Central European University, Department of Public Policy

An assessment of lustration
systems and their impact.
Case study: Romania
Ethics and Public Policy- Final paper

Gabriela Korodi
4/3/2013

Introduction
Well seated in the Parliament the boys from PCR ()1

In a country such as Romania, where the communist past is deemed as a horrific

experience because of the cruel political police (the Securitate), the massive arrests and
incarcerations in either mental facilities or terrible prisons and the overall low living standards
the population endured, a lustration system should be the first step into providing the basic
framework for reckoning with the past. However, this did not happen in Romania: by August
2010 the short lived Romanian lustration came to an end after five years in which it had done
little or nothing to avoid former communists to undertake public offices in the current regime.
The current paper seeks to examine what lustration is and how it can implemented in a
manner that will ensure success in forcing out former communist officials without violating their
human rights or labor prerogatives. Further in the paper, I will take a closer look to Romanias
situation and examine in which context the lustration law was vetoed in 1999, the ups and downs
of its implementation and the reasons for which it failed to remove from public office former
participants to the communist reprisals. It will also assess the impact of such a law (or the lack of
it) on the political culture of the country and the overall trust of people in their government.
The first attempt to implement a lustration system in Romania was announced in early
1990 during the Timisoara proclamation. Timisoara is the city in which the revolution sparked
out; as power was overtaken by Ion Iliescu after the illegal trial of the Ceausescu dictatorial
family, this body of activists from the Western-Romanian city stressed upon the disregard of the
capital towards the true values of democracy. Article 8 of the Proclamation clearly states that
current office should not be held by former members of the communist nomenklatura for at least
10 years after the regime crash; moreover, article 10 of the same document states that no
presidential candidate should have more than 3 consecutive mandates (Roy Rosenzweig Center
for History and Media 2007). This document was not enforced by a real legislative act until
1999. By then, Iliescu had already acquired presidency two times and managed to suppress and

Lyrics from a famous social-themed song released in 2012 by artist Dragos Tudorache entitled Letter to Mr.
President, in which the artist emphasizes, among others, how most MPs are in fact, members of the old communist
elite.

imprison part-takers to actions like the Mineriada and Goleniad, which aimed to downturn of the
newly created, but old fashioned institutions.
Change did not occur until 1999 when Romanians were allowed to access the files the
Securitate had drawn on them. This was made possible by a survivor of the terrors of the regime
and active participant at the Revolution- George Serban. His election in the legislature led to the
promulgation of a bill that allowed opening secret archives and the creation of the National
Council for Studying Security Archives (CNSAS in Romanian), an independent agency whose
purpose was to facilitate access to the archives and engage in government investigations when
asked by the Parliament. But soon, CNSAS proved to be a bluff: it was engaged in massive
scandals, fake accusations and political partisanship (Stan 2008).
Furthermore, in 2003 when Romanias accession to the European Union was clear, the
Council of Europe asked for the declassification of all archived material and setting up a national
commission with the purpose of investigating communist era human right abuses. In 2012, a
documentary by Glenn Ellis broadcasted on Al-Jazeera showed that despite efforts of civil
society, theres still no full disclosure on Securitate files; the film provides an even more horrific
insight: the Romanian Service of Information (SRI) is the organization that took up the tasks and
labor force of the old Securitate after the regime crash. An interviewee in the film confesses that,
as former employee of the SRI and Securitate, his task has not changed too much despite the
transition into a different political regime: he was supposed to tape and listen to phone calls of
anyone posing a threat to the current leadership (Al Jazeera 2012).

Lustration: definitions, classifications and effects

In an attempt to bring clarifications to what the term lustration means, this paper will
analyze it in the light of the Central-Eastern European experience with former communist
regimes. So, lustration can be considered merely a system in which the legislature answers the
dilemma of how the past might affect the present. The communist legacy expands far beyond
fears of deprivation of basic products and spy paranoia, being visible in many more aspects of
public life: political culture, solving issues of restitution, political rehabilitation 2 , legal un2

In a recent article it was speculated that a committee was formed in order to investigate the presumed accusations
for which the Ceausescu dictator couple were sentenced to death in attempt to rehabilitate their names
(http://www.antena3.ro/romania/nicolae-si-elena-ceausescu-ar-putea-fi-reabilitati-209126.html,
accessed
on
02.04.2013)

