Private Wealth, Public Doubt

Public officials having to disclose their private wealth is a powerful anti-corruption tool: if the corrupt ones would disclose their real wealth, they could not justify it with their legal income (only); if they hide their real wealth, one of the regular audits can find out they lied. Thus, asset declarations led to the imprisonment or dismissal of hundreds (if not thousands) of corrupt public officials across Europe. In Romania, this included ministers and a Parliamentary President.

Despite this success, on 29 May 2025, the Romanian Constitutional Court substantially undermined the effectiveness of asset declarations. It declared the online publication of declarations unconstitutional and invalidated the provision on declaring wealth of adult family members of public officials (as per Law no. 176/2010). There are two reasons for other governance-reforming countries not to follow this case law: First, the Constitutional Court’s decision is biased, undermining its own claim that “democratic values have consolidated” in Romania (§ 65). Second, the decision applies only to member states meeting EU anti-corruption standards and therefore not to accession countries.

Flip-flop case law on public access

The Romanian Constitutional Court has repeatedly shifted its position on public access to asset declarations. In 2010, it declared the online publication of declared data as unconstitutional, and breaching Article 8 of the ECHR (415/2010). Four years later, the Court found that “publishing declarations of assets and interests is justified […] [for] ensuring integrity […] and preventing institutional corruption” (309/2014, § 31). The Court noted that core personal data was anonymised (such as number plates of vehicles or bank account numbers), a practice in line with international recommendations and with data protection standards. In 2022, the Court also found that “requiring the declaration of a spouse’s income did not constitute an interference with family life” (651/2022, § 39). Only three years later, in 2025, the majority of judges reversed the Court’s position back to one that it held in 2010. This was only possible using biased arguments, supported by an ignorance of facts inappropriate for a constitutional court, let alone one of an EU member state. I will dissect them one by one.

Cherries picked, reality ignored

First, the Court argued that since 2023, Romania fulfils all EU benchmarks for fighting corruption, so publication of declarations is no longer needed (§§ 64-65). In reality, in 2023, the EU lifted a special monitoring mechanism for Romania regarding its past institutional failures in fighting corruption. However, lifting the mechanism only removes the label of being an underperformer. It confirms institutional reforms – but not the absence of corruption. All available indicators suggest that corruption remains widespread in Romania: the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which indicates perceived levels of public sector corruption, shows barely any improvement between 2013 and 2024, with Romania moving from 43 to 46 on an ascending scale from 0 to 100 (for comparison: some “developing” countries score better, such as Botswana with a score of 57, or Bhutan with a score of 72). 45% of Romanian citizens stated in 2021 that corruption had worsened, and 20% reported having paid a bribe in exchange for public services. The Court’s reference to the EU lifting the monitoring mechanism in 2023 chose to overlook that the EU based its lifting also on the “fact that asset and interest declarations […] are publicly available online”, noting that “some 10.7 million assets and interests disclosures had been published” (2023/1786, § 7; COM(2022)664, at 2.2; see also World Bank, p. 244).

Second, the Romanian Constitutional Court claims some EU countries foresee only declaration of “financial interests” but not “assets” (§ 39); provide no or only limited public access (§ 63); or their constitutional courts decided to limit publication (§§ 55-62). The Romanian Constitutional Court conceals the fact that the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has approved the online publication of data of all public officials, whether political or not (C-184/20), and did so for a member state with less corruption than Romania (Lithuania, which is scoring 63 in the current CPI). The same is true for the ECtHR, which already in 2003 called for financial data to be “transparent”, stating that “Internet access to the declarations makes access to such information effective and easy” (2428/05), and therefore rejected the allegation of a privacy violation as “manifestly ill-founded”. Furthermore, the Romanian Constitutional Court selectively presents only countries and case law (allegedly) supporting its course against transparency, while it ignores European case law supporting publication (e.g. Germany 2 BvE 1/06 § 310; Cyprus 3/24). Some of the foreign decisions quoted clearly support online publication at least for certain categories of public officials (France, Italy), while the Romanian Court (ab)uses the decisions to argue against online publication in principle.

Third, the Court alleges that the ECtHR (allegedly) approves publication only for political officials (§§ 54, 67). This is not true. The ECtHR accepted online publication of declarations in a case concerning a politically exposed local government official. The decision lacks any obiter dictum on non-political public officials (2428/05). Thus, one cannot infer anything on the publication for other categories of officials.

Fourth, the Court argues that publication is not needed if a state body audits declarations (§ 44). This argument is superficial at best. All EU countries have a state body tasked with auditing the content of asset declarations. This does not keep them from publishing asset declarations (as visible from the Romanian Court’s own reasoning: France, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.). Alerts from the public are the main source for state bodies auditing declarations (ReSPA, p. 218). The World Bank noted this in 2020 specifically with regard to Romania (p. 244).

