The delegation of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea was received by President Marian ENACHE, as well as by Mr VARGA Attila, Ms Elena-Simina TĂNĂSESCU and Mr Dimitrie-Bogdan LICU Licu, Judges, on Wednesday 21 June 2023 at the seat of the Romanian Constitutional Court.
The delegation of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea was composed of Mr Youngjin LEE, Judge, and Minki Hwang, Judge-Rapporteur. H.E. Kap-soo RIM, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Romania, was also present at the meeting.
On behalf of the Constitutional Court of Romania the meeting was also attended by Mr BENKE Károly, First Assistant Magistrate, and Mrs Cristina TITIRIȘCĂ, Assistant Magistrate.
The theme agreed for the working meeting between the representatives of the two constitutional courts was ”Constitutional review. Recent case-law”.
At the beginning of the discussions, President Marian Enache briefly outlined Romania’s constitutional history, the procedure for the appointment of constitutional judges, the powers and effects of decisions of the Constitutional Court. He pointed out that, from a statistical point of view, the majority of the Court’s work consists in the a priori and a posteriori constitutionality review, with approximately 550 and, respectively, 21.800 decisions having been pronounced so far.
For his part, Mr Youngjin LEE stated that in the 35 years of activity of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea, celebrated earlier this year, around 45.000 cases had been resolved, most of which were individual complaints of violations of fundamental rights, and that around 28.000 cases had been registered in the past year. Of these, 65 % are rejected by a filter panel of 3 judges and the remaining 35 % reaches the plenum of 9 judges, 4 % representing the percentage of unconstitutionality decisions to be taken with a two-thirds vote.
The President of the Constitutional Court, Mr Marian Enache, noted that, from a procedural point of view, all referrals are dealt with by the Plenum and that there is no filter procedure. From a judicial point of view, the decisions handed down by the Romanian court in the exercise of the power to resolve legal disputes of a constitutional nature were mentioned, and attention was drawn to the judicial dialogue with the Court of Justice of the European Union, and Decision No 534/2018 and the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Coman case were mentioned to that effect.
Concluding the discussions, the President of the Romanian Constitutional Court considered that the discussion with the South Korean side was important and useful, resulting in a fruitful exchange of information and professional experience. Both sides also agreed on the need to relaunch and develop the relations between the two Courts.
At the end of the meeting, Judge Youngjin LEE was invited to sign in the Book of Honour of the Romanian Constitutional Court.
