Romania is poised to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union for the first time at a ceremony attended by the country's prime minister and president and top EU officials in Bucharest on Thursday.
The role will see the country's government chairing meetings at every level in the Council for the next six months and hosting an EU summit in the spring.
Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila said on Wednesday the country was ready on both a technical and political level for its turn at the helm.
But critics have called attention to what they describe as Romania turning back from its reform programme and copying the example of Poland and Hungary, two countries that have come under fire from the EU for endangering the rule of law, as well as bureaucratic incompetence.
Romania ranks as one of the EU's most corrupt states and Brussels keeps its justice system under special monitoring.
The government, led by the Social Democrats (PSD), has been the focus of repeated protests since they took power in early 2017 and tried to decriminalise several corruption offences.
Their changes to criminal codes and other judicial bills raised criticism from the European Commission, the U.S. State Department, thousands of magistrates, and triggered the country's biggest street protests in decades.
PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, who has a suspended jail sentence in a vote-rigging case and has appealed a separate conviction for abuse of office, has been pushing Dancila's government for further changes.
President Klaus Iohannis was also forced by a court decision to sack Romania's chief anti-corruption prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi in July, despite having previously rejected a call to do so by the government.
Kovesi had led the DNA anti-corruption agency since 2013 and, under her management, conviction rates rose sharply, winning plaudits from Brussels.
Iohannis has himself become a vocal critic of the government, saying in November after the EU warned Romania over reforms to its judiciary that the country had "gone back in time to before its 2007 EU accession"
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters