On Thursday, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu asked the Minister of Education to come up with proposals to amend the legislation regarding cases of sexual harassment in universities, in the context of the Snoop investigation, which revealed sexual abuse by professor Alfred Bulai from SNSPA.
“Reports concerning criminal acts, for example harassment, will be sent directly to the prosecutors and the Police following the analysis carried out where the report is made”, then announced the Minister of Education, Ligia Deca.
At the beginning of the government meeting, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu asked for measures against cases of sexual harassment in the university environment.
“We start with a theme that has been in the foreground of public life in recent days: specific cases of sexual harassment in the university environment. We cannot accept such situations and there will be no tolerance, regardless of the name of the aggressor. And if it were a single case, saving a victim is essential”, claimed PM Ciolacu.
He asked the Minister of Education, Ligia Deca, to quickly come up with legislative proposals in this regard. “I ask the Minister of Education, Ligia Deca, to come next week with proposals to complete and amend the legislation, in dialogue with the National Council of Rectors. I think that our society is waiting for a simple and clear fact: that the law really protects the victims, and that the aggressors are brought quickly to justice”, the PM said.
More precisely, the Cabinet wants to amend the Emergency Ordinance 27 of 2002, which establishes the regime of petitions and where it is provided that anonymous petitions are not taken into account, according to Article 7:
“Anonymous petitions or those in which the identification data of the petitioner are not entered are not taken into account and are ranked, according to this ordinance.”
The provision that anonymous petitions are not taken into account will be changed, and further institutions, such as the Ministry of Education, will have to make their own procedure by which referrals containing criminal acts will be forwarded to the police.
The current framework code of university ethics and deontology, approved in April 2024 by the Government, specifies that, in order to be admissible, reports must contain, as a matter of necessity, the name and surname of the person making the report, so complaints should not be anonymous.
Education minister announces law amendment
“I think that we were all shaken by the testimonies of the victims of the university events that appeared in the media recently. We have already discussed with colleagues from other ministries and public institutions and decided that we will work with specialists from the Ministry of Justice and other relevant ministries, from the National Authority for Equal Opportunities and the National Council of Rectors to create a legislative circuit like this so that any notification quickly enters the anonymous or non-anonymous approval circuit. Notifications concerning criminal acts, for example harassment, will be sent directly to the prosecutors and the Police following the analysis carried out where the notification is made”, declared Ligia Deca.
She said that the changes are aimed at harmonizing the legislation for the entire public system, considering that the rules on workplace research apply to all areas of society, hence the need for consultation between institutions.
In addition, the Ministry will audit the ethics commissions of all the Universities in Romania, so that by the beginning of the academic year we will have a report on how the complaints in this field of violation of university ethics and deontology were recorded, analyzed and resolved.