Romania gets two weeks to defend integrity law

The European Commission has asked Romania to explain how a contested clause in its new integrity law squares with three EU legal principles: whether the country is punishing past conduct after the fact, whether the penalty fits the offence, and whether officeholders could have foreseen the consequence. The request, sent on 2 September by the Commission's justice directorate, gives Bucharest two weeks to respond (RFI, Digi24).

The Commission has moved the clause from political controversy into the payment assessment. Romania's answer will feed directly into the evaluation of its sixth and final payment request under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (the EU's post-pandemic fund that pays governments only after they deliver agreed reforms).

A reform that became a fight

Romania's parliament passed Law 180/2026 on 26 August, three days before a hard deadline for completing recovery-plan milestones (Europa FM). The law tightens the link between a final finding by ANI (Romania's integrity watchdog, which checks officials' assets and conflicts of interest) and the loss of office. That part addresses a real gap: ANI had identified officeholders with final conflict-of-interest rulings who stayed in their posts because the old framework banned them only from future office, not their current one (Juridice, Stiripesurse).

The clause that turned the reform into a fight is the so-called Fritz amendment. It applies the new mandate-ending rule backward: officials with final findings issued before the law took effect lose their posts 30 days after entry into force (Agerpres). ANI says 55 officeholders, including 10 mayors, now fall under the provision (Agerpres). The political label comes from its most prominent target: Dominic Fritz, the German-born mayor of Timișoara and USR party leader, whose conflict-of-interest finding was upheld by Romania's High Court in June (HotNews).

Romania's Constitutional Court upheld the backward-looking clause. Its reasoning: the law changes what happens next to someone already found in breach, rather than retroactively criminalising their original conduct (Gandul). President Nicușor Dan then signed the law into force, saying publicly he disagreed with the amendment but did not want to jeopardise recovery-fund money (Agerpres, Sintact).

Where the pressure comes from

Two European Parliament party leaders, EPP president Manfred Weber and Renew's Valérie Hayer, asked Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to treat the clause as an EU-rights issue. They argued it violates the treaty right of EU citizens to stand for local elections in any member state (Agerpres, FAZ). The Commission's response stayed procedural: the law will be assessed as part of the final payment request, expected this month (ActMedia, G4Media).

The money question

Headlines have placed €770 million at risk from the Fritz amendment. That number is real but misattached. Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan tied the loss to the wage-law reform that parliament failed to pass by the 31 August deadline (HotNews). The figure covers Romania's entire final grant instalment across several milestones, not one clause (EU Perspectives). No public Commission document found in this research pins that sum to the integrity reform alone.

The integrity law could still cost money. Under the recovery fund's rules, if Brussels decides the law defeats the reform it was meant to complete, it can hold back the relevant share of the final instalment (Regulation 2021/241). Romania's two-week answer will become the evidence the Commission uses to decide whether the integrity milestone clears. The Commission is now examining what the law does, not just whether it was adopted on time.