Problems and Purpose

Background History and Context

Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities

In its first meeting, the Joint Commission of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate for the drafting of the revision bill of the Constitution of Romania voted to set up the Constitutional Forum as an autonomous and consultative structure, meant to organize debates and consultations with society members regarding the revision of the Romanian Constitution. In addition, it set up a parliamentary committee responsible for discussing the proposals emerged from the deliberative practices of the Forum. The Forum coordination team (led by the NGO Pro Democracy Association and academics) asked for a minimum of six months to deliver a report and the parliamentary committee decided to grant them only two and half months, including the public consultations and proceedings’ synthesis (February–May 2013).

Participant Recruitment and Selection

Methods and Tools Used

The mini-public combined online and offline deliberation.

What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation

Influence, Outcomes, and Effects

Immediately after the end of deliberations (June 2013), the parliamentary committee studied and decided about the suggestions: it kept some, rejected others, and added some new ones. Representatives of the Forum were always invited to meetings of the parliamentary committee and were asked to present arguments to support the suggested modifications. The discussions during such meetings were open and transparent, although there was no real agreement between the Forum representatives and the MPs. The draft issued after these discussions included to a large extent the proposals originating in the debates of the Forum, especially on rights and freedoms, child protection, and checks and balances. However, in a second phase, the final vote of the parliamentary committee weakened the result of deliberation. Several key amendments, including the most progressive ones (e.g., permitting same-sex marriage) were removed. This shift had political causes: the social democrats, with a majority in committee, feared that the constitutional revision could be used by the Liberal chair of the committee, as a platform for his 2014 presidential candidacy. Consequently, the social democrats decided to condemn the constitutional revision process as a whole and the subsequent step was to weaken the revision draft. Furthermore, after the Liberals left the government coalition with the social democrats in April 2014, the entire project of constitutional revision, and implicitly the outcome of the deliberation, was abandoned. While in theory, it had to be discussed by the Parliament, there is no longer the two-thirds majority to support it and no immediate incentive to adopt it and submit to a public referendum. Nothing happened with the report until today but it exists and politicians can pick it up any time should they wish to.

Analysis and Lessons Learned

See Also

References

External Links

Notes

This entry is based on the POLITICIZE dataset. More information can be found at the following links:

• Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
• Pilet J-B, Paulis E, Panel S.,Vitori D & Close C. 202X The POLITICIZE Dataset: an inventory of Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs) in Europe. European Political Science.