1965 Constitution of Romania

The 1965 Constitution of Romania, Communist Romania's third, was drafted by a committee of the Great National Assembly (MAN) and approved by a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party on June 28, 1965. It was then debated at the party’s 9th Congress in July and adopted by the MAN, sitting as a Constituent Assembly, on August 21, being published in "Monitorul Oficial" that day. The fundamental law that formed the basis for the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu (who had come to power that March), this constitution brought changes to the organisation and name of the state, and to the expression of its foreign policy. Thus, the state was now called the Romanian Socialist Republic, and the “brotherly” alliance with the Soviet Union was replaced with the principle of “respect for national sovereignty and independence, equality of rights and reciprocal advantage, non-interference in internal matters”. The state enhanced its involvement in the economy (“it organises, plans and leads the national economy”) and had a monopoly on foreign trade. The document provided for a series of freedoms that remained purely theoretical, including speech, press, assemblies, meetings and demonstrations, with the proviso that these “cannot be used for purposes against the socialist structure and the interests of those who work”. As for the state organisation, alongside the MAN, which in theory remained the supreme leadership organ, the office of president of the republic appeared for the first time in Romanian history (in 1974, through an amendment), with attributes that gave it, in the framework of the existing system, dictatorial powers. The 1965 Constitution was modified 10 times between 1968 and 1986, after which it contained 121 articles in 9 titles. It was partly abrogated in December 1989, following the Revolution; some clauses continued in operation until December 8, 1991, when a new constitution was adopted.

References

* Stoica, Stan (coordinator). "Dicţionar de Istorie a României", pp. 93-4. Bucharest: Editura Merona, 2007.

External links

* [http://www.constitutia.ro/const1965.htm Text of the constitution]