RBL: Gov't attacking principles of rule of law in Romania

„For the first time since 1989 on, the principle according to which „nobody is above the law’ is openly stepped on, totally and without doubt, by the current Romanian Government itself. The 13/2017 emergency ordinance, passed, literally, in the dead of night, on Tuesday night, 31 January, makes lawful immunity for abuse of office, including the theft of public money.

Similarly, the project on the pardoning of those convicted and the exoneration of responsibility of of party members convicted, under a humanitary pretext, are seriously affecting a decade of anti-corruption fight and are legitimizing the reinstatement of a type of capitalism that held the Romanian society and economy back for two decades.

The Romanian Business Leaders community, founded in 2011, which includes Romanian entrepreneurs and executives who believe that without moral integrity nothing healthy can be built neither in society, nor in economy, is stunned by the unprecedented attack on the principles of the rule of law enacted by the current Romanian Government. We find unacceptable even the fact that the fundamental principle ‘nobody is above the law’ is questioned, not to speak of its outright breaching and of the basic moral norms – one should not steal.

The stakes of breaching this principle is not just economic, it is not just about losses of millions of euros in public money; it is not just about sub financing the hospitals, schools and national road infrastructure; it is about the type of country we want to build. A country where theft, hidden under the benign name of abuse of office, it is transformed in norm even by the leaders or a country where respect for life, work and citizen money, for equality in front the law, prevails in the face of the historic tendency of the trans-party tendency, coagulated from 1989 on, to confiscate Romania”, said RBL in an open letter.

The RBL community proposes all professional and business organisations of good will to join in order to find common, legal solutions to defend the principles of the state of law, of a healthy society or of the free market.