A few hundred people again took to the streets in Bucharest on Wednesday evening, January 24, the day when Romania celebrated 159 years since the Unification of Romanian Principalities.

The protesters gathered in Victoriei Square starting 18:00. As usual, they chanted slogans and carried banners with messages against the ruling coalition and its plan to change the justice laws. They also danced Hora Unirii  (the Hora of Unity), a traditional Romanian folk dance where the dancers hold each other’s hands and the circle spins on the music’s rhythm.

Romanians have been organizing protests for about a year, being mainly unhappy with the way the ruling coalition made up of PSD and ALDE is trying to change the justice laws and penal codes. On January 20, tens of thousands of people joined the first big protests of the year in Romania. Groups of protesters from all over the country came to Bucharest for this event, which was organized by local civic groups via social networks. A small group of people walked for ten days from Cluj-Napoca to Bucharest to join this protest. Thousands more protested in other big cities in Romania.

Then, the next day, approximately 100 people took part in a silent protest held in Bucharest’s Victoriei Square.

At the beginning of last year, massive protests in Bucharest and all over the country managed to block a Government emergency ordinance that aimed at partly decriminalizing abuse of office. However, the ruling coalition continued its plans of changing the justice laws and criminal codes in the Parliament, ignoring calls from the protesters and from Romania’s foreign partners. The first new laws passed the Parliament already, and are now in the hands of president Klaus Iohannis.

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Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com