of the Agency for Privatisation. I've seen how the newspapers attacked certain privatisation projects. The "perpetrators" were exactly those people behind which I knew that some business group or other was hiding. But this time around the stake was much higher because both an economic component and a political component - as well as a strategic component, for that matter - were involved. However, I had from the beginning asked the people in charge to do something against these pressures. As long as we wanted a reform, a fundamental change in our foreign policy, we simply could not live and work in such a way. Such an environment could not engender a new political life. Romania really needs new policies. But, according to some peoples' plans, we were supposed to remain a country in the grey zone. We are too small to be an ally and too big to be an enemy; too big to be assimilated, too small to be feared.

G.A.: Then I simply do not understand something. What was the President's part in all this? We have already mentioned the President's statement which created a new, dangerous context…
A.S.: I expected that the President's logic would leave a way out, even though he mentioned the "totally unfounded" character of the information. He was supposed to say in the end: "Even though what Mr. Severin stated turned out to be not completely true, most things were confirmed. So one should not take punitive action against him." I thought, I repeat, that things were being worked out in a reasonable and positive manner. I was lead to this conclusion by another fact. When I sent the so-called documents to the special services - a fact that was publicly announced - I referred in the materials to the facts that I had been informed about. The concrete cases, those that I knew and that the special services knew as well, were introduced in an addendum. Later, the President asked me to change several names in that appendix, implicitly suggesting enough evidence already existed about those individuals. In other words, the allegations were already confirmed.

G.A.: Which basically means that the President himself was steering the whole process.
A.S.: I believed that the President was supporting me. I thought that since he had found out about the names of some persons about whom plenty of evidence existed, he wanted to support my statement. That is why he asked me to replace some names on the famous list. But let this be clear: I had no previous discussion with President Constantinescu regarding my statement. Rather, the statement was simply also based on some conversations which I had had with the President. The statement tried to be a desperate call concerning the fact that, in spite of my conversations with Emil Constantinescu, nothing had happened. Looking back, I can now say that this was the real tragedy of that administration: the fact that good ideas and correct assessments never turned into concrete action and never bore fruit. After the resignation, I thought that I may had acted hastily, that had I waited a little longer discussions behind close doors would have yielded results. But today I realise that even if I had not done what I did, the results would not have been better. On the other hand, I would have had absolutely no excuse for my association with a government which did not do the right thing to protect the state's fundamental interests.
This is the first point that I'm trying to make. The second point is that, after I had made my statement, I had a feeling that the President wanted to uphold my cause, which was his cause too. I was sure that the Romanian President's fundamental interest is to support me rather than dismiss me. On the other hand, I pointed out that I am sceptical about the idea of making names public after the two-month investigation of the special services. This was not due to the absence of evidence, but because I could hardly imagine that it was in our interest to start a quarrel with the groups in power, with the pressure and interest groups connected to the targeted individuals. This was not the usual way to solve the problem. I had in mind something entirely different: using a series of informal rather than judicial evidence. I wanted to ask friendly states to support us in solving at least part of the problem. That is, in bringing the phenomenon to a bearable point. To a tolerable limit. This was, in my view, the procedure which had to be followed. Anyway, the communiqué of the Supreme Council for National Defence [CSAT] had to merely confirm the phenomenon and announce certain measures to combat it, rather than identify by name certain individuals.

G.A.: We've reached the communiqué of the Supreme Council for National Defence, so eagerly awaited by the press. It contains a long passage which not only confirms what you said, but enhances the dimensions of the phenomenon. If you are guilty of painting a catastrophic image of the country's situation, then certainly the Supreme Council for National Defence was even guiltier, for it added an extreme brush to the painting.
A.S.: There were many people who were intrigued, after the fact, by the lack of coherence, the lack of logical connection between the conclusions reached by the Supreme Council and the decision to dismiss me - the latter of which was formulated as a request to assume, as they put it, "political responsibility" for my statement. I remember the debates within CSAT, when they said: "You were right. Your intervention had a positive outcome but we have to learn that in order to yield positive results we also have to pay. This time you are the one who has to pay."

