DESPRE INSTITUȚIA PREFECTULUI ÎN SISTEMUL ADMINISTRATIV ROMÂNESC. PUNCT ȘI DE LA CAPĂT

This study accurately highlights, on the one hand, the regulatory normative framework of the prefect and of the institution of the prefect starting from 1990 and until now and, on the other hand, the political vision on this institution, in the different stages of relationing between Romania and the European Union: pre-accession, accession, integration and present. The study critically analyzes both the ways of professionalization and depoliticization of the prefect function, as well as the actual repoliticization that took place in 2021. The failure to professionalize the function of prefect is presented in the broader context of the failure to professionalize the function and the public administration in general, one of the essential causes that determine the low performances of the Romanian public administration.
Likewise there are critically exposed the legislative interventions to dilute the quality of the prefect of Government representative in the territory, in relation to the administrative function of the Government and its corruption into a territorial political agent of the Government, seen as an emulation of the political parties that form it. This political reverie is thus the basis of the legislative amendments that have led to the unconstitutional situation in which the implementation of the government programme in the territory by the prefect, which is in any case impossible to achieve as we will argue below, becomes the main commitment of the prefects, to the detriment of the very constitutional responsibility of the prefect, which determines the precise reason for the existence of the institution of the prefect – the administrative guardianship.
All these are primarily the result of an ad-hoc and discretionary style of regulation – which can also be seen in the very large number of amendments brought to the framework law regarding the civil service – the Law No 188/1999, republished, as amended and supplemented: some of them by emergency ordinances subsequently declared unconstitutional, but which produced significant upheavals in the system.