Advisory opinions of the Romanian Constitutional Court on the proposal to suspend from office the President of Romania, Traian Basescu (2007, 2012) – A comparative analysis

Suspension of the president is a subject that recurs on the public agenda. The purpose of this article is to make an incursion in the constitutional process of suspending from office the President of Romania, by highlighting the consultative character of the advisory opinion issued by the Constitutional Court, its weight in the process, as well as the political and institutional contexts generating conflict understood as motive for suspension. This cannot be better explained than by comparing the political and institutional contexts in Romania in 2007 and 2012, which led to the double suspension of the President, analyzed through the jurisprudence of the Romanian Constitutional Court. The article aims also to provide certain elements supporting the hypothesis that the Court’s opinion is assumed or ignored by the decision-maker according to its own political agenda.