| NEW EDUCATION LAW DEEMED UNCONSTITUTIONAL 19/11/2009 |
| (2009-11-19) |
| Last updated: 2009-11-20 16:24 EET |
Passed on the 15th of September as part of a package on which the government requested Parliament to hold a confidence voting, the new education law has come under attack by the opposition, teachers’ unions and NGOs alike. They all denounced the fact that the procedure of holding a confidence vote in Parliament short-circuits debates both in Parliament and society, the result being that a normative act of the highest importance is passed without seeing one single amendment capable of improving it. Acting as a referee whose decisions are challenged by many but respected by everyone, the Constitutional Court has ruled as discriminatory, therefore unconstitutional, a provision of the education law according to which the position of school director is incompatible with party membership. The head of the presidential committee for education and the main author of the law, the former education minister Mircea Miclea says parliamentarians will find a way to stop the depoliticising of schools:
“I continue to uphold this principle, because it is the only way to depoliticise education, at least in schools, because inspectorates are anyway politicised, the ministry is politicised, and all appointments are political. Under the circumstances, I believe the only chance is for Parliament, if the law is again debated, to phrase the law in such as way as to depoliticise schools or we won’t be able to keep in check the interference of political life in schools.”
Education trade unions, on the other hand, are happy with the Court’s decision, which, starting from the minor detail of incompatibility, basically dismisses the entire law, allowing it to be discussed in detail by Parliament. Marius Nistor is a teacher and a trade union leader:
“This law in unconstitutional and it’s been proven once again it should have been the result of a real public debate and not passed from one day to another, through a confidence voting in Parliament. In the coming period, we expect this law to be truly discussed with the representatives of education trade unions and become the result of people who do understand education and who must allow for equality of chances of become a reality.”
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2025-04-03
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