Calin Popescu Tariceanu (foto) delivered a very tough speech on Friday, in the Senate, addressed to the European Commission, which he accused of encouraging the „parallel state” in Romania.
The attacks were made during the opening speech of the 19th edition of the Meeting of Association of European Senates, attended, among others, by the President of the Austrian Federal Council – Reinhard Todt, the President of the Belgian Senate Christine Defraigne, the Vice-President of the Switzerland Council of States – Géraldine Savary, and presidents of the Senates of France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland.
The head of the Senate referred almost exclusively to what the coalition calls the parallel state, the „system of an occult and meta-legal influence coordinated by SRI and DNA”, and the abuses of which persons from the judiciary would be guilty.
Fragments from Calin Popescu Tariceanu’s speech:
- „We are still waiting for the European Commission to position itself and explain why it has systematically disregarded and overlooked the alarm signals sent to it by some people about the serious abuses committed by persons from the judiciary. Because of the biased, sometimes even partisan, policy of the European Commission, the Mechanism of Cooperation and Verification has been captured by the occult and meta-legal system of influence coordinated by SRI and DNA, simply becoming at the national level another tool of pressure on opponents of this system parallel to the rule of law.”
- „After Romania’s accession to the EU, a repressive system similar to the Securitate model of the ‘50s was created here. The signs of the existence of this system with Stalinist roots are indisputable – abusive arrests, walking people handcuffed in front of cameras, information leaks from the files to the media. In practice, the presumption of innocence has been abolished, and judges have been constantly pressurized, by direct and public threats, to issue convictions demanded by DNA following SRI’s instructions.”
- „There have been arrests and indictments, sometimes proven unfair, of judges from the High Court or the Constitutional Court. Until recently, this system has been encouraged by the European Commission itself.”
- „The existence and tolerance, including by some of our European partners, of the parallel anti-corruption management system, had results that have been difficult to correct: first, Romania has been portrayed as a country where the incidence of corruption is measured by the number of arrests and indictments administered by institutions proving today that they have themselves been corrupted by the exercise of unlimited power by deforming the mechanisms of mutual control and verification provided by the Constitution. The indictments led to high-level resignations, and in many cases, there was not even evidence to prove the existence of the acts incriminated. Resounding acquittals have confirmed the political nature of many cases.”
- „Secondly, this has led to a profoundly unfair generalized perception of Romania as a country whose destiny is politically led by corrupt and criminal governors and lawmakers. Consequently, the possibilities of our country to significantly contribute to the European construction have been negatively influenced by the indefinite continuation of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism and the postponement of Romania’s accession to Schengen”.