G.A.: Was your resignation demanded by CSAT?
A.S.: Yes, of course it was. Another remark, which countered my attempt to show that I am involved in a series of foreign affairs actions that will not be continued in my absence - not because there were no smarter people than me, but because I was the beneficiary of personal commitments - ran as follows: "Yes, we know that from the point of view of foreign policy we will lose a great deal, but at this point we cannot afford a war with the entire press."

G.A.: Wait a minute! This is a tough statement that you are making. You've just said that CSAT made a decision on account of the position of the press.
A.S.: It made that decision based on the position of the press.

G.A.: But this is an act of submission which betrays the state's interests!
A.S.: To put it elegantly: they thought that the interest of the state is to avoid stirring the public opinion, which was unavoidable if I did not resign and if the press continued its offensive, this time against the government and the CSAT as well. They said that if I did not resign the target of the attacks and criticism in the press would be no longer my person, but CSAT which had allegedly accepted responsibility for my statements. Such a battle, they argued, is impossible to fight. It would be in the interest of the state to keep the CSAT outside the media warfare.
Of course, one may question the justness and the consistency of such a line of reasoning. Eventually, the Prime Minister said during the CSAT meeting that he is ready to support me on the condition that he should not be the only one to do so. And that he needed the solidarity of the President and of the leaders of the coalition parties. Upon which President Constantinescu declared that he is ready to join the Prime Minister in his statement. And that he knows the opinion of the coalition leaders: the only one who is hostile to a fair outcome is Petre Roman. He went on: "If anybody can persuade Petre Roman to change his position, then we can immediately issue another communiqué. Actually, the same communiqué with a different ending."
Under such circumstances, those who were present said: "Let's discuss it with Mr. Roman again, and see if we can do something about it." The President asked Mr. Victor Babiuc - who was Minister of the Defence and, as such, a member of the CSAT - to discuss with the PD president and to tell him about their desire to work things out by supporting me in a general, global way.
I believe that the issue was not merely to "support me", but rather to "support the national interest". This interest was not to keep me in my position as Minister of Foreign Affairs, but to keep a minister that can guarantee a certain external policy, and to settle the scores with those who believed that, without any form of democratic legitimacy, they can change foreign ministers when they like. I'd like to quote an important American diplomat who told this to me after the events: "A country where the press can change, as a matter of ambition or for a dubious cause, a minister without flaw in his official activity, is a country which did not learn the lesson of democracy and cannot guarantee any form of stability."
The stake of those debates should be looked at from such a perspective. So Mr. Babiuc went to the next room to speak on the phone with Mr. Roman… I saw him leaving unenthusiastically, without wishing to negotiate a solution himself. During the entire meeting Mr. Babiuc has constantly pointed out the drawbacks of the different honourable solutions, which makes me think that he had a mandate from Petre Roman to lead the conversation toward my elimination from the Foreign Ministry. Eventually, he agreed unenthusiastically to discuss the issue with Petre Roman. After a few moments he returned and he told the President that Mr. Roman is on the phone and that, personally, he believed that it would be better if the conversation occurred between the PD president and the chief of the state himself.
The President left the room. There followed a conversation among the two which probably took some forty minutes. Neither myself nor the other CSAT members attended, because the conversation took place in a room nearby. Coming back, Mr. Constantinescu said: "Mr. Roman is more radical than we are, and obviously we cannot take up his position." (I suspect that Mr. Roman did his best to bury me for good.) The response to Mr. Roman's answer was: "The solution which we suggest is this: we say what we have to say, what is already in the communiqué, and you resign as a consequence. We don't dismiss you. We don't mention your dismissal in the statement (they couldn't do it anyway) but we shall speak about your political responsibility and you shall understand these words the way we tell you to."
This is how the whole episode ended. The President left the room. He made a speech in which he stressed, more than in the communiqué, the issue of political responsibility, making my resignation foreseeable. Then we met again in his office together with Mr. Ciorbea to follow the response on TV. It was like the beginning or the end of a war. Everybody was mobilised, inside every TV station they were trying to cover the outcome. Then, finally, as I was waiting for the first hosts and participants to emerge in the television talk-shows, I said to the President: "You shall see that tonight people who are on the famous list shall be very joyful. Tomorrow, after I will have signed my resignation, everybody will suddenly be on my side. Later on, after a while, there will follow a government crisis and the next person on the list, the next target, will be you."
Things went on precisely this way. When I resigned the next day the press, now free from constraints, illuminated, and maybe concerned not to grant the spoils of victory to the President or the leader of the PD, announced my victory. The victory of the defeated… And within the next few days the government crisis started and it led to Ciorbea's own resignation. And then, during the Radu Vasile interlude, a consistent, permanent attack against the presidential institution surfaced.
