After the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, a new Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on November 21st 1991, which entered into force following its approval by national referendum on December 8th 1991. Subsequently, the Constitution was revised in 2003 and this revision was approved by national referendum on October 18th and 19th 2003 and entered into force on the October 29th 2003.
The Constitution includes specific provisions related to cultural rights, freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of religion and national minorities’ rights.
Thus, Article 33 of the Constitution guarantees access to culture as well as the freedom of each person to develop his or her own spirituality and to have access to the values of the national and universal culture. According to paragraph 3 of the same article, the State has an obligation to make sure that “the spiritual identity is preserved, national culture is supported, arts are stimulated, cultural legacy is protected and preserved, contemporary creativity is developed, and Romania’s cultural and artistic values are promoted throughout the world”.
Article 6 contains specific provisions related to identity rights of persons belonging to national minorities.
Article 30 guarantees freedom of expression of “thoughts, opinions, or beliefs, and freedom of any creation, by words, in writing, in pictures, by sounds or other means of communication in public”. Censorship is expressly forbidden according to paragraph 2. Also, paragraph 3 provides that “freedom of the press also involves the free setting up of publications” and, according to par. 4, “no publication shall be suppressed”.
Freedom of expression is closely linked to the right to information provided in article 31, which also contains specific provisions on public service broadcasters (PSBs), which are autonomous and operate under parliamentary control. These PSB “[…] must guarantee any important social and political group to exercise the right to broadcasting time”.
Comments are closed.