In Romania the Presidential Commission for Constitutional Regime Analysis has presented its report to President Traian Basescu. According to Financiarul.ro, the Commission was set up last spring and was headed by Ioan Stanomir, a political scientist in the Department of Political Science at the University of Bucarest.

I am not wholly sure that the report has been made public. Certainly, I have not been able to get hold of a version in English. My understanding is that President Basescu has not made it public, but he has prioritised a number of its 23 recommendations.

For readers of this blog, perhaps the most interesting element of the press conference last week was the statement by President Basescu concerning the semi-presidential nature of the system. As reported in SEEurope.net, he stated: “I believe that a semi-presidential regime is the best solution for Romania. I don’t believe that Romania needs a Presidential regime in which the Head of State is the Head of Government. I also believe that a Parliamentary regime in which the Head of State would no longer be directly elected by the citizens does not express the will of our nation”. While there are those of us who would say that Romania already has a semi-presidential constitution, this statement is being taken as a sign that President Basescu would like to see the powers of the president increased somewhat. For example, Southeast European Times reports him as saying “If we continue to elect a president who can’t act, we will ignore the nation and diminish the democracy. The best term to describe the semi-presidential regime is equilibrium”.

Using Shugart and Carey’s measures of presidential power, Tom Gallagher and Viorel Andrievici have calculated that the Romanian president records a score of 7. This puts Romania on a par with Croatia (2000), just ahead of Lithuania and Ukraine (2006), well ahead of Bulgaria and Macedonia and trailing far behind Belarus, Russia and Ukraine (1996). The full scores are available in Robert Elgie and Sophia Moestrup (eds.), Semi-presidentialism in Central and Eastern Europe, Manchester, Manchester University Press. 2008.

Following on from his own problems a few years ago, President Basescu also wants to see the grounds for impeaching the president changed to include only the charge of high treason. He supports the introduction of a unicameral parliament.