Maybe one should add another thing to this story. According to the PD Statute, the resignation of party-ministers had to have the approval of the Permanent Bureau. For this reason I phoned that very night my cabinet director, Mr. Mihnea Constantinescu, and asked him to contact whomever he sees fit, possibly also Mr. Petre Roman, so that I should have a talk with the Permanent Bureau the next day, before I submitted my resignation. At the same time, I asked people to discuss with the presidents of PD's parliamentary groups so that, before they came to the meeting, they should also inform the group-members and bring us their opinion. Again, I had not submitted my resignation that night - this move had only been discussed. At the end of the CSAT meeting Mr. Ciorbea announced me informally that if I refused to resign he would have to ask for my revocation due to the pressures of the public opinion. Of course, at that point it would have been absolutely fruitless to discuss legal matters, such as the fact that the revocation is only possible when a minister proves to be inadequate for his position or engages in deeds that make him incompatible with that position. (My statement could not be regarded that way.) But, naturally, taking up this issue would have been pointless.
During the same evening of December 22 - an interesting date -, after the meeting, I discussed with President Constantinescu and Prime Minister Ciorbea the details of my resignation. I requested to be allowed to bring to a close some important and urgent projects. Which meant that, after my resignation would be announced, they were supposed to say they accepted it but only if I continued to fulfil my mandate until a new Foreign Minister was appointed. In accordance with the customary procedures, this meant I had one more month. It is also true that it would have been possible to bring my successor before the parliament in the very last days of the year (and this is what actually happened). But this procedure was not motivated by any kind of emergency, and they promised it would be avoided. I was also promised that I would be consulted by the President - and not merely by my own party, as is customary - concerning the person who was going to succeed me. Thirdly, we decided that I would still remain involved in a series of foreign policy actions which would allow me to bring my contribution to the policy that I had promoted up to that point.
None of these commitments was ever fulfilled. The only partial exception was the last point, but in that case things went on in a very formal manner, unenthusiastically and inconsistently, so that the tasks I undertook did not have the necessary conditions for a successful completion.
But let us return to the Permanent Bureau meeting which took place the next day: I had both pleasant and unpleasant surprises, although the latter kind were predominating. The nice surprise was that the presidents of the parliamentary groups came with a message of support. One unpleasant surprise was that members of the Bureau which were less important did not have the courage to express very clearly their position, although their principled support was obvious. The second unpleasant surprise was that important members, such as Mr. Radu Berceanu, had an unexpected position and pushed things toward my immediate resignation. One might say that the debate was not a serious and honest one. The leaders of the parliamentary groups did not even have the courage to stay firm on their positions when they faced this opposing current. So they simply voiced some feeble doubts about the justness of the resignation and the whole discussion ended.
When I was prepared to stand up and go to the press conference that I had previously announced in order to communicate the news of my resignation, somebody asked: "OK, but if Mr. Severin is going to resign, who is the person that the party will support as his replacement?" Petre Roman quickly shoved the question aside: "We shall look into this matter later." Which made the leaders at the meeting, especially those from the countryside, say: "Oh! It's great that we do not have a new proposal. We shall ask a certain time in order to discuss the matter and a few weeks later, when all this would have calmed down, we shall say that the party opted for the same candidate. In this way, Mr. Severin will have played his part by resigning, and then we will choose him once again, and that's that."
With all this in mind, I went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where I had a short press conference which lasted for some 10-15 minutes. Actually, it was not a press conference but a statement that I delivered in front of the press. I had no reason and no desire to take up questions so I left. Not more than 30 minutes had passed since I had split with my colleagues from the PD leadership at the "Dacia" Club and until I finished my conference in 14 Modrogan, at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. When I left the building, I found out that Radio Bucharest had already announced that at his own press conference, one that nobody had been notified about, and which had taken place in No. 1 Modrogan (a few buildings away from me, that is), Mr. Roman announced that Mr. Andrei Plesu was going to be the party's candidate for the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
This, I believe, says a lot about what happened. I remember that at that point some PD leaders - Alexandru Sassu, Paula Ivanescu, Mr. Cristoiu the President of the Arges County Branch, Cornel Ruse from Prahova County - made very tough statements saying that they had no part in that decision, about which they had not even been consulted.

