Illiberal Democracy: The hybrid war waged by the PSD and the Constitutional Court against the rule of law

Today, Romania’s Constitutional Court (CCR) violated the very Constitution it is charged with safeguarding by upholding an amendment tailored specifically by the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) to target Dominic Fritz. In short, the Court ruled that a law can apply retroactively, in direct defiance of the explicit constitutional mandate that “The law provides only for the future.”

This ruling carries profound ramifications for Romanian democracy, following closely on the heels of the dramatic annulment of the 2024 presidential elections. Back then, the CCR hid behind the pretext of foreign election interference; today, it has no excuse whatsoever.

The legal absurdity sanctioned by the Court is so blatant that even jurists close to the PSD cannot bring themselves to defend it. It is legislation crafted for a single target: the leader of the reformist Save Romania Union (USR).

PSD heavyweight Sorin Grindeanu had already telegraphed this full-scale assault against the reformist, civil-society movement (pejoratively labeled the „#hashtag generation”) back in July: “Let me give you advance notice: from this moment on, we will fight these #hashtag people on every single front—across rural communes, in cities, in the Romanian Parliament, wherever necessary. It seems a plague has gripped Romania, and it is our duty to fight them. And I will do just that.”

And not only is it a law made for a single man, but this measure changes the rules mid-game. It penalizes the Mayor of Timișoara for a past administrative act that has already been adjudicated and settled, and already sanctioned. The ruling is so grotesque that its judicial reasoning will stand as a case study in how legal rhetoric can be contorted to serve power.

Today, the target is Dominic Fritz. Yesterday, it was the National Liberal Party (PNL), whose congress was effectively dismantled by the Savonea judicial network. Tomorrow, it will be anyone who fails to understand that genuine political leeway in Bucharest is strictly confined—that state-owned corporations must remain under the System’s control, that energy sector deals must pay their toll to the establishment, and that political figureheads like Dăncilă, Veștea, Ciolacu, and Ciucă serve as ideal executors for the establishment’s designs.

This decision is purely political and institutional. Autonomous figures like Dominic Fritz and Ilie Bolojan must be pushed out of public life. Both had the audacity to publicly state that decisions within the USR and PNL should be made internally by the parties themselves, rather than dictated from backrooms (namely, the intelligence apparatus or the Presidential Palace).

Genuine political independence is the ultimate bogeyman for the entrenched establishment over which Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan imagines himself in control. Truly autonomous political figures—such as Corneliu Coposu, Emil Constantinescu, or Traian Băsescu (up to a point)—have always been the worst nightmare of the power apparatus built around the PSD. The objective is unambiguous: purge independent leaders from the political landscape. Annihilate them.

In reality, we are witnessing a full-blown hybrid war against democracy—waged by the PSD, with the eager complicity of the Constitutional Court, against the rule of law. To preserve an entrenched, corrupt status quo, the party and its institutional tentacles are trampling the Constitution, statute law, and common decency.

Adding insult to injury, this anti-Fritz amendment was stealthily attached to a legislative package on which €770 million in European Union funding hinges. Taxpayers across Germany, France, Italy, and Denmark would surely appreciate knowing that their money is underwriting a state where institutional lawlessness has become official policy.

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