Top Channel has secured the document containing the Democratic Party’s proposal for the separation of the state from the party in the electoral process. The party competes with its own resources, while the state governs with its own resources.
1. The purpose and need for the reform. Guaranteeing free and fair elections is not based solely on the proper administration of the vote. It also requires the real separation of the state from the party, the neutrality of the administration, and the protection of voters from pressure, reward, or politically motivated retaliation. Legislation must block the transfer of power, money, personnel, competences, data, means, authority, and state prestige from the public function to the party competition. The OSCE Copenhagen Document, paragraph 5.4, requires a clear separation between the state and political parties, while the joint guidelines of the Venice Commission and ODIHR, CDL-AD(2016)004, include among administrative resources the material and immaterial advantages stemming from public office and require predictable prohibitions, independent control, and effective sanctions. These standards and recommendations support the aim of the reform, but do not constitute prior approval of every proposed provision [1–2].
Të lidhura
None found
The ODIHR final report on the parliamentary elections of 11 May 2025 identified the absence of a level playing field, reports of the use of public resources, and pressure on public employees; it recommended prohibiting the use of state resources in the campaign and sanctions for the misuse of office. The EU’s interim common position on Chapter Group 1 in 2026 identifies state resources, institutional advantage, and patronage networks respectively. Thus, the intervention is linked to election observation recommendations and to the European integration process [3–5]. The problem is structural: the government legally possesses competences and resources that the opposition does not have. This functional superiority must not be turned into an electoral advantage through the use of the state. The reform aims at preventive and corrective mechanisms, not freezing institutional functioning.
The current framework recognizes some important prohibitions, especially in Articles 91 and 92 of the Electoral Code, but they still do not form a complete system of prevention. Deadlines are not uniform; control often focuses on the formal act or on denunciation after the act has been committed; the use of normative power, the payment chain, administrative hierarchy, and institutional communication can produce the same advantage through different routes. Isolated prohibitions can be circumvented by advance preparation, time shifting, or intermediation. Therefore, adding a fine or an isolated prohibition is not enough; a general rule is needed that identifies the public source, the electoral connection, the responsible subject, and the way to interrupt the effect. The ODIHR findings must not be used to assume that every government decision during elections is illegal or to draw unsupported conclusions about numerical impact on the result. They document a persistent problem of competitive conditions, for which the law must provide preliminary protection and effective tools. The distinction matters: the argument for strengthening the rules is based on the recognized risk and enforcement deficiencies, whereas responsibility in each case remains a matter of individual proof.
2. Horizontal principle and the state–party boundary. No public institution, central or local body, publicly controlled enterprise, holder, official, or employee may use or allow the use of the function, authority, resources, and information they administer to support or harm an electoral subject, candidate, or the political behavior of the voter. A state resource is considered any material or immaterial advantage linked to the exercise of public power: funds, payments, property, premises, vehicles, contracts, staff time, normative and administrative competences, control and inspection, service, information, registers and personal data, communication infrastructure, visibility, and prestige of the function. The prohibition follows the function and real control, not the formal name of the entity. Intermediation by private operators, organizers, or contractors cannot make lawful what the institution cannot do itself.
The separation of the state from the party does not imply a ban on state action, but the obligation to act neutrally. Governance, services, payments, investments, procurement, and lawful controls continue normally. The boundary is crossed when a competence or resource is diverted from its public purpose to produce electoral benefit, pressure, discrimination, or political retaliation. The prohibition must be neutral toward the political subject and apply equally to central and local governance, to subordinate institutions, and to public enterprises, regardless of which party exercises power. It is not required that the official be a candidate; it is sufficient that he or she acts using public competence or resource for electoral benefit or harm. On the other hand, describing an action as political does not automatically make it illegal, because the prohibited element must be identified in a predictable and provable manner. The reform does not affect the freedom of political conviction, voting, expression, or individual organization. The legal boundary lies between lawful personal conduct and the use of power or administrative dependence. Restrictions for specific categories of officials or employees, when necessary, require a special legal basis, defined duration, and effective protection against unjustified interference with their rights.
