Constitutionalism in romania after december 1989

Underlining the main characteristics of the constitutional movement in post-Decembrist Romania, culminating, on December 8th, 1991, with the adoption of the Constitution, this article analyses the evolution of the approach of the fundamental law, more laudatory in the beginning, more critical thereafter. Many norms originally accepted are becoming subject of certain negative appreciations, the most vulnerable being those norms that regulate the relationships among the state authorities, a process that calls for a revision. The necessity to make the Romanian constitutional texts compatible with the Community Treaties also triggered this action, which led to the revision of the Constitution, in 2003. Constitutionalism has become, especially after Romania’s integration in the EU, more and more complex, characterized internally by the gaps in the texts of the fundamental law and externally by the consolidation of the European constitutionalism, the amplification of this movement now manifesting itself on at least three levels : national, regional and European. “At least” three levels because the “European level” is not a singular one, constitutionalism making its presence felt especially inside the EU as a common phenomenon of this super-state structure, but also inside another more ample structure, that of the European Council. By analyzing constitutionalism in post-1989 Romania in close connection with the European one, we come to the conclusion that the direction of the constitutional movement in Romania is convergent with that of the European constitutionalism, the two processes completing each other.