Senate Speaker, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, has delivered a speech on Friday, talking about the parallel state, intelligence services and the European Commission’s biased attitude in front of the European Senates speakers gathered in Bucharest.
“We are still waiting for the European Commission to position itself and explain why it has systematically disregarded and ignored the alarm signals sent by certain individuals about the serious abuses committed by people in the judiciary. Due to its biased policy, sometimes partisan, the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) was captive by the system of influence coordinated by SRI and DNA, a tool at national level for laying pressure on the opponents of this parallel system to the rule of law,” Tariceanu said.
Tariceanu has also talked about the shift of the anticorruption fight to the intelligence services and the parallel state, arguing it is about a repressive system alike the one in the ‘50s, about handcuffed people in order to be filmed, about the benefit of doubt being abolished, digi24.ro reports.
The Senate Speaker said judges are under public pressure to issue the sentences requested by prosecutors under the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI)’s pressure and that there are cases when the judges refusing to carry out the demands have been indicted themselves.
“After the accession to the EU a repressive system was set up, much alike the Securitate in the ‘50s. The signals the system with Stalinist roots is sending are obvious – abusive arrests, handcuffed people to be filmed, and information leaks to the media. Actually, the benefit of doubt has been abolished, the judges have been under constant pressure by direct and public threats, to issue the sentences requested by DNA upon the SRI instructions,” the Senate Speaker said.
“Some judges with the High Court or with the Constitutional Court have been unjustly indicted and prosecuted. Until soon, this system was encouraged by the European Commission,” Tariceanu added.
The meeting of the Association of Senates in Europe is taking place in Bucharest. The event is attended by speakers and deputy speakers of the upper parliament chambers from Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Switzerland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, UK, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Spain, the secretary general of Germany’s Federal Council and the Irish Senate speaker, as special guest.