“2023 was once again a bad year for democracy. Even if we have not had a spectacular evolution in relation to previous years or other countries in our region, the trends of narrowing of civil space and attacks on civil liberties have continued slowly but surely,” said the State of Democracy in 2023 report, launched on Thursday by the Center of public innovation, ActiveWatch and CeRe: a resource center for public participation.

They mention, among other things, legislative initiatives qualified as threatening, restrictions on the space of activity of non-governmental organizations, as well as strategic legal actions against public mobilization, which are called SLAPP – an abbreviation of “strategic lawsuit against public participation”.

Attack on access to justice

“In 2023, the attack on access to justice that began last year continued. In 2022, the Public Association “Spiritual Militia” was dissolved by the court due to the inability to pay the court costs claimed by the developer One Properties,” the message reads.

In 2023, it was the turn of the Save Bucharest association and the SOS Orașul association, involved in the same process, which HotNews also wrote about.

Threatening legislative initiatives

According to the document, the year 2023 began with the draft amendments to the Criminal Code proposed by Nicolae Chuke and Lucian Bode, which, among other things, proposed to increase the punishment for disturbing public order and peace to 5 years in prison, with aggravating circumstances if the act is committed by two or more persons (in this case up to 7 years old).

After the reaction of the civil society, which sharply criticized this project of changes to the Criminal Code, one of the initiators – Lucian Bode – abandoned the proposals, and they were no longer adopted by the parliament.

Abuse of activists

In addition, abuses against some activists were recorded, from the intimidation of some participants in solidarity protests with the victims of the terrorist attacks in Gaza to an activist being taken to a police station for a Facebook post, the document said.

The authors also note attempts to obstruct the right of farmers and transporters to protest, as well as 24 criminal cases that the head of the GUNP said he opened in the context of those protests.

Attacks on press freedom

The report talks about the pressure on journalists. In addition, the authors also recorded how the independence of journalists was seriously affected by the financial interests of media owners.

In addition, political parties invest huge sums in the press from public cash subsidies through contracts, the content of which remains hidden from the public.

Also mentioned is the case of the persecution of the investigative journalist Emilia Sherkan, “a significant failure in guaranteeing the safety of journalists in Romania.” But also the situation created by the Swiss press group Ringier, which “decided to sacrifice the administrative and editorial management of Gazeta Sporturilor si Libertatea, as well as a large part of the editorial office of Libertatea, after they resisted editorial pressure from the patronage through which they tried to promote the industry pond”.

Access to information of public interest

The authors of the report also remind that there are still government agencies that want to hide information. Therefore, they continue to abuse pretexts such as confidentiality of information, availability of personal data or claims that they need additional data processing.

One of the most famous cases is the president of Romania, who classified information about how much his foreign trips cost.

The government continued to abuse the instrument of the decree

In 2023, the government continued to abuse the instrument of decree, usurping the legislative role of parliament. 129 extraordinary and 42 simple resolutions were adopted. At the same time, state institutions took advantage of the introduction in 2022 of an arbitrary exception in the legislation regarding the transparency of decision-making, and

The Constitutional Court refuses to discuss the constitutionality of this exception, the report says.

Practically, simply by referring to the state of emergency, the initiator of the regulatory act can ignore the public discussion procedure. Due to these mechanisms, the trend of previous years continues: the emergency situation is the rule, not the exception, the authors of the study note.

An example is the PNRR legislation, which was passed in its entirety “as an emergency,” the report said.

More tasks for research institutes

The new law on cyber security, which came into force in March 2023, expands the powers of the Romanian Intelligence Service. In an interview with SRI General Anton Rog, he explains that the SRI will be able, for example, to shut down websites if a party uses propaganda that could influence the election results. There is no mechanism for civil control or appeal of decisions to block or close the site, which are equivalent in spirit to censorship.

The report can be read in its entirety on the State of Democracy website.