De la contestația prezidențială la politica memoriei: analiză critică a propunerii de modificare a OUG 31/2002 și Legii 157/2018
From the presidential appeal to the politics of memory: a critical analysis of the proposal to amend OUG 31/2002 and Law 157/2018

Summary/Abstract: The study follows the path of the Law amending the sanctioning framework regarding fascist/legionary/racist/xenophobic organizations, symbols and acts, as well as Holocaust denial, lists the institutional opinions and comments (CES, CNCD, CNA, CSM, Legislative Council) and reconstructs the public debate generated by the appeal of unconstitutionality formulated by the President and rejected by the CCR. We examined the quality standards of the criminal law (clarity, precision, predictability), the correlation with freedom of expression and the need to find the line between lawful admiration for a historical figure and the “promotion of the cult” of that historical figure. We emphasized the risk of punitive extension through vague or redundant terms (“legionary”, “legionary materials”) and by replacing “apology” with “cult” without operational criteria. Based on comparative data (France, Germany, Poland, Sweden) and an inventory of national incidents between 2015 and 2025, the empirical conclusion is that Romania registers relatively few violent anti-Semitic acts, while the proposed sanctioning regime will be among the harshest in the EU. The latter remains imprecise in the meaning of the terms and in normative connections. Local anti-Semitism is mainly one of discourse. A good public policy does not consist in the unlimited increase in incriminations, but in the proportional and predictable calibration of the social response by strengthening the educational and memorial infrastructure. The study then broadens the view to discuss the systemic risks of Romanian democracy: the networks of the heirs of national-communism, the influence of Russia, the instrumentalization of identity issues (Hungarians/Roma) and the hijacking of public attention by hyperbolizing the “legionary danger”. In this context, the author advocates for an ethics of memory that unambiguously recognizes the tragedy of the Jews in the Romanian space (including the Holocaust in Transnistria), but that avoids penalizing attitudes when there is no concrete social danger, directing the effort towards democratic resilience and coherent educational policies.

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