President Traian Basescu could be easier to impeach following a decision made by the Legal Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies who adopted with five votes in favour and two against the favourable report on the law changing the organisation and operation of the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR), removing the Parliament’s decisions from the category of acts on which the Court may rule. The initiators of the bill are PNL Deputy Cornel Pieptea and PSD Senator Georgica Severin. Opposed were PDL Deputies Gabriel Andronache and Silviu Prigoana.The change adopted by the Legal Committee yesterday takes paragraph 1 of article 27 of the CCR law back to its form prior to 2010. In the recitals of the draft law, the authors explain that the fact that CCR is supposed to rule on the constitutionality of decisions made by the Camber of Deputies, Senate and of the two combined was an excessive burden on the workload of the Court, ‘which impairs its smooth activity and exercise of its role as an institutional referee, one that is often played in the Romanian constitutional context. The decision is not final. The Chamber of Deputies is the first chamber dealing with the bill, but the Senate has the ultimate decision.The Secretary of the Standing Bureau of the Chamber of Deputies, Georgian Pop, says ‘the chance is big’ that the bill amending the CCR Law may go to final voting today. ‘The CCR Law could also go to vote tomorrow (today – our note), according to the Committee report. (…) And the chance is big,’ Mediafax quotes Pop as saying after the meeting of the Standing Bureau of the lower chamber.
