Criminal Defamation
No provisions.
Defamation and insult were repealed as criminal offences in Romania with the adoption of the new Romanian Criminal Code in January 2014.
Criminal Defamation of Public Officials
No provisions.
Criminal Defamation of the Head of State
No provisions.
Criminal Defamation of the State and its Symbols
No provisions.
However, Art. 30(7) of the Romanian Constitution states that defamation of the state and the nation shall be prohibited by law.
Criminal Defamation of Foreign Heads of State
No provisions.
Criminal Defamation of Foreign States and Symbols
No provisions.
Criminal Defamation of the Deceased
No provisions.
Criminal Blasphemy
No provisions.
Criminal Statistics
N/A
Criminal Defamation and Media
N/A
Recent Legal Changes
Defamation and insult were repealed as criminal offences in Romania with the adoption of the new Romanian Criminal Code in January 2014.
The removal of defamation and insult from the Romanian Criminal Code was the subject of a complicated legal discussion in recent years. In 2006, the Romanian Parliament voted to abolish defamation and insult as criminal offences, but the act was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2007. In 2010, the High Court of Justice weighed in and stated that criminal defamation and insult had been abolished. But in 2013 the Constitutional Court ruled that the High Court had contradicted the Constitutional Court’s earlier decision and that defamation and insult remained criminal offences. This decision, however, applied only to the previous criminal code. The back-and-forth finally ended with the adoption of the new Code.
In February 2016, the Romanian Chamber of Deputies voted not to approve a controversial law on “social defamation” that had been passed by the country’s Senate in October 2015. The bill defined social defamation as an act or statement putting a person in a “position of inferiority” because of that person’s belonging to a group of people “who can be socially distinguished through one or more features related to gender, age, race, religion, ethnic origin, native language, cultural traditions, sexual orientation, social origin, disability, non-contagious disease, or HIV/AIDS infection”. The penalty for defaming an individual would have been a fine of 1,000 to 30,000 lei , while the fine for defaming a group would have been max. 100,000 lei. According to reports, Romania’s ruling Social Democratic Party defended the measure as necessary to “promote human dignity and tolerance of group differences”. Opposition politicians and journalists, however, criticised the bill as an attempt “to shield politicians from criticism” .
Notes and Acknowledgements
Information for Romania was originally collected by IPI as part of the “Out of Balance” report, published in January 2015 with support from the European Commission and incorporating research contributed by Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University in Budapest and by the SHARE Foundation in Belgrade. This entry was later expanded and updated by IPI as part of a study commissioned by the Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
A fully footnoted version of this entry is available in the OSCE study. This entry was last updated in March 2017.
The information contained in this database is for informational and advocacy purposes only. If you are a journalist facing a defamation claim, you should seek legal advice from a qualified attorney. However, if you are unable to find such an attorney, IPI may be able to assist you in doing so. Please contact us at info(at)ipi.media.
