Despre încetarea mandatului de ales local, raportată la fuziunea partidelor politice
About the Termination of the Local Elected Politician, In Relation to the Merger of Political Parties

Summary/Abstract: In 2014, the Constitutional Court seemed to begin to nuance its analysis of the effects the exclusion of the local elected representatives from the political parties they were members of in the elections and, respectively, the resignation from the parties have on the their mandate. However, the necessary reversal of jurisprudence did not occur. The Court still considers it is constitutional that the mayor should lose his mandate only if he resigns from the associative structure that supported him/her in the elections, and the councilors should lose their mandate also when they are excluded from the structure. In the Decision no. 529/2018, as well as in the 2014 decision we will consider, the arguments advanced by the Court attest to a grasping of the role of political parties established by Art. 8 par. (2) of the Constitution that is for us difficult to understand: in the Court's view, it seems to be conditioned by the type of electoral scrutiny. The new context is given in 2018 by the analysis of the effect that the fusion of political parties, an expression of their freedom of association, has on the mandates of the local representatives members of these parties. The unconstitutionality of the legislative measures is not motivated by a change in the interpretation of the representative character of the local mandate in relation to the loss, by resignation or exclusion, of the party membership. The motivation is based on the Court's correct assessment of non-compliance of the legal provisions with the quality requirements of the law: clarity, accuracy and predictability. The present article aims to draw attention to the problematic aspects of the Constitutional Court's interpretation of these matters, to critically emphasize that the Court still appreciates that political parties are legal persons of public law and that their constitutionally imposed role has different consequences in relation to the type of electoral scrutiny that justifies differences of regulation regarding the effects that the resignation of the local elected representative from the political party, his/her exclusion from the party or both have on the mandate.

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