3. Areas of intervention and division of regulations. The package contains eight thematic position documents. Each of them addresses the substantive prohibition, proof, and specific instruments of the respective field, while the common provisions are provided only in this part. This division prevents gaps and at the same time avoids repeating the same violation in several provisions.
The covered areas are: administration, covering employee neutrality, hierarchical relationship, pressure, mobilization, and protection against retaliation; normative, fiscal, and social power, including acts that create benefits, the timing of adoption, and the deferred effect of implementation; budget, procurement, investments, and property, with the normal continuity of the planning–commitment–contracting–payment cycle and the prohibition of electoral diversion; administrative acts and services, where conditioning or political selection of beneficiaries and patronage are prohibited; control and coercion, including the selective use of inspections, police, tax administration, and sanctioning competences; data, with the prohibition of using state registers for political profiling, contact, or monitoring; official function and activities, such as inaugurations, promotional inspections, organized meetings, and institutional prestige; and communication and media, including state-produced propaganda, ready-made materials, full live broadcasts, and circumvention through social networks. The boundaries of these areas are functional. The same operation may use an administrative act, payment, personnel, data, and communication. Every distinguishable behavior is assessed, without creating duplicate offenses or fines for the same fact.
4. Duration: permanent prohibition and graduated electoral protection. The basic prohibitions are permanent: pressure on the employee, partisan use of data, patronage, conditioning of service, and discriminatory control remain prohibited even outside the electoral period. The intensity of special measures increases in phases when the electoral risk is higher, but they are not all activated mechanically on the same day. For restrictions related to elections, the general starting point is proposed to be the date of the decree. If the existing prohibition begins four months before the vote, the earlier deadline applies, so that the new law does not shorten current protection. For some categories, an intermediate deadline may be provided, linked to the registration of subjects (75 days according to the examined model), as well as more intensive restrictions during the 30-day campaign. The deadline for each prohibition must be expressly defined in the law and justified for the category of subjects it restricts. After the vote and until the effective transfer of the relevant function, protection narrows to the prohibition of rewards, retaliation, transfers, controls, and payments with political motivation. No general moratorium on administration is imposed. In partial and local elections, the territorial application of measures that restrict the rights of third parties must be linked to the specific race.
The protected period cannot be treated as a single moratorium. It distinguishes four levels: permanent prohibitions on pressure, conditioning, patronage, and political use of data; from the decree date, or from the four-month deadline if it comes earlier, restriction of acts, activities, and use of resources that create electoral risk; special deadlines for certain categories, including linkage with the registration of subjects and the campaign; and narrow measures after the vote to prevent reward and reprisal. In all phases, the competence for normal state action continues. The starting point from the decree date also requires a clear rule on the decreeing of elections and on not shortening existing prohibitions. For general, local, and partial elections, objective criteria must be applied for the date, territorial scope, and affected subjects. Placing a nationwide restriction on the activity of a private media outlet or operator merely because of a local partial election would require additional justification. Therefore, effects on third parties are limited where there is a real connection with the specific race.
5. The normal governance test: N–D–S–K. The decisive issue is not only whether the state has the competence to make a decision, but whether it exercises that competence normally or turns it into an electoral advantage. The assessment is based on facts and documents and is based on four elements. Normalcy: the plan, budget, practice, and usual rhythm; would the action have been carried out at the same time and in the same manner even without elections? Necessity: legal obligation, court decision, emergency, safety, and continuity of service; objective impossibility of postponement. Selectivity: unexplained deviation in territory, value, time, beneficiaries, procedure, intensity of control, or publicity. Electoral context: proven connection with the political subject, campaign message, party organization, use of the administration as an audience, or political conditioning. These indicators are not absolute presumptions. Proximity to the vote is not enough to prove a violation; likewise, an act adopted before the decree date does not exclude scrutiny of payment, implementation, or promotion deliberately planned for the electoral period. For urgent measures, concrete indicia and imminent risk are required; for sanctions, proof of the elements of the offense is required. The burden of proof for liability does not automatically shift to the controlled subject. The regime does not prohibit automatic indexation, fulfillment of legal obligations, ordinary services, or necessary works; the institution must document the functional reason, especially when there is an unusual change of plan.
