New round of Sunday protests announced in multiple cities against Parliament’s changes to justice laws

Parliament’s actions towards changing the justice laws have continued to cause outrage among many Romanians, who promise to hit the streets in another large protest against the PSD-ALDE Coalition this Sunday evening.

Protests are being organised on Facebook in Bucharest’s Victory Square and multiple other cities, such as Alba Iulia, Oradea, Bacau, Arad, and even in cities abroad where there are large Romanian communities, such as Milan.

There are several controversial draft bills which protesters are hoping to block, while Coalition MPs are attempting to pass them as quickly as possible, even changing parliamentary procedures in order to avoid long plenary debates over the hundreds of proposed amendments.

Spontaneous protests also took place during the week, most significantly on Wednesday night, when the Chamber of Deputies voted on amendments until almost midnight and a few hundred protesters gathered at the gates of Parliament, asking them to “stop the laws of injustice”.

Romania 100, the organisation led by former PM Dacian Ciolos, has also announced that they will be joining the protest on Sunday, saying that the way PSD-ALDE are trying to change fundamental laws without any debate is unacceptable and that it is moving Romania away from democratic values.

General prosecutor Augustin Lazar is also against the Coalition’s proposals, claiming that they will lead to the harassment and political control of prosecutors by the Justice Ministry.

Although there are several popular Facebook groups such as “Corruption Kills” that have been known to create these events on social media and encourage people to join the protests, they insist that the movements have no formal leadership, contrary to the claims of some Coalition members, who say that protests are led by USR or by other, more obscure interest groups.