clarities regarding communist assets, the role of nomenklatura in current private sector, former
supervision system and civil servants (Welsh 1996).
Literally, to lustrate means to make a ceremonial purification that removes bloodguiltiness (Letki 2002). In ethical conditions, it means coming to terms with the past. As Letki
argues in her article, defining lustration has always had to sides: exclusion from political life and
judicial punishment for past deeds. In this context, collaborators of former abusive regimes seem
to face two types of consequences, namely criminal law cases (which would lead up to either
imprisonment or limitation of certain rights) and major screening procedures which would result
in preventing a former communist from occupying public functions in the democratic regime.
These two consequences fall under the signs of retribution and disqualification, but Letki stresses
at the fact that lustration should be used in the narrower sense of screening people who have had
affairs with the communist regime and who are currently seeking to occupy a public office (Letki
2002).
In this sense, lustration must go further than just screening records held in secret archives
(David 2006). It must become a system in labor law or employment rules that regulates the
access to public dignities. It should be reflected especially in public administrations higher ranks
and the military, but it would have a useful scope if it governed positions in public media, state
owned companies, privatization processes and security-sensitive trade (David 2006) because
these are the jobs which typically affect a wide range of population and are subject to most cases
of corruption.
Looking beyond the public role of lustration, for those affected is a measure that limits
their opportunities of acquiring a place of employment. In this context, lustration is a system that
eliminates the job candidacy of those who have collaborated with previous communist regime
and security apparatus (Horne 2009). Due to this, it may be considered a law that could violate
the right to fair employment, the freedom of assembly and of speech and the respect for the
consecrated due process from the legal system. On the other hand, the non- implementation of a
lustration law ignores the injustices, crimes and violations performed under the old regimes; the
lack of it even qualifies as bad governance (Horne 2009). In this context, policy makers could
say they find themselves in a situation of moral hazard: not having a lustration law allows former
perpetrator to take offices while the existence of a lustration law advocates for differential
employment policies which in terms of distributive democracy are equal to discrimination.
3

In trying to operationalize lustration methods and systems, a classification has been

released that divides up screening procedures based on their methods of dealing with the
inherited staff, regardless if the level of collaboration that person has had with the previous
regime (David 2006). Thus, the author explains why lustration systems can be categorized as
being exclusive, inclusive, reconciliatory and mixed with the observation that not all lustration
systems fit under one label or the other and that a distinction between the distinct purposes of
lustration systems has to be done:

some are aimed at distributing power, while others at

maintaining status quo (David 2006).

Exclusive lustration systems simply exclude members of the former regime from
occupying pubic offices in the present. There is left no room for discretion regarding the methods
undertaken after the affiliation with former oppressive forces has been established. Its the most
severe establishment and it is based on the idea that someone who had broken the law in the past
is prone to break it in the future. Human character is a constant variable in this hypothesis and
the guilt is established one the candidate has submitted a resume. The idea behind exclusive
lustration systems is the fact the criminal acts remain the same regardless of times passing; law
retroactivity is not an argument to be brought up in such situations due to the fact that this kind
of behavior might put the process of democratization into jeopardy as people who were involved
in criminal activities in the past can pursue them during democracy as well. Lustration laws
adopted in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia3 had an exclusive nature.
Inclusive systems rely upon admissions of past sins in order to be present in current
regimes. The model puts the task of ensuring that criminal behavior will not occur again during
democracy on the public.. However, in this type of system, if a truth commission discovers the
sins of a currently public official these will not be made public unless the official wants. If he/she
chooses to secrecy of his past actions resignation is required from the person in question, without
any public smear. Inclusive systems are modeled on the belief that human nature improves and
were implemented in Hungary and Poland.
In reconciliatory systems, the former collaborator has to publicly confess his wrongdoings without any investigation by an outer body. Every individual seeking employment in a
public office has to file an affidavit that is then verified by a lustration committee. In this case,
persons facing lustration process can either tell the truth and ascent to public office, or lie in the
3

Serbia only adopted an exclusive lustration system for higher dignitaries.

hope that the committee will not find out their past actions. However, even if the latter does not
happen and past affiliation is proven by the committee it is a common practice to use resignation
or transfer to non-lustrated position instead of criminal law suits. Among countries that used this
system we can recount South Africa and Poland.
Last but not the least, mixed systems use a procedure similar to the selective justice trials:
past collaboration can be accepted if the candidate proves their ability to hold a position of trust.
According to the context in which the institution that seeks employees finds itself and upon
investigation of the candidate, the authorities have to decide whether he/she is adequate for the
job in question. This system has been used in reunified Germany for employees from the old
GDR.
As we can see all of the four systems described above affect in way or other the access to
employment. This issue was tackled several times by international organizations such as
International Labor Organization (ILO) and the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR).
These organs have brought their interpretation to the lustration laws whenever complaints were
made. However, the problematic factor in this equation is the difficulty to make the right
decision since lustration implies the limitation of certain prerogatives and both ILO and ECHR
being organs that defend and extend prerogatives. Largely due to their decision in favor of the
plaintiffs, these two organizations were deemed as being anti-lustration. In the light of these
accusations, the bodies of law stressed on retroactive justice issues in the lustration process:
information and informer problems, due process violations, bureaucratic loyalty concerns (Horne
2009).