The emergency exception does not authorize ceremonies, personal promotion, or propaganda. The N–D–S–K test is a verification instrument, not a provision that grants the administrative body competence to create offenses. The elements of the offense, categorical prohibitions, and corresponding measures must be defined in the law. The test is applied when the real character of an activity presented as ordinary must be assessed: planning documents, payments, historical rhythm, beneficiary criteria, institutional messages, and connection with the party structure are examined as a whole. The institution’s obligation to administer documentation must not be confused with reversing the burden of proof for sanctions. In budget, procurement, and investments, control follows the chain PLANNING – COMMITMENT – PROCUREMENT – CONTRACTING – IMPLEMENTATION – PAYMENT – PUBLICITY. Normal fulfillment of a contract is not prohibited; what is examined is advance preparation, unexplained plan changes, territorial concentration, acceleration or postponement of payment, and unusual promotion. Likewise, a public service does not become illegal solely because the beneficiary is a voter; what is illegal is the proven connection of the service with his or her political behavior.
6. Prevention of advance preparation and circumvention. Control must cover the full decision cycle, not only the date of the final act: drafting, planning, approval, commitment, contracting, payment, implementation, and publicity. The use of a decision prepared in advance to concentrate benefit or exposure at an electoral moment without an objective reason is prohibited. The same logic applies to accelerated or postponed inspections and to activities promoted by third parties under institutional control. Calling an activity a party rally does not allow the exercise of state competence within it. The promise of a program for post-election governance is part of political debate, whereas the promise of a concrete benefit before the vote, through the official’s current competence and in exchange for political support, is subject to the relevant prohibitions. This does not create automatic liability for the media that broadcasts the lawful rally.
7. Oversight: an active CEC and separation of functions. The CEC cannot remain a body that waits for the report of another authority or the denunciation of the injured party. It must rely primarily on its own findings, public data, and information from employees, citizens, organizations, and electoral subjects. Monitoring must include activity calendars, risky contracts and payments, institutional content, and relevant registers. The AMA report may serve as evidence, but it is not a precondition for the start of CEC action.
The proposed institutional model assigns to the Sub-Commissioner a special monitoring and investigation function, with legal competences to request documents, secure evidence, and impose temporary interruption measures. The CASC decides on liability and sanctions in an adversarial procedure, clearly separating investigation from administrative adjudication. Every restrictive measure and sanction is subject to effective judicial review. The prosecution and SPAK act only when the facts meet the elements of a criminal offense. The Sub-Commissioner’s competence is a legislative proposal, so it cannot be assumed to exist without the corresponding amendment to the Code.
Urgent orders require a competent body, clear conditions, limited duration, reasoning, notification, and swift review. Initial implementation does not depend on building new IT systems; paper documents and existing registers suffice. The positive obligation to control is not a general authorization for arbitrary action. The proposed Sub-Commissioner must have expressly defined competences, response deadlines, access to existing documentary sources, and inspection possibilities, with traceability of actions.
State bodies must respond to legal requests and preserve evidence; deliberate non-cooperation must have a separate consequence. This model is not conditioned by the prior creation of a new electronic platform, since calendars, official correspondence, Treasury documents, and existing registers are sufficient to begin control. Immediate measures that may affect institutional activity, payment, or broadcasting must have a limited object, short duration, concrete motivation, and a rapid appeal route. The Sub-Commissioner may ascertain facts, secure evidence, and request or order a provisional measure only within legal competence; final liability and the fine are decided by the competent body after hearing the parties. The CASC must not become a formal confirmation of the investigation act, but must itself assess the evidence, objections, and proportionality of the measure.
