The Civic Space Review of Romania was prepared by the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV), headed by Elsa Pilichowski. It was developed under the strategic direction of Carlos Santiso, Head of the Open and Innovative Government Division and Alessandro Bellantoni, Head of the Open Government and Civic Space Unit. The Review was led by Claire Mc Evoy and drafted by Alice Thomas and Marie Whelan, with significant input from David Goessmann, Benedict Stefani and Mauricio Mejia. Meral Gedik prepared the manuscript for publication with support from Olivier Bucher. Julie Harris, Eleonore Morena and Donald Strachan provided editorial assistance.
The OECD Secretariat wishes to express its gratitude to all those who made this report possible and to recognise the excellent collaboration with the Government of Romania and Romanian civil society organisations for the duration of the Review process. The leadership of Marian Neacsu, Secretary General of the General Secretariat of the Government of Romania was essential for this Review. We would like to extend special thanks to Laurentiu Mazilu, Robert Lazaroiu, and Constantin Cernega from the General Secretariat of the Government who coordinated the Review in Romania and provided indispensable insights on the status of civic space in the country throughout the process. We would also like to thank Madalina Mitroi for her early support. All the government interviewees deserve a special mention for their dedicated engagement, as do the many public officials who followed up their interviews to provide additional information to the Observatory team. We are extremely grateful to the wide range of civil society actors in Romania who shared their views during the fact-finding mission and provided information and substantive inputs throughout the process, including comments on the draft report. Their considerable insights and recommendations are integrated into every chapter of the report.
The OECD would also like to enthusiastically thank the public officials from the governments of Chile, Finland and Scotland who generously took part in the process as peer reviewers. Their contributions regarding good practices and lessons learned from their own countries are also integrated throughout the report. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the important role of Cristina Luchici from the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) of the European Commission and her support during the process.
The report also benefitted from substantive comments from other OECD teams currently supporting Romania in a wide range of policy areas: open government; the centre of government; public sector innovation; digital government and open data; and policy coherence for sustainable development goals.
Some sections of the report analysing Romania’s legal frameworks paraphrase material provided by the Library of Congress to the OECD Observatory of Civic Space as part of the process. Please see the OECD Civic Space website for the full Library of Congress “Romania: Civic Space Legal Framework” background report.