Chamber of Deputies calls for asylum to be withdrawn from those who refuse to integrate, in seven opinions voted in one day

The Chamber of Deputies is calling for asylum to stop being granted to people arriving from third countries whose political situation has stabilised, and for those who have refused to integrate into the host society to have their right of asylum withdrawn and to be returned. The demand sits at points 11 and 19 of Resolution no. 72/2026, one of the seven resolutions the plenary voted in the sitting of 28 October 2026, which appeared on 29 October 2026 in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 904, pages 2-9. It is the second batch of its kind in five weeks: on 23 September 2026 the Chamber had voted another seven opinions on the European Commission’s plans, running to 146 points. The October batch counts 145 points across nine European documents, of which only one sets a deadline and names an institution that has to report.

The seven resolutions share the same preamble, repeated seven times over: Articles 67 and 148 of the Constitution, Law no. 373/2013 on cooperation between Parliament and the Government in European affairs, and Articles 165-190 of the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies. Each has a single article, which takes over an opinion adopted earlier by the Committee on European Affairs. Three of the opinions, numbers 7c-21/514, 515 and 516, were adopted in committee on 23 June 2026; the other four, 607, 608, 609 and 610, on 15 September 2026. Between the first committee sitting and the plenary vote, 127 days passed; between the second and the same vote, 43.

On the strategy to combat racism for 2026-2030, document COM (2026) 12, Resolution no. 69/2026 has 15 points and names Romania in none of them. There are two concrete demands. Point 7 recommends training programmes for public sector workers in the member states, so that they can handle racism and hate speech and ensure equal access to education, jobs, housing and health care. Point 10 calls for accountability and oversight mechanisms for artificial intelligence systems, so that people affected by discriminatory decisions taken on the basis of an algorithm have effective avenues to challenge them and obtain redress, while point 11 calls for the use of artificial intelligence in recruitment to come with clear anti-discrimination safeguards. At point 13 the Chamber also attaches a political condition: migrants are to be integrated without preferential treatment being established in relation to the citizens of the host state.

On the visa strategy, document COM (2026) 43, Resolution no. 70/2026 has 19 points, and six of them, from 13 to 19, are about Romania. Point 13 calls for adequate resources for the states on the external border, „including Romania”. Point 18 records that Romania made the Entry/Exit System operational on 2 March 2026, at every external border crossing point, while point 19 calls for the diplomatic and consular network to be adapted to the new requirements. Two points are reservations: point 9 asks that the Union’s visa policy not encroach on national powers over security, public order and border control, and point 10 calls for periodic assessment of the effects of visa liberalisation on illegal migration, on asylum systems and on internal security. At point 11 the Chamber voices concern about schemes granting citizenship in exchange for an investment and welcomes the Commission’s intention to monitor and restrict them.

On the communication about the Union’s eastern regions, COM (2026) 82, Resolution no. 71/2026 has 22 points, most of them of direct Romanian interest: the port of Constanța at point 14, maritime borders at point 15, the Black Sea and Danube corridors at point 18, agricultural, fisheries and aquaculture production at point 19, strategic mineral resources at points 21 and 22. The Republic of Moldova appears at point 12, with a call to step up energy, infrastructure and logistics interconnections between the Union, Romania and the Republic of Moldova. This is also where the only explicit reservation about a Union policy in the whole batch sits: point 3 asks that the implementation of the measures give priority to the strategic, economic and security interests of the eastern regions, „avoiding a shift of the main emphasis towards excessive debates on the climate regime”. Four points further down, point 7 calls for food security to be strengthened „in connection with neutralising the impact of climate change”.

On the asylum and migration strategy, COM (2026) 45, Resolution no. 72/2026 has 20 points and the sharpest internal contrast in the batch. Points 9, 10 and 12 call for policies that respect fundamental rights, investment in reception systems, stronger safeguards and reforms aligned with international protection standards. Points 11 and 19 call for asylum to stop being granted, for it to be withdrawn and for returns. Point 6 calls for transparency and oversight for the private organisations assisting migrants in the Mediterranean, so that they do not indirectly encourage illegal flows, adding that the priority of saving lives at sea must not interfere with protecting the external borders. Point 18 rejects coercive financial penalty mechanisms in European solidarity, which is precisely the lever by which the Pact on Migration and Asylum ties a state’s contribution to taking in a quota.

On the action plan against cyberbullying, COM (2026) 71, Resolution no. 73/2026 has 19 points and, as with racism, names Romania in none of them. Point 3 calls for closer monitoring of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on digital services, on the side of mitigating risks linked to cyber violence. Point 9 supports a coordinated European approach to age thresholds for access to social media platforms, so that protection does not vary from one state to another. Point 10 calls for the feasibility of a definition of cyberbullying harmonised across the Union to be explored, while point 7 supports marking and labelling content generated by artificial intelligence. Point 17 is the only one in the whole batch that names a concrete form of abuse and its victims: sexually explicit deepfake material, which disproportionately affects girls and young women.

On the ProtectEU counter-terrorism agenda, COM (2026) 101, Resolution no. 74/2026 is the longest, with 30 points, and the most technical. Two demands have a direct effect on travellers: point 10, extending the Schengen Information System with post-event dynamic alerts („post-hit”), and point 12, extending the passenger data framework from air transport to sea, rail and road, with common standards for collection, storage and analysis. Point 16 calls for a European operational framework for detecting and neutralising drones used for terrorist purposes, while point 21 calls for common risk assessment standards in prisons, which the resolution describes as an incubator for extremist ideologies. The last two points, 29 and 30, concern the Romanian Intelligence Service and call for its operational and analytical capabilities to be developed, including for identifying flows that finance terrorist activity.

On the three draft regulations about tickets, COM (2026) 231, 232 and 233, Resolution no. 75/2026 has 20 points and is the only one in the batch dealing with legislative acts. Here the demands concern wording, not principle: point 14 lists five things to be clarified in the proposal on multimodal booking, among them a definition of the notion of „designating authority”, transparent and impartial criteria for displaying and ranking transport products, and clarification of the notion „otherwise affected”, on which it depends who may lodge a complaint. Point 17 lists six things to be clarified in the proposal on the issuing of rail tickets, among them the mechanism for setting the remuneration under the commercial agreement a rail operator has to conclude with an online ticket vendor. Point 11 calls for purchase and assistance channels to be kept for those who cannot use exclusively digital services, and point 12 supports taking small and medium-sized enterprises out of the scope of the regulation on multimodal booking.

What it changes in practice

The seven resolutions are the outcome of a procedure, not acts that create rights. Article 11(1) of Law no. 373/2013 states that, following parliamentary scrutiny, Parliament or one of its Chambers „adopts resolutions on the draft acts in the process of being adopted at the level of the institutions of the European Union”, while paragraph (2) of the same article states who they are sent to: the Government, at least three working days before the date the Government has set for finalising the mandate it will defend in the Council. The addressee is not the European Commission and it is not the public.

From that moment on, the law produces three effects and nothing further. Article 3(2) provides that the resolution „is taken over by the Government when finalising the national negotiating position in the Council, as set out in the mandate”. Article 3(5) obliges it to give written reasons, as soon as possible, for defending a position other than the one voted by the Chamber. And Article 11(4) closes the chain in the Government’s favour: if the deadlines are not met, the Government decides in the absence of Parliament’s resolution. On the six communications, Article 17(1) states outright that resolutions on the Union’s strategy, programming or consultation documents „are advisory for the Government”.

For Resolution no. 75 the classification is different, but the effect is the same. The three documents commented on are draft regulations, so they fall under the subsidiarity scrutiny in Protocol no. 2 to the Treaty of Lisbon. For this the law provides two separate exits: Article 14(3), the reasoned opinion by which the Chamber finds a breach of subsidiarity, sent under paragraph (4) to the presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission within eight weeks of the draft being forwarded, and Article 14(5), the resolution by which the Chamber finds compliance with subsidiarity and proportionality, „with observations on