You cannot fight the Prime Minister, the President and your own party at the same time

G.A.: To me it was obvious that President Constantinescu had an important role to play in the story of your resignation. What you've been telling us so far underscores this conclusion, which could be drawn simply by following the course of events.
A.S.: It is clear that the President could steer things in a different direction and toward a different outcome. Nobody could force him to play the game of Mr. Roman and of those who joined him.

G.A.: Especially since he had Victor Ciorbea on his side.
A.S.: The statement made by Mr. Ciorbea was clear-cut. I know that the President had previously discussed with various journalists and tried to alleviate the press campaign directed against me. He persuaded most of them to take a rational attitude. At one particular point he even said: "There is no reason to replace the Foreign Minister and, after all, I will say that I need him and have no reason to fire him."
In order to prepare adequately for the CSAT meeting, which in the context became so important, we wanted to talk to those who were going to present their written conclusions - to the employees of the special services. This happened two days before the Monday when the CSAT meeting was scheduled. We arranged for the meeting. Everybody said that everything was perfect, problems were solved, and there was no room for surprises. This was happening before I was scheduled to leave the country in an official visit to Germany. Then I had to go to Luxembourg, to Brussels at the Council of the Euro-Atlantic Pact, then to the Interministerial Conference of the OSCE. Then I was supposed to come back to the country. So, before this foreign tour, I was assured that everything was all right. Upon my return, I had to be present at Radu Budeanu's funeral, since he had passed away a few days before I returned. From the funeral service I went back to my office in order to discuss, in the afternoon of December 20 (a Saturday), with the people who were preparing the documents for the CSAT meeting on Monday.
To my surprise, I realised that there was no one there to answer the phone, and this happened until late at night. The secretaries would say their bosses were not there. Not only were they not there, but they were also unreachable since they had gone out somewhere. At 19 hours I decided that, since it's a Saturday, I should leave the ministry building. But I asked the cabinet director to stay a while longer and make phone calls. Nobody answered that day, at Cotroceni or elsewhere. I tried to reach someone the entire Sunday. It didn't work. It was only Monday in the morning, when I got to my office, that I was told the President had asked me to meet him in Cotroceni before the CSAT meeting, in order to discuss a few matters. I was supposed to be there for the talk 15 minutes before the CSAT meeting started. So I went there, a few minutes earlier actually. The President was 20 minutes late, that is 5 minutes after the CSAT meeting was supposed to start. He said very briefly that there is no evidence that can be made public and that under such circumstances they decided to issue a statement - the one you already know about -, and that we have to calm down the spirits. The only solution was for me to accept political responsibility.
I asked: "How comes there is no evidence after I had been assured that there was enough evidence on these issues?" I reminded him that, from the very beginning, I myself had pointed out that the naming of names in public was out of the question because it could lead to unaffordable complications. Rather, the point was merely to confirm a phenomenon. Thirdly, I said that I do not understand the practical meaning of "accepting political responsibility".
Then I was told that the only way out was for me to announce my resignation. Since one could not name names and thus quiet down the public opinion, I had to take everything upon myself.
I was aware of the pressures exerted by Petre Roman and, possibly, by others as well. But what I failed to understand was the President's submission, as long as he was in a position to prescribe a different opinion. Keeping me in my official position did not impose any special risks, such as PD going out of the coalition, or a governmental crisis.

