Ramona Saseanu, Liviu Popescu, appointed interim national media general directors

At a joint meeting on Thursday, the standing bureaus of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies appointed Ramona Saseanu as interim head of Romania's National Television Broadcasting Corporation (SRTv) and Liviu Popescu as interim head of the Romanian National Radio Broadcasting Corporation (SRR) for 60 days each. Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Ludovic Orban said that the appointments were made in order to ensure the management of these media organisations after the Constitutional Court's (CCR) unconstitutionality ruling. Opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) MPs did not attend Thursday's meeting. This way of appointing is the result of the lack of a quorum in a joint sitting of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday. "We find that there is no quorum. Consequently, I want to point out the provisions of Article 46 (8) in Law 41/1994 on the organisation of the Romanian National Radio Broadcasting Corporation and the Romanian National Television Broadcasting Corporation: if no joint plenary meeting of the two chambers of Parliament is possible due to the lack of a legal quorum, the standing bureaus of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies shall appoint interim directors," Senate Chair Anca Dragu said on Wednesday. After the plenary sitting of Parliament was suspended due to the lack of a quorum, the leader of the PSD senators, Lucian Romascanu, said that the current power acted this way to appoint the interim leaderships of SRTv and SRR by decisions of a joint meeting of the standing bureaus because such decisions cannot be challenged with the Constitutional Court. PSD is considering challenging the decisions made by the joint sitting of the standing bureaus regarding the appointment of the interim general directors of SRTv and SRR with an administrative court, Romascanu added. Saseanu and Popescu were appointed on May 11 by Parliament after a plenary parliamentary sitting rejected the two corporations' activity reports and the budget implementation accounts for 2017, 2018, 2019, which led to dismissal of the Boards of Directors of the two corporations. The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) on June 17 agreed to take up a constitutionality objection raised by PSD and ruled unconstitutional the decisions of Parliament regarding the appointment of the interim general directors of SRTV and SRR. AGERPRES (RO - author: Livia Popescu, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)