8. STOP – RESTORE – SANCTION. A fine imposed after the elections does not eliminate the advantage created before the vote. For this reason, legal remedies must be divided into three separate functions.
STOP: an immediate, enforceable, and reasoned order to stop or suspend the use of the prohibited resource, activity, payment, or broadcast. The interim measure is based on concrete indicia, is reversible when possible, and can be appealed quickly.
RESTORE: removal of the created advantage, including the return of unlawful financial benefit, prohibition or blocking of payment through the Treasury where the law permits, removal of content under the violator’s control, review of the administrative act, and repair of discrimination, while respecting the rights of third parties in good faith.
SANCTION: disciplinary, administrative, monetary, or criminal liability according to the elements of the law. The sanction is examined separately from the preventive measure and is not imposed without due process. No violation should have a “tolerance period” when the law directly prohibits it. The CEC may intervene without prior warning when the legal conditions for the measure are met, but this does not exclude notification, reasoning, and the right to appeal required by due process. Effectiveness also requires the link between the stop measure and financial effect. When the violation is committed through a payment not yet executed, the law must define the mechanism of the interim order and its communication with the Treasury institution, without replacing judicial review and without blocking lawful payments to third parties. When the activity is prohibited, the ban on the distribution of institutional material and the removal of the advantage require corresponding enforcement tools, because a late fine alone does not restore the equality of the race. Implementation must avoid two extremes: a mandatory warning that gives the violator time to complete the action, and a final measure imposed without process. To interrupt an ongoing violation, no “tolerance period” is needed, but the requirements of legal competence, reasoning, notification, and appeal must be preserved. For the final sanction, proof of the elements of the violation and adversarial examination are required.
9. Liability and escalation of consequences. Liability follows the real chain: the initiator, the orderer, the office holder, the financier, the organizer, the member of the collegial body, the implementer, and the candidate or political subject who participates knowingly or in coordination in the illegal benefit. Execution of an order and collective decision-making do not by themselves eliminate individual liability; for each, the role, concrete duty, and element of fault required by law must be proven. Repetition, systematic organization, use of data, hierarchical pressure, value, and extent of benefit may constitute expressly defined aggravating circumstances. Materially different violations may be punished separately, but a single complex act is not artificially divided into cumulative fines. When a prohibition that applies directly from the law is violated and, at the same time, an enforceable and notified CEC order is violated, disobedience to the order is treated as an aggravating circumstance, not automatically as a second punishment for the same fact. Invalidity of the result is an exceptional corrective tool for serious, proven violations with possible impact on the integrity or result of the elections, but it cannot be turned into an automatic sanction.
Criminal liability is limited to actions with high dangerousness and precisely defined elements, not to administrative errors. In collective decision-making, liability cannot remain abstract at the institution level. The proposal, vote, order, preparation, and implementation are proven, taking into account the concrete competence of each participant. An employee compelled by a superior to perform an action, a director who organized it, and a candidate who knowingly benefited are not in the same situation. Liability of the political subject requires a proven connection with the request, organization, coordination, or conscious benefit; objective benefit alone is not sufficient for every type of sanction. For particularly serious violations, the package provides graduated liability according to the nature and consequence of the violation. Invalidity of elections is applied as a corrective tool when the legal conditions of damage to the integrity of the process and the result are met. Disqualification of a candidate, termination of mandate, and infringement of the proportional mandate are different legal consequences; they are not equated with the administrative fine and do not automatically follow from every violation. The package is based on preventive, corrective, and sanctioning measures that can be defined by law, while respecting the constitutional rules on candidacy, winning and termination of mandate, and voter representation.