G.A.: Mr. Severin, you and I had a quick conversation after your resignation. Actually not just one, but several of them. Maybe you do not remember that now - at that moment you completely caught in the stream of the ongoing events. What surprised me back then was your conciliatory attitude towards the President. I was sure that he was the main actor in the resignation. This is partly because of his relationship, both formal and informal, with the directors of the SRI and SIE. This time around, you are very outspoken about the President's part. Should we understand that the passing of time, the opportunity to sleep on what happened, have enabled you to do so?
A.S.: I am not changing the position that I held back then. I still understand that the President was in a difficult position. I still believe today that he did not want things to turn out the way they did, and that he simply did not find the inner force to withstand the pressures. On the other hand, time has added a few other insights and made things a little clearer. We know, for instance, that this weakness was not temporary but permanent. Other similar contexts, involving other individuals, make me believe that his decision was not just the consequence of outside pressures, but also a matter of safeguarding one's own interests. He was completely wrong in my opinion. So my attitude may have become a little harsher.

G.A.: On the evening of December 21 and then during the entire day of December 22 I tried to reach you by phone. You already knew you had my support. What I wanted to tell you then was this: the request of your resignation was part of a great confrontation. The people who were aware of the whole context knew that behind the scandal was a battle for the country's foreign policy and, therefore, a struggle for the national interest. I wanted to ask you to fight to the last breath. In my opinion you should have systematically refused to resign. What you've told us now suggests that such a refusal would have been worth it. I still believe that you should have demanded the President to share the responsibility for what had happened. Do you think you could have been more successful had you played the offensive card? Or was there a danger of worse consequences that you wanted to avoid?
A.S.: I believe that at that point your line reasoning, according to which I should have stayed put and transferred the responsibility on the shoulders of the President and the Prime Minister, could have worked. Today, after quite a few years and so many other events, I believe that the position is questionable. I might also add that your position was rehearsed by quite a few ambassadors which came to visit me at the ministry headquarters in that morning.

G.A.: Well, I am not even given the benefit of being original.
A.S.: Anyway, the point is that they managed to come to see me and maybe this is the reason why I was unavailable by phone and we could not have a conversation. These ambassadors encouraged me, in a diplomatic but firm way, to keep my position. They advised me not to resign, and to transfer the responsibility to the President and the Prime Minister. They mentioned that neither of them would probably have the courage to accept such a responsibility. So I asked: "Assuming the two will refuse to accept responsibility, what would happen if my party announced that they would no longer support me?" They answered: "Well, then everything is lost because you cannot fight the Prime Minister, the President and your own party at the same time, not to mention the press who are still keeping this topic hot."
As I've already pointed out, the last episode of the chapter consummated itself in PD's Permanent Bureau, where I encountered not so much an aggressive Petre Roman - he had already arranged things and was, as usual, avoiding to meet me face to face -, but where I had the bitter revelation of seeing party leaders who disliked intensely Petre Roman, such as Radu Berceanu, being firm in requesting my resignation. My friend Victor Babiuc was also one of them. It is tough having to face the betrayal not only of those whom you know to be indifferent to you, but also of your friends, on whose support you counted. This is how things actually happened.
However, since then several events enabled me to understand the circumstances better. I know today that the President was consistent in throwing out of his balloon those he considered a ballast. He finally lost by behaving this way. The latest instance of this sort is the recent dismissal of Victor Babiuc. The way in which the President understood to support him was as lame as the two months he granted to the special services not to verify the guilty parties, but to check on me. The same is going on right now with Mr. Babiuc. Nobody told the President it was an aberration from the point of view of national interest to remove a Minister of Defence a few months before elections. Especially when there were no reproaches levelled against him, and at a time when the Ministry was supposed to function on auto-pilot if I may say so. It looks like the President has the necessary courage only when he commits mistakes. He also has an outstandingly personal way to assess his interests. So I believe that at that point he could have decided, just like Victor Ciorbea, in favour of my dismissal.
Had the dismissal been chosen as the solution, I am sure there would have been no problem to infirm, by means of another communiqué, the initial statement of the CSAT. Or to make all sorts of statements in order to destroy my reputation. At that point, the President himself mentioned a rumour according to which ambassadors accredited to Bucharest had said that, due to the circumstances, their capitals did not want them to talk to me. This was a pure lie, merely another way to put pressure on me.