Lustration in Romania. Impacts

Vladimir Tismaneanu, professor and renowned scholar in communism studies has talked
several times about the situation of Romania not dealing with its past errors. He emphasized how
society needs to stand up and participate in the national conversations about the past because
cases of abuse need to stay valid regardless of how much time goes by; in his opinion, the decommunization process has three levels that need to be roamed in order to have a truly
democratic regime (Tismaneanu 2008):

Lustration: temporary banning from public offices the [communist] party bureaucrats
and secret police officers and informers;
5

The general access to personal files in the secret police archives;

Trials against former communist dignitaries and secret police officers or agents that
were facing accusations of human rights abuses.

From the steps proposed by Tismaneanu, only the second one got to be implemented in
his native Romania. Although never having adopted a lustration law per se (Radu 2011),
Romania has implemented a set of measures in order to vet on those public official that have
occupied functions in the communist nomenklatura. The next section will tackle these measures.
Firstly, Romania started exhibiting signs of condemning communist era miss-happenings
shortly after the Revolution in 1989 dissipated the old regime. The Timisoara proclamation from
March 1990 proposed a very rigorous approach for the previous elites: a 10 year ban from public
office of those who have been active in any form during the communist regime. They highlighted
the fact that the Revolutions purpose was not to bring down the Ceausescus, but to bring down
the entire political regime, hence the severity of their proposed lustration (Radu 2011). From
Davids (2006) framework, what the authors of the Proclamation were requiring was an
exclusive lustration system. Still, the formulation and implementation of such a lustration failed
to appear: it took 9 year for an act that allowed the access of people to their personal Securitate
files and the formation of an agency to lead investigations in this field. This agency got smeared
into scandals soon after its formation because of the fact that the ruling party has a veto power
over since it appoints its members and leadership.
Secondly, Romanias typicality in the pool of former oppressive regimes is the fact that it
is a country in which the affiliation to the communist party is the best predictor for current
business ownership (David 2004). In this context, 63 % of those involved in politics have had
close contacts to communist politics as well, while only 10000 people have gone through the
lustration process (Stan 2008). In 2006, the Democratic Party new members to governing
coalition have initiated the drafting of a new lustration law that would contain the
recommendations issued in 1990 at Timisoara; by the time the vetoing was supposed to happen,
it was sent to the Constitutional Court, which in 2008 put an end to every lustration effort in
Romania (Iancu 2010).
Thirdly, even though a 2004 EU resolution banned members of communist repression
organs and individuals involved in crimes against humanity from occupying positions in the EU
structures didnt cause much trouble or pressure upon Romanian legislature. Lavinia Stan argues
6

that the slow pace of Romanian lustration was due to restrictions imposed by a statute of
limitations, the difficulty of piecing together evidence the communists tried so hard to erase and
in many cases, the defendants old age and health problems (Stan 2008).
The consequences of this chaos that ultimately led to nothing in terms of dealing with the
past have nonetheless impacts on the social sphere in the country. When people are
dissatisfied with the measures that are undertaken, their level of trust in the government and
institutional structures lowers (C. M. Horne 2012). Moreover, the stronger the communist force
in current governments, the higher the degree of political polarization (Welsh 1996): parties had
to be either pro-communist or anti-communist; the problem with Romania is that both camps
were disguised communists. Thus, if initially the lustration had a purification role of lustration,
as time went by the interest in implementing it has decreased. The events that shook Romania
prior to 1989 and during the Revolution eluded collective memory and individual recollections
of it were deemed as political manipulations.

Conclusions: uselessness of Romanian lustration

All the evidence examined in this paper prove that in fact Romanian lustration was never
truly considered and that communist nomenklatura is still at the leadership of the country. In
fact, the president himself admitted to being a prominent member of the Communist Party.
Besides this, the possibility of having an institution (the SRI) whose main activity is to suppress
anyone opposing leadership is not democratic at all either. In this context, people lose their fate
in political institutions and democracy overall, which has been demonstrated by the low presence
at polls for any given recent universal suffrage in the country. In the Romanian context, there is
one more observation to be made: as one journalist admits it those who rise against the former
communists are labeled Talibans or extremist (Stan 2008). The declaration makes us reflect on
how internalized the anti-lustration opinion has become and how severely distinct the discussion
from the Parliament are compared to those in the press. Also, it fuels dilemmas regarding
political culture: in times of economic downturn should this be the main concern of politicians?
This question remains to be answered in the next electoral campaign for presidency.

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