January 25, 2021
The Forgotten Constitutional Provision
“Romanians can take their fate into their own hands and can make use of a constitutional provision that allows them to draft their own laws, without depending any longer on the mercy of the inertia displayed by parliamentarians. And such a normative act, which will be called the Sovereignty Law, will have the role of really protecting the Romanian economy. The one who launched the proposal on Monday, 25 January 2021, is the lawyer Dan Chitic (photo), who started from art. 74 paras. 1 and 2 of the fundamental law.
Those passages of the Constitution give citizens the right to draft bills themselves and then send them to Parliament.
We reproduce the constitutional provisions to this effect:
‘(1) Legislative initiative belongs, as the case may be, to the Government, to deputies, to senators or to a number of at least 100,000 citizens with the right to vote. The citizens who exercise their right of legislative initiative must come from at least a quarter of the counties of the country, and in each of these counties, respectively in the municipality of Bucharest, at least 5,000 signatures in support of this initiative must be registered.
(2) Fiscal matters, those of an international character, amnesty and pardon may not be the object of the citizens’ legislative initiative.’
Returning to Dan Chitic’s proposal: it concerns first of all the prohibition of deforestation until the year 2040 and the requirement that the alienation of state assets and the concession of resources be done only by organic laws adopted with a qualified majority. It is a matter of two thirds of the votes of all the parliamentarians, as Chitic explained for Lumea Justiției. Moreover, this qualified majority will also be necessary for the adoption of the organic laws needed to restrict the exercise of certain rights and freedoms, any other alternative being excluded by the Sovereignty Law. Likewise in the field of rights and freedoms, Chitic’s law would provide stinging fines, of up to 50 million euros, for anyone who engages in censorship on the Internet.
The same normative act will forbid the administration of medical treatments without the written and informed consent of patients, medical emergencies being excepted.
Another provision will eliminate the possibility for the secret services to become involved in justice, in politics, in the press and in business on the territory of Romania. In the field of defence, the Sovereignty Law will limit the acquisition of military equipment solely to foreign manufacturers who ensure offset production in Romania of at least 40% of the value of the contract.
Before we present to you the proposal published by Dan Chitic on Facebook, we mention that the lawyer explained for Lumea Justiției that it is not obligatory that a single law should result in the end, it being possible to speak also of a package of sovereignty laws. ‘In any case: what is important is that these draft sovereignty laws should be the result of broad debates with specialists from all the fields concerned,’ Chitic emphasised.
We reproduce the lawyer’s entire post: https://www.facebook.com/1645845977/posts/10216808395955981/?d=n”
More at https://m.luju.ro/legea-suveranitatii-avocatul-dan-chitic-propune-un-act-normativ-scris-exclusiv-de-cetateni-se-interzic-defrisarile-pana-n-2040-instrainarea-activelor-statului-si-concesionarea-resurselor-se-fac-doar-prin-lege-organica-adoptata-cu-majoritate-calificata-tra
See the post on FacebookThe Facebook archive keeps no permanent addresses for posts. The link above is rebuilt from the identifier of the attached photograph, and some posts are no longer public — Facebook has deleted, restricted or moved them — so it may answer “This page isn’t available”. If that happens, search for the post by its text on the author’s page.
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