G.A.: We met after the events. You were, naturally, extremely affected. I remember that one of the things you said clearly enough was that Victor Ciorbea did not have the quality or the dignity to remain a Prime Minister. If I am not mistaken, it was then that you said something to the effect: "Victor Ciorbea has to go." I felt that we were completely disagreeing in our views of internal politics on this issue. I was taken aback by your attitude, especially since you were not merely expressing a viewpoint but also the will to make things happen. You probably know this, because I have expressed my own attitude in public and I pronounced your outlook a mistake. In the Romanian context, governmental crises triggered huge losses which could simply not be recuperated by means of an actually improbable betterment in the behaviour of the new Prime Minister. (The case of Radu Vasile speaks for itself.) How do you feel about that attitude today?
A.S.: After that conversation I published my own point of view in Azi, under the title "All Three of Them". What I argued was basically this: that the President could put an end to the crisis by making use of the authority that he still possessed. He could ask the Prime Minister to resign because the coalition was in a serious state of crisis which rendered the government inefficient. The Prime Minister, Mr. Victor Ciorbea, could himself solve the problem by resigning, realising that there was a strong opinion in favour of his going away. Petre Roman, the leader of the party that had demanded Mr. Ciorbea's dismissal, was also in a position to solve the crisis. Upon seeing that the crisis is continuing due to the weaknesses of the other two main actors he should have accepted a compromise. This compromise would have both saved face, and made it possible to continue a more efficient government with the same Prime Minister. Which does not - at least not too much - go against the views you expressed.
However, I would contradict your opinion that my position at that time was the result of the bitterness engendered by my resignation. My position concerning Victor Ciorbea was not affected by my resignation. It was not the result of the fact that I had been driven away from the government, so now I wanted Victor Ciorbea to go through the same ordeal. I had already decided that Victor Ciorbea had many qualities, unfortunately not those which are essential to being a good Prime Minster. It had become clear since the first half of 1997 that, not due to bad faith but due to lack of managerial qualities, the reform had stopped. The gap between our foreign policy commitments and the internal realities was steadily growing. In the midst of the European Council at Luxembourg, where we had managed to promote a favourable image of our country in spite of the social and economic counter-performances, I stated that that was a political and diplomatic success but not an economic and social one. I had done this before knowing that I would have to leave the government. This statement should say a lot to those who want to read it properly.
As the government crisis was triggered by the dispute between Mr. Ciorbea and Mr. Basescu - a crisis which would not have been possible had I been in the government, because Mr. Basescu afforded it knowing that there was no one left to try to give a rational spin to things -, it became obvious that there was high time for a change of team. The really bad thing was not that the government was changing. This happens elsewhere and everybody can understand it. The really terrible thing was that changing the government took four months.

G.A.: In the Romanian context the costs were considerable. In fact, they were intolerable.
A.S.: A crisis that long is costly to states who function well in all departments. It was fatal to a state such as Romania, aiming for European and Euro-Atlantic integration. Even more so because the succeeding Prime Minister was not a feasible solution for our country. I pointed out to the leaders of my party that the kind of politician's ability that they were displaying was extremely pernicious. I also pointed out to them that any rapid increase of popular support which might ensue due to such a behaviour will be quickly followed by a dramatic fall in popularity. My forecast was unfortunately confirmed by the events.

G.A.: I agree with your critiques concerning the way in which the Ciorbea government functioned. But now, as an individual who should know better, could you compare the Ciorbea and the Vasile governments?
A.S.: In terms of end-results I think we cannot speak of a great difference. There are two different stages. Naturally, whenever in a certain stage things are on a descending slope, in the next stage the country will look even worse. The phenomenon is the same in both cases. In my opinion, however, Mr. Ciorbea was a responsible man, though not an able Prime Minister. This is why he failed miserably so many times. He authored a lot of political blunders, and I am not referring here only to things known to the public. I have in mind events consummated within the coalition, which progressively worsened relations and led to the political crisis we know so well.
Radu Vasile was politically able but irresponsible. Political ability associated with deceptive purposes and irresponsible behaviour is hardly a quality. But note that foreign diplomats and other personalities, all honest and experienced individuals, let themselves be tricked by Prime Minister Vasile. A few days before he was forced to leave the government's leadership, he was greeted with unexpected, downright surprising praises by the foreign press. It is interesting that, after he left, these kind words vanished at once.

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