If you’ve been following me on the Fediverse, chances are you’ve heard me talk of the recent woes in Romania regarding the judicial system. Even if you don’t follow me, you might’ve heard about it if you’re even tangentially interested in Romania or know someone who is.
I won’t go into all the details in this post, partially because there’s too much to summarise, partially because I’m not qualified to go into the details of a lot of this, but I hope this quick rundown is enough to give you a broad idea of what’s going on.
A bit of backstory
Justice has been a bit of a touchy subject in Romania for some time. The late 2000s and the better part of the 2010s were practically synonymous in Romania with a ramp up in the fight against corruption. The Romanian National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA by its Romanian acronym) was bringing to court one high profile corruption case after another. There are definitely criticisms to be made about DNA’s activity during this time, but overall the institution functioned as it was intended to.
The anti-corruption fight seemingly culminated, at least as far as public perception was concerned, with the Ordinance 13 (also known as OUG13). This was a bill which significantly weakened what the judicial could do about corruption, sparking a series of country-wide protests as well as several protests in the Romanian diaspora, these protests being widely regarded as the largest series of protests in the country’s history since the revolution of December 1989.
Following the protests, the ordinance was repealed, Liviu Dragnea was sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison for corruption, and the public felt like the fight for justice was finally won. And it couldn’t happen soon enough, as soon after the conclusion of the protests, the COVID-19 pandemic would start, followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In short, there were other fish to fry.
Captured Justice
In the years that followed, the judicial system stepped out of the spotlight. Most likely assumed the work was still being done, just without the press coverage of years past (that’s definitely what I thought for a while). On the 9th of December of 2025, however, Recorder published Justiție Capturată (literally “Captured Justice”), a two hour documentary featuring interviews with current and former prosecutors and judges, detailing how over the years spent by the judicial system out of the public view were spent slowly subjugating the system from the inside, the legislative slowly passing laws giving the Superior Magistracy Council (CSM) impunity over the judicial system, with CSM itself, DNA the High Court of Cassation and Justice, and a number of other important courts (such as the Bucharest Appeals court) slowly being taken over by judges and prosecutors with an agenda other than serving justice equally.
As per the allegations made in the documentary, this takeover would be done by a group led by Lia Savonea, a judge that was rather infamous even before the current events for favouring corrupt politicians and opposing reform requested by both members of the judicial and the public.
And the results of the takeover? Corruption case after corruption ending either with the accused inexplicably acquitted of all charges, or the court proceedings dragging for years and years until the statute of limitations passes. Either way, the result is the same: the accused gets to walk free regardless of whether they were guilty.
“Lia is calling”
Following the release of the documentary, the Bucharest Appeals Court (CAB) organized a rather unusual press conference. The official statements made were what you’d expect: complete denial of the aforementioned documentary, referring to it as a “highly artistic movie calling itself a documentary”.
Overall, the press conference was hardly noteworthy: just the damage control you’d expect, with all the question dodging and non-answers that come with that. There were, however, two moments that stood out. The first one happened before the court’s leadership started their official statement, when judge Raluca Moroșanu stepped up to the press microphones and made a short but decisive statement: “The allegations in the documentary are true, if anyone contradicts it, it is all lies”. This moment led to Moroșanu becoming the face of the protests that sparked following Recorder’s release of the documentary.
The other moment that stood out from the press conference, however, was inarguably far more damning: during the press questions, one of the judges whispered to the court president:
Lia is calling. I’m going to answer.
Whether they didn’t know or didn’t care that the press microphones picked up this line for the whole country to hear, I don’t know. What is certain is that when the judge who rushed to answer Lia’s call came back, she started reading answers to the press' questions off her phone and whispering them to the court president (once again, her whispers were picked up very clearly by the microphones for the whole country to hear). While technically up for debate where the answers came from, it’s quite likely and widely assumed they came from Lia Savonea.
For anyone who wants an abridged version of the conference with just the highlights, Recorder posted a video titled “Lesson of Courage” (alluding to Moroșanu’s statement) containing just that.
Savonea’s “election”
Going back to Lia Savonea for a moment, her election to her current position as president of the High Court was, to say the least, legally questionable.
Earlier this year, the election procedure was started earlier than what the law allowed, with Lia Savonea as the only candidate. Needless to say, she “won”, but not without a fight. Many started questioning the legality of the procedure right away, with Declic petitioning Nicușor Dan and Ilie Bolojan (then freshly sworn in as president and prime minister respectively) to do something about it (something they legally could do given the legally questionable process taking place), but the pleas fell on deaf ears.
After the election was done and Lia Savonea officially became president of the High Court, Declic proceeded to raise funds to take things to court, something they eventually succeeded. However, before trial could start, CSM approved moving the court proceedings from Cluj where Declic is headquartered to the Alba Appeals Court, significantly raising litigation costs for Declic. The official reason? Declic’s activism was deemed as influencing the impartiality of the Cluj court. Of course, to anyone familiar with the dirty tactics sometimes employed in court, it sounds more like the group led by Savonea is using all its resources to put so much financial strain on Declic and anyone else looking to litigate this that it’s infeasible for them to go trough to the end. And even assuming this reading of the situation is a conspiracy theory, I’d really like to hear another explanation for CSM’s decision given the context.
Wrapping up
Following immediately after the release of the documentary, people took to the streets all over the country, with protests growing every day since then, especially after the rather incriminating press conference held by CAB, with some protests happening even abroad.
Will these protests cause Romania to finally get its shit together and get a functioning judicial system? I hope so. Or maybe we just end up kicking the can down the road as turns out was the case with the protests against OUG13. Either way, people are pissed and want change. Not next year, not tomorrow, but yesterday.