EQUAL TREATMENT AND NON DISCRIMINATION ON GENDER CRITERIUM IN ROMANIAN LAW

• Main Author: TOFAN Mihaela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Technopress 2012-06-01
• Series: Journal of Public Administration, Finance and Law
• Online Access: http://www.jopafl.com/uploads/EQUAL-TREATMENT-AND-NONDISCRIMINATION-ON-GENDER-CRITERIUM-IN-ROMANIAN-LAW.pdf

There have been important changes in Romanian legal framework in the past two decades. Concepts as liberty, equality and equity evolved from declarative level to effective values applied into reality. Romanian Constitution, adopted in 1991 and considerably reviewed in 2003, started the process of adapting the Romanian legal framework to the European law. Fundamental principles, such as liberty, equal treatment and equality between all individuals have been ruled and are in force, as they are included in the constitutional texts. In order to confer stronger guaranties for respecting these principles, there have been adopted laws, ordinances and regulations. Although the separation of the power is ruled on constitutional level, the Romanian govern has the power to adopt ordinances, when the parliament is not able to act. This power is not used properly, the process of ruling through ordinances being the prior method and not the exception, as it should be. So, the equal treatment and the non-discrimination principles are insured by ordinance, many of the aspects being criticized. The constant, systematic and concentrated promotion of the equal opportunity principle for men and women, as it is known today, represents a relatively new worry for the international community, even though legal aspects about equality between men and women have been evoked ever since 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the European Union, the preoccupation for the promotion of the equal opportunity and treatment for men and women was officially recognized as a necessity starting with the European Treaty from Maastricht (1993), and subsidiary through the adopted Directives for this purpose and not least through the jurisprudence of Luxembourg’s Court of Law. On institutional level, there have been founded some private and also public bodies to carry out the mission of protecting the equal treatment and non-discrimination principles. An important role is reserved to the judges, as representing the judgment power in the state. Still, the turnover of the Romanian legal framework is not complete at this time. There are concepts to be ruled and European ideas to be reached. The mechanisms to do so are not completely efficient and the paperwork proposes some way to improve the current situation.