Romania: Officials' wealth declarations to become less transparent, using value ranges instead of exact sums

Romanians will have a harder time verifying the exact wealth of their public officials following a legislative change approved by a committee in the Chamber of Deputies. Lawmakers from the PSD, PNL, and USR parties adopted an amendment on July 27 that modifies the current system of asset and interest declarations.

While the existing declarations will still be completed by officials and submitted to the National Integrity Agency (ANI), they will no longer be published in full. ANI will instead generate a new document, termed a "financial interests declaration." This new format will replace exact figures for bank account balances, asset values, and other detailed financial information with broad value ranges.

The ruling coalition presents this change as a necessary compromise to align with a 2025 Constitutional Court decision. This decision reportedly stated that asset declarations could no longer include the assets and income of officials' spouses. However, anti-corruption experts contend that transparency could have been maintained to a much greater extent.

Radu Nicolae, president of the Association for Cooperation and Sustainable Development, described the new declaration as a step forward from the Justice Ministry's initial proposal, which lacked such a summary document altogether. Nevertheless, he criticized the overall outcome as negative, arguing that the Constitutional Court's ruling did not necessitate such a drastic reduction in transparency. He believes that complete declarations could have remained public, at least for certain categories of officials.

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În forma adoptată de Comisia juridică a fost introdusă această declarație de interese financiare, care reprezintă, practic, un rezumat al declarației de avere și de interese.