Fifth, the Court states that published data fed into artificial intelligence can make “it possible to create personalised behavioural models and patterns for each declarant” and thus “nullify” the protection of private life (§ 66). The Court reduces a complex issue to a single sentence, wielding AI as a knock-down argument, and skipping a meaningful and much needed discussion. In this regard, one should note a recent opinion by the Venice Commission calling for the data in published asset declarations to be “machine readable […]” (CDL-AD(2023)046, § 33).

Sixth, the Court assumes that some of the declared data is too personal, such as civil status, children, or business partners of officials (§ 49), and too much data is transferred into the public sphere for too long a time (§§ 50-52). The Court does not discuss the fact that the CJEU has approved the online publication of a wide set of data of all public officials in Lithuania, underlining that “combating corruption is of great importance within the European Union” (C-184/20, § 109). Declarations are online for some time even after declarants leave office, and are archived up to 99 years (OECD, p. 77). As for family members (usually included in all declarations), the CJEU only called to withhold from publication the names of family members for declarants who had little decision power (C-184/20, §§ 100, 116; Hoppe, ICL 2023, 443).

In addition, the Romanian Constitutional Court ignores the fact that asset declarations fall within the realm of EU law, as the CJEU has bindingly clarified (C-184/20). Thus, the Romanian Court owes an answer as to the extent of which the Romanian constitution needs to be aligned with European fundamental rights. By comparison, the German Constitutional Court balanced the (national) fundamental rights of data protection and media freedom in 2019 with explanations about their relation to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (1 BvR 16/13; Meyer/Hölscheidt/Hoppe, GRC, 6th ed. 2024, Art. 53 § 33).

Don’t ask, don’t tell

The Romanian Constitutional Court concedes that obliging officials to declare their spouse’s or adult children’s assets is not per se not unconstitutional (§§ 18-22). Still, in the Court’s opinion, the obligation imposes an unfair burden on the declarant, who may not have direct access to that information. Spouses can refuse to share financial data – especially under a separation of property regime – and adult children have full legal autonomy. As a result, declarants are liable for the truthfulness of information they cannot verify. Therefore, the Court found the entire declaration obligation to violate the constitutional principle of legality.

A remarkable contrast emerges in this regard: to make its point against publishing declarations, the Court compiled more than 1,300 words on foreign laws and court decisions (§§ 55-63); for invalidating the inclusion of family members, the Court provides only one sentence (§ 39) – with an irrelevant, statistically distorted allusion to a study on members of parliament (and without proper reference to the study, likely in order to disguise the poor quality of the argument). The Court tries to conceal an inconvenient truth: all EU countries that include data on spouses or children in their asset declaration regimes hold the public official liable for the truthfulness of the declaration.

The Court stands alone in this new interpretation – and with good reason. In other countries, when family members do not cooperate or provide inaccurate information, the system remains functional: public officials can indicate that certain data was unavailable or refused, often using designated fields in the declaration. More importantly, officials are held liable only if they knowingly or recklessly submit false or misleading information regarding their family’s assets. The Court sweeps under the rug that the ECtHR confirmed the firing of a constitutional judge in 2021 based, among other, on the fact that she had provided false data on her spouse’s income (15227/19, § 351; Hoppe). All in all, the Romanian Court can make its point only through biased argumentation.

Impact on Romania and other countries

The decision will affect only future declarations (297/2025, § 72) and leaves the Romanian legislator with a wide margin to minimise the damage from this decision. As for family members, it could limit liability to intentional cases of false or inaccessible data of family members, even though this should go without saying. As for publishing data online, the legislator could limit the circle of officials or of the data published and anonymise more data, while still allowing for the public to monitor the wealth (for example, redacting some descriptive data but publishing the financial amounts received or spent). To complement online publishing, the agency could provide access to the electronically declared data (slightly redacted) to persons with a justified interest, such as journalists or NGOs, doing so on-site and thus without transferring the entire dataset to them.

The proposal of a new directive by the EU on fighting corruption foresees “effective rules for the disclosure and verification of assets of public officials” (Article 3(3) COM(2023)234). Once adopted, it overrides national law, including constitutions.

Corrupt elites of third countries will be tempted to emulate the Romanian (bad) example. However, in the decision’s logic, only member states fully up to EU-standards could skip on publishing asset declarations. This would be countries such as Sweden, scoring 80 on the CPI. It is probably no coincidence that taxes of all of Sweden’s citizens are transparent. By comparison, doing the bare minimum is not what will keep corruption in check.

The author would like to thank Vera Devine, Anton Marchuk, Sviatoslav Tkachuk, and David Wellstein for their comments on a draft of this blog post.