Constitutional Court approves constitutional amendment proposal from AEI

The proposal of the Alliance for European Integration (AEI) to amend Art.78 of the Constitution was approved today by the Constitutional Court. Under the proposal, the head of state would be elected by direct popular vote and could be dismissed with a two-thirds vote of Parliament, Info-Prim Neo reports. Like in the case of the project submitted by the opposition Communist Party (PCRM), the approval of the Constitutional Court came with a few reservations. Constitutional Court Chair Dumitru Pulbere warned that the Alliance should pay attention to Art.80, which determines the duration of presidency, and Art.85, which in the current version says that the acting president shall dissolve Parliament should it fail to elect the president. If neither proposal gets parliamentary endorsement, an alternative would be a referendum called by either the Government or a group of 200,000 citizens; the president or the acting president is empowered to call only an advisory, non-binding referendum, the Court specified. On April 29 the Constitutional Court approved a constitutional amendment proposal by the PCRM, which proposed gradually reducing the number of MP votes required to elect the president, from 61 to 57 to 52. The proposals may be considered in Parliament after six months from the publication of the Constitutional Court’s approvals in the Official Gazette /Monitorul Oficial/. Either proposal requires 67 out of 101 MP votes to pass.