Romania

B

Legislature

Romania has a bicameral (two-chamber) parliament called the National Assembly. It is composed of a lower house, called the Chamber of Deputies, and an upper house, called the Senate. Members of both houses of parliament are elected for four-year terms according to a system of proportional representation, apart from a small number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies that are reserved for ethnic minorities. All citizens aged 18 and over are eligible to vote.

C

Judiciary

The Romanian legal system is based on the Code Napoléon (Napoleonic Code). The Supreme Court is Romania’s highest judicial authority. Its members are appointed by the president at the proposal of the Superior Council of Magistrates. In each of Romania’s 41 counties and in the special municipality of Bucharest there is a county court and several lower courts, or courts of first instance. Appeals against sentences passed by local courts are heard in appellate courts; there is a right of appeal from the appellate courts to the Supreme Court.

Romania has a Constitutional Court, charged with ensuring a balance of power among the branches of government. The procurator-general is the highest judicial official in Romania, and is responsible to the National Assembly, which appoints him or her for a four-year term. The death penalty was abolished in December 1989 and is forbidden by the constitution.

D

Political Parties

Between 1948 and 1989 the only political organization in Romania was the Romanian Communist Party. Led by Nicolae Ceauşescu after 1965, it controlled all aspects of government. After Ceauşescu was deposed in 1989, the Communist Party dissolved and a number of former party members formed the National Salvation Front (NSF). Many other new parties also emerged at this time. The Romanian Communist Party was reestablished in May 1994.

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Since the dissolution of Communism, many short-lived political parties in Romania have formed, and mergers and coalitions of parties and political groupings have been common. Among the most important parties are the Social Democratic Party (PSD), formerly known as the Party of Social Democracy of Romania (PSDR); the National Liberal Party (PNL), which joined with the Democratic Party (PD) in 2003 to form the Justice and Truth Alliance; and the anti-immigration Greater Romania Party (PRM). The Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania represents Romania’s Hungarian minority.

E

International Organizations

Romania is a member of the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe (CE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In January 1994 Romania joined the Partnership for Peace program, and the following year it sent peacekeeping troops to Angola, thereby participating in its first military operation under UN auspices. Romania’s chief foreign policy goal after the fall of Communism, membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was achieved in March 2004, when Romania formally joined the defensive alliance. Romania became a full member of the European Union (EU) in 2007.

VII

History of Romania

The territory that is now Romania first appeared in history as Dacia. Most of its inhabitants were originally from the region of Thrace, in Greece; they were called Getae by the Greeks, and later, by the Romans, they were known as Dacians. Between ad 101 and 106 Dacia was conquered by Roman emperor Trajan and incorporated into the Roman Empire as a province. Roman colonists were sent into Dacia, and Rome developed the region considerably. The Romans built roads, bridges, and a great wall that stretched from what is today the Black Sea port of Constanţa across the region of Dobruja to the Danube River.

In the middle part of the 3rd century a Germanic people known as Goths drove the Romans out of much of Dacia. In about 270 Roman Emperor Lucius Domitius Aurelian decided to withdraw the Roman legions and colonies to an area south of the Danube; some Roman civilians chose to stay, however. Under the influence of the Romans, the people of Dacia adopted the Latin language.

For the next thousand years, the Daco-Roman people were subjected to successive invasions by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, and Bulgars. Slavs brought Christianity to the region in the 4th century, and through intermarriage and assimilation, changed the ethnic balance in Romania. Its inhabitants developed into a distinct ethnic group, known as the Vlachs, a name designating Latin-speakers of the Balkan Peninsula. In the 9th century the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity was introduced by the Bulgars (see Orthodox Church).

In 1003 King Stephen I of Hungary established control over most of the region of Transylvania in what is now central and northwestern Romania. In the 13th century King Béla IV of Hungary brought Saxons and other Germanic tribes into Transylvania to strengthen Hungary’s position there. In the middle of the 13th century Hungarian expansion drove many Vlachs to settle south and east of the Carpathian Mountains. There they established the principality of Walachia, and later that of Moldavia. Each was ruled by a succession of voivodes (native princes), who were generally under the authority of either Hungary or Poland. Until the 19th century the history of Romania was that of the separate principalities of Walachia and Moldavia.

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