10. Invalidity of elections, prohibition of candidacy, and loss of mandate. Misuse of power and state resources harms not only the equality of the race, but also the legality of the representation it produces. For serious, organized, or systematic violations, the administrative or criminal liability of the perpetrators is not sufficient if the electoral subject retains the mandate won because of the violation. The package provides four distinct consequences: invalidity of the elections, prohibition of candidacy, loss of individual mandate, and loss of the proportional mandate by the benefiting electoral subject. Invalidity must also include serious violations committed before voting day, when the use of state resources, pressure on the administration, patronage, or conditioning of voters has decisively harmed the freedom of the vote and the integrity of the result.
The impact is assessed according to the nature, extent, organization, duration, and power of the violation to distort the race; the discovery of individual votes or impossible arithmetic of influenced votes is not required. Annulment and repetition of the vote remain solutions for cases where the result cannot be corrected in a more limited way. Prohibition of candidacy and loss of individual mandate are linked to serious electoral violations and to the conditions provided by the relevant legislation, including Law No. 138/2015. Personal liability is not equated with the liability of the electoral subject: consequences on the subject’s mandate require specific proof of organization, ordering, financing, coordination, or conscious benefit by it. In the proportional system, replacing a disqualified deputy with the next candidate on the same list does not remove the subject’s won mandate. When a serious violation of state resources is attributed to the electoral subject and it is proven that without it the subject would not have won the relevant mandate, the correction must affect the number of mandates of that subject and not only the person exercising the mandate. A change in the electoral system does not change the principle that a mandate won illegally must not be retained as a benefit of the political subject. The loss of the proportional mandate identified as an illegal benefit is, by its object, a narrower intervention than the invalidity of elections in the entire zone, which also affects other mandates and may require a repeat of the vote.
The measure aims to correct only the damaged part of the result. The Electoral Code defines the criteria of decisive impact, the number of affected mandates, and the method of recalculation of distribution according to votes and the legal formula, without arbitrarily transferring votes from one subject to another. The mandate is not removed for objective benefit or for an isolated violation by a person without a proven connection to the subject. Albanian constitutional law already recognizes the loss of mandate for breach of prohibitions protecting the integrity of the representative function. The Beqja and Kokëdhima cases, linked to Article 70 of the Constitution, show that the importance of the constitutional prohibition is not measured only by the monetary value of the benefit. The European Court of Human Rights, in Kokëdhima v. Albania (11 June 2024), examined the removal of a mandate in relation to the guarantees of the right to be elected. Another domestic model is found in Article 115 of the Constitution and in Law No. 139/2015 on local self-government, where a serious breach of the law may lead to the dismissal of the directly elected body, with review by the Constitutional Court. These are analogies for protecting the integrity of the mandate, not identical cases of correcting proportional mandates [12–13].
Comparative support is direct at the level of principle. In the joint opinion on Serbia, CDL-AD(2022)046, §116, the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR link widespread abuse of administrative resources with the lack of effective preventive sanctions, expressly mentioning disqualification and loss of office. In the opinion on Ukraine, CDL-AD(2023)050, §24, in a case concerning the mayor’s mandate, the Venice Commission reasons that removal of a mandate in serious circumstances of corruption or unfair benefit from administrative resources may be a tool for protecting democracy. The Ukrainian opinion deals with an individual mandate, but the principle of not retaining illegal benefit serves as support for the solution on the subject’s mandate [6, 14]. The mechanism is set out in the Electoral Code. The CEC investigates and ascertains the facts, identifies the benefiting subject, and, when the legal conditions are met, refers the matter to the Constitutional Court with a request for verification of the election and consequences on the mandate.
The right to set the Court in motion is also recognized for other subjects legitimized by law. Final judicial review is based on Article 131, paragraph 1, letter “e” of the Constitution; the Code defines the grounds, procedure, deadlines, standard of proof, participation of parties, and manner of implementing the decision. The review focuses on the concrete mandate and its benefit, not on an unlimited control of the entire electoral process. Here, the distinction made by the Constitutional Court in Decision No. 36, dated 4.11.2021, between verification of an official’s election and control of the electoral process as a whole is taken into account [15–16]. This consequence is corrective, not a second fine for the same fact. The Court assesses the serious violation, the subject’s liability, the decisive connection between the violation and the mandate, and the possibility of limited correction of the result. The solution preserves mandates won lawfully and avoids repeating elections when the infringement can be repaired precisely and proportionally. The guiding principle is that neither the candidate nor the electoral subject should retain a mandate won illegally through the use of state resources.
11. Media and public communication: targeted measure, not control of debate. The Electoral Code already provides that broadcasts promoting institutional achievements must be counted in the media time of the electoral subject. However, this calculation does not make a prohibited activity lawful and does not eliminate the advantage created by its full and live broadcast. Therefore, it is proposed to prohibit, during the 75 days before the vote, the full and live broadcast of promotional activities of the government and public bodies, expressly defined by law. The measure is limited according to the institutional source and the promotional nature of the activity; it does not include the broadcast of lawful party rallies or independent editorial reporting. The prohibition removes the immediate advantage of the institutional signal, without imposing on the media the duty to assess every statement of the official during the broadcast [6].
Article 92, paragraph 5, must not be weakened. On the contrary, the prohibition on broadcasting and coverage must also apply to activities that the Code itself expressly prohibits, without waiting for an individual CEC decision. The enforceable CEC decision creates a special obligation and non-compliance with it constitutes an aggravating circumstance. The formulation must preserve the media’s legal certainty and distinguish liability for broadcasting a prohibited activity from the unpredictable statement of a participant in a lawful rally. The prohibition is not circumvented by transferring the signal to institutional websites, profiles of officials administered with state resources, contractors, or coordinated distribution. Meanwhile, the independent user and the technological platform are not equated with the institutional organizer. For media rights, the standards of Article 10 of the ECHR, Regulation (EU) 2024/900, and the European Media Freedom Act must be taken into account, without presenting these instruments as an automatic basis for general reporting bans. ODIHR 2025 recommended that footage prepared by the government or parties be identified as political advertising and not used as informative/editorial content [3, 7–8].
Media regulation distinguishes three situations with defined consequences: broadcast or coverage of activities prohibited directly by the Code or by an enforceable CEC decision; full and live broadcast of institutional promotional activities during the period defined by law; and editorial coverage of lawful political activity. In the first two cases, the special prohibition applies, with objective and verifiable elements; in the third case, editorial freedom is preserved. Thus, the equality of the race is protected without prior censorship of political debates or liability for unpredictable statements in lawful activities. Closing digital circumvention must follow control and order: institutional websites, official signal, materials produced with public funds or personnel, institutionalized personal accounts, and coordinated contractors. No automatic liability is created for the independent user, journalist, or platform that merely provides the technical service. Publication restrictions and interruption of broadcasting must be predictable and appealable, without creating a general duty of prior monitoring of political speech. ODIHR recommendations on ready-made materials support the separation of government content from editorial news, but do not authorize a general ban on journalism [3, 6–8].
12. Reinforcing transitional regime and proportionality. To correct the structural misuse of power and state resources, the package establishes a reinforcing transitional regime with a maximum duration of ten years. The prohibition of partisan use of the state remains permanent; the transitional period applies only to the special control instruments and restrictions defined by law. Temporary restrictions on political activity for certain categories of public employees, proposed in Position Document I, constitute limitations on the exercise of the right under Article 17 of the Constitution, not its suspension. Their purpose is to protect the right-holder, the administration employee, from political pressure and from the misuse of his or her political activity as a tool to expose him or her to hierarchical pressure. They are defined by law, limited in subject, content, and time, and serve to protect the neutrality of the administration, the freedom of the voter, and the equality of competition. No derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights is provided. The ten-year duration responds to the need to dismantle a practice consolidated over several electoral cycles and to measure the change in institutional behavior beyond a single mandate.
The law separates permanent prohibitions from transitional reinforcing instruments. The intervention is graduated: permanent neutrality in ordinary times, reinforced oversight before elections, special prohibitions during the protected period, and limited measures against political reward or retaliation after the vote. This restriction according to risk, object, and time ensures the proportionality of the intervention. At the end of the fifth year, the Assembly must assess the transitional regime on the basis of a public report prepared with independent expertise, CEC data, court decisions, and consultation with institutions, electoral subjects, and civil society. The assessment includes found violations, the time of their interruption, the results of corrective measures, appeal outcomes, and the impact on the rights of employees and voters. The Assembly decides by law on the modification or early termination of transitional instruments. For the special regime of administration provided in Position Document I, the first period is five years; continuation for a further period of no more than five years is done only by an express decision of the Assembly, based on the assessment and conditions defined in advance by law. Without this decision, the five-year special regime ends.
The reinforcing regime is not a suspension of democratic freedoms. It includes more intensive verification, expedited procedures for stopping abuse, and special restrictions expressly defined for functions that create a direct risk of electoral use of state dependence. The strongest measure is applied only where ordinary control, based mainly on denunciation and after-the-fact sanctioning, fails to prevent the electoral advantage. For each measure, the law defines the object, subject, period, control body, and appeal route. The end of transitional instruments does not affect the permanent prohibitions on patronage, political pressure, and misuse of state resources.
Test of limitations on rights. The proposed restrictions are based on Article 17 of the Constitution and the relevant ECHR standards. They are imposed by law to protect free and fair elections, the neutrality of public service, and the rights of voters. They are necessary because hierarchical pressure, patronage, and the use of state activities produce an electoral advantage in real time, which a later fine cannot neutralize. The package restricts conduct that uses the public function, not the political conviction of the individual: it preserves the vote, opinion, and lawful personal expression, while prohibiting imposed mobilization and partisan use of state authority. For media, prohibitions relate only to expressly defined institutional activities and formats; independent editorial coverage and the broadcast of lawful party activities are protected. Individual reasoning of measures, rapid appeal, and judicial review guarantee proportional implementation.
13. Legislative technique and order of implementation. The Electoral Code must include the horizontal prohibition, definitions, periods, subjects, competences, urgent measures, sanctions, and appeal. The Criminal Code intervenes for intentional and highly dangerous actions, defined with clear elements. The criminal package is expressly harmonized with Law No. 138/2015 “On guaranteeing the integrity of persons elected, appointed, or exercising public functions.” This link strengthens prevention: even when the prison sentence is not long, the legal consequences on the right to exercise public functions can be long-term, according to the conditions and deadlines defined by the decriminalization law. The harmonization is done expressly, without extending by analogy the cases of prohibition. Laws on administration, data protection, finance, procurement, and media are adjusted to the necessary extent. CEC acts detail the implementation, but do not create new offenses or sanctions. Implementation starts with existing capacities: official requests for documents, calendars, registers, payment traces, media signals, and reasoned decisions.
A new electronic system may improve control, but it is not a condition for entry into force. For every mechanism, it must be known in advance who investigates, who stops, who decides the sanction, and which court reviews the decision. The package is based on a single normative architecture: the principle of separation of state from party; permanent prohibitions and special electoral deadlines; the distinction between normal governance and abuse; active oversight; immediate interruption and restoration; individual liability and proportional sanctions. Each element has a defined function and supports the implementation of the others. The proposed solutions represent our position on the reform and are defended with constitutional, electoral, and international standard arguments. The purpose of the reform is not to remove the government from governance during elections, but to remove the state from the campaign. The package must have a single register of provisions and sanctions, so that the same act is not defined by different names in several articles. For each prohibition, the subject, action, period, exclusion conditions, control body, preventive measure, sanction, and appeal are provided separately. Criminal liability must not extend to administrative errors or low-dangerousness conduct. Restorative tools and administrative sanctions must remain applicable even when the conditions for criminal prosecution are not met.
