Consultations with parliamentary parties on Constitution's modification, at Cotroceni Palace
Date: 15-03-2010
President Traian Basescu has invited the officials of the parliamentary parties and of independent parliamentarians' group, at the Cotroceni Palace (presidential hqs.), on Monday, for consultations on the modification of the Constitution and the legislative priorities, this year.All the participants said they agree with the amendments of the State's basic Law, but they have different outlooks on the process.All the participants in the referendum, Romania's President convened upon, last year, were in favour of a unicameral Parliament, numbering 300 parliamentarians, at the utmost. The Social Democrats, the Liberals, and the Conservatives (in opposition) and the officials of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR - at rule), wish however, the unicameral system to be preserved.
The Democrat-Liberals (at -rule) announced, several times, that the Constitution's amendments, stipulating the switch from a bicameral to an unicameral Parliament, and the decrease in the number of parliamentarians, represent one of their most important projects.
A different stance within the Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L- at rule) takes Cristian Preda, who opines that the political and the Constitutional reforms must be correlated with the territory's reorganization and a philosophy of the representation. He proposes the Senate to be preserved as a structure of the collective interests, and to include 40 senators elected by the counties or the regions, and the Chamber of Deputies should number 250 deputies. Preda believes it is also required that the Constitution should also include the provision reading that the State's head shall have the right to dissolve the two Chambers of the Parliament in case of political crisis.
After the Referendum, held in last November, the PD-L's Steering College asked the Standing Bureaus of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to set up the Constitutional Committee on the modification of the Basic Law, namely to include provisions regarding the unicameral Parliament and the decrease in the number of parliamentarians.
Late in Feb 2010, the joint Standing Bureaus of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies decided to postpone the creation of such a committee, the version backed up by the opposition parties, namely the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD).
Accprding to Agerpres, the head of the PNL group in the Chamber of Deputies Calin Popescu Tariceanu stressed, on the occasion, that the Liberals agreed with the postponement of setting up the commission for the Constitution's revision, because 'a wider' modification of the Constitution was required.
