The Offense of Incitement to Violence, Hatred or Discrimination Provided in the Romanian Criminal Code

The offense of incitement to violence, hatred or discrimination is provided for in art. 369 of the Romanian Criminal Code. This offense consists in inciting the public, by any means, to violence, hatred or discrimination against a category of persons or against a person on the grounds that he or she is part of a certain category of persons defined on the basis of race, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, opinion or political affiliation, wealth, social origin, age, disability, chronic non-contagious disease or HIV/AIDS infection, considered by the perpetrator as causes of a person’s inferiority in relation to others. This article was amended by Law no. 170 of June 3, 2022, for the amendment of art. 369 of Law no. 286/2009 regarding the Criminal Code. This amendment to the Criminal Code was imposed because in the old text, namely “Inciting the public, using any means, to hatred or discrimination against a category of individuals,†no discriminatory criteria were provided for the existence of the crime. Therefore, the act of incitement to hatred or discrimination could be based on a wide variety of criteria, such as sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, opinion, political affiliation, beliefs, age, illness, disability, social origin, wealth etc., which can generate feelings of hatred and the desire to discriminate against a certain social category, but were not expressly listed. The commission of the offense is punished by no less than six months and no more than three years of imprisonment or by a fine. The change was carried out as a transposition into legislation of the Framework Decision 2008/913/JAI on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia through Criminal Law. The focus of this study is to conduct a thorough analysis of this offense.