Expert Forum published an analysis of the draft law initiated by the Permanent Electoral Authority (PEA) for the regulation of political parties, which would replace the current Law No. 14/2003.
- The draft introduces some useful provisions – clearer rules on assets (art. 35), members’ rights (art. 30), party names (art. 5), transparency and integrity (art. 19, 21), internal arbitration mechanisms, data protection and digitalization of party management (art. 55). At the same time, EFOR identified a series of problematic changes at key stages of party establishment and dissolution, with a direct impact on political pluralism and local democracy.
- The most important structural change is the transfer of the competence for the registration and dissolution of parties from the Bucharest Tribunal to the PEA. As a general principle, EFOR is against transferring the procedure for the registration and dissolution of a party from the court to the PEA. The right to political association (is one of the fundamental rights with the greatest relevance for democratic pluralism). European standards (Venice Commission, ECHR case law) require solid judicial guarantees and an independent and impartial body for both registration and dissolution. In addition, the Constitution provides in art. 21 para. (4) that special administrative jurisdictions are optional and free of charge, while the draft establishes a mandatory administrative-jurisdictional procedure at the PEA, with decisions taken by panels made up of employees of the institution and subsequently contestable at the Bucharest Court of Appeal. The PEA leadership is appointed through an eminently political mechanism, and recent mandates of the institution’s presidents have frequently ended with public scandals or criminal cases, which raises questions about the neutrality of an authority that would decide both the establishment and dissolution of parties. Comparative analysis at EU level shows that only in a few states (e.g. Malta, Ireland) does registration fall to an electoral authority – generally, this remains the responsibility of a court or a Ministry. Establishment and dissolution should remain the responsibility of the court, and the PEA could instead be given an expanded role in managing a public, updated and accessible Register of Political Parties.
- A second major change is the increase in the threshold of founding members from 3 to 100, without any justification in the substantiation note. EFOR recalls that the previous threshold of 25,000 members was declared unconstitutional by CCR Decision no. 75/2015. Although the number of registered parties has increased significantly compared to 2008-2012 (from approximately 30 to over 270 controlled by the PEA in 2026), and many of them are inactive or difficult to contact (including for the control of party financing carried out by the PEA), EFOR considers that this administrative problem does not justify a restriction of a democratic right – the solution lies in differentiated control mechanisms depending on the party’s resources and activity, not in a higher entry threshold.
- EFOR also criticizes the mechanism imposed for dissolution (by the decision of the PEA). The law introduces new conditions for the dissolution of the political party. Art. 63 provides for the competence of the Constitutional Court only in the event of unconstitutionality (as a result of the conditions in art. 62 letter a), and for the rest, for all other cases – illicit purpose/activity or contrary to public order, pursuit of a purpose other than the statutory one, organization of structures according to the criterion of the workplace, inactivity – the PEA can initiate the procedure itself or can be initiated by any interested person and pronounces a decision for dissolution. The introduction of these regulations is a regression compared to the current regulations, which establish that the dissolution is carried out by decision of the Bucharest Tribunal, at the request of the Public Ministry. As in the case of the establishment of political parties, we reiterate that this procedure should be carried out by a court of law, maintaining the arguments presented above regarding the establishment of political parties. The comparative study showed that in most cases, dissolution is requested by the court or prosecutors.
- The criticism also extends to the extension of the dissolution criteria for inactivity , which adds conditions such as the absence of a general assembly for 4 years, failure to update the headquarters or management for one year, or failure to submit financial statements for 2 years, reasons that EFOR considers more appropriate for gradual administrative sanctions than for dissolution, an irreversible measure. Likewise, the formulation of “serious or repeated political activities at the level of public authorities and institutions” as a ground for dissolution is considered insufficiently precise, contrary to the requirement of predictability of the norm consistently established by the Constitutional Court. The condition of non-participation in “two successive elections”, without specifying the type of elections targeted, could lead – if it were also applied to the presidential elections – to the dissolution of approximately 90% of the parties in Romania. For example, a party that is established at the local or county level and has the vocation to participate in local or parliamentary elections, according to its statute, should not be dissolved because it does not have candidates at the national level.
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Other observations concern the change in the legal form of parties , from legal entities under public law to public utility associations under private law. The public utility status may attract certain tax incentives and additional reporting obligations. The draft attributes this status to all political parties, without clarifying what tax or patrimonial consequences it produces. These changes must be explained, and the change in the status of political parties can only be made if there are guarantees that the transparency of their activity and the related responsibilities are not reduced.
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Another criticism concerns the excessive restriction introduced in Art. 4 on the use of a party’s name or logo without its consent, which may affect freedom of expression – for example, a critical post on social media that includes the logo of the targeted party could fall under this prohibition, although it does not violate other regulations.
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The new chapter dedicated to political foundations is a useful but incomplete step: the draft allows them to be financed by parties from their own income or subsidies, without setting limits for these transfers or clear obligations of transparency, activity reporting and control.
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The contravention regime is criticized for the fines set in a single range (20,000-80,000 lei), applied regardless of the seriousness of the act – from failure to publish a document on the website to failure to carry out the annual inventory of assets -, which contradicts the principle of proportionality of sanctions consistently upheld by the CCR. Sanctions should be separated according to their subject (natural persons/legal entities), but also according to the seriousness of the violation.
- Although the draft PEA contains welcome specific improvements, overall, the proposed establishment and dissolution mechanism risks weakening the constitutional and democratic guarantees surrounding the establishment and dissolution of political parties, by centralizing these decisions to a politically appointed authority, through unjustified establishment thresholds and through imprecisely formulated grounds for dissolution.
The report includes, as reference material, a detailed comparative table of regulations on political parties in all 27 EU Member States – legal form, competent authority, establishment thresholds, grounds for dissolution and appeal, as well as a list of political party registers.