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Country reports: Europe and Central Asia
the acquis communautaire,12 there is clearly still a lot of room for improvement. Recent concerns on the part of international actors13 have highlighted a series of legislative and practical vulnerabilities that are generating some reconsideration of the risks that might occur at the nexus between the public and private spheres. As an example of this anxiety, the Bucharest Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIB) addressed a letter to both the president and prime minister highlighting the impact of the high level of corruption and the influence of interest groups on overall economic activity. The CCIB still considers corruption one of the major obstacles to economic development, particularly in the tourism and food industries. The CCIB did not approach the relevant authorities that work on corruption issues, however, and, as such, its impact is likely to be limited.14 While business representatives claim that the phenomenon has become a general trend exacerbated by bureaucracy and technological shortcomings, a former CCIB president said the private sector is affected by the intrusion of politics in the same way that politics is unduly influenced and corrupted by business figures.15 Some of the main weaknesses of Romanian legislation, according to a 2005 Group of States
against Corruption (GRECO) evaluation, are the lack of legal accountability for individuals committing corrupt acts on behalf of legal persons (for example, a company); shortcomings in regulations concerning professional disqualifications for misconduct and other accounting obligations; and miscommunication between authorities involved in preventing and detecting corruption.16 Moreover, the EC expressed its concern regarding the transposition of the 2003 Council Framework Decision on combating corruption in the private sector into domestic legislation. This decision addresses active and passive corruption in the private sector and makes legal persons (companies/firms/ non-governmental organisations) liable for the corrupt behaviour of their staff.17 The Romanian authorities have responded to these challenges in several ways. First, in 2006, the government amended the Criminal Code.18 Coming into force in 2007, it made legal persons liable for the corruption of their staff. While this did not mitigate the individual liability of staff members, this is the first time that criminal liability has been incurred on legal persons, serving as an incentive for companies to ensure that corruption is not a practice tolerated within their organisations.19 Sanctions faced by legal persons include dissolution, suspension of activity and bans on participating
12 The total body of EU law accumulated so far. 13 Group of States against Corruption in the Evaluation Report on Romania, Second Evaluation Round adopted in October 2005, and the European Commission, which emphasised the importance of ensuring ‘that both active and passive corruption in the private sector are criminal offences in all Member States and that legal persons may be held responsible for such offences and that all these offences incur effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties’ in its Report to the Council released on 18 June 2007; see http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/doc_centre/ crime/economic/doc/com_2007_328_en.pdf. 14 See www.bursa.ro/on-line/?s=print&sr=articol&id_articol=23205. 15 Ibid. 16 Evaluation Report on Romania, Second Evaluation Round, adopted by Group of States against Corruption at its twenty-fifth plenary meeting, October 2005. 17 Report from the Commission to the Council based on article 9 of the Council Framework Decision 2003/568/JHA of 22 July on combating corruption in the private sector; http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/doc_centre/crime/ economic/doc/com_2007_328_en.pdf. 18 Law no. 278/2006, Official Journal, no. 601, 12 July 2006. 19 TI Romania’s National Corruption Report 2007 analyses the modifications brought to the Penal Code, including the impact of Law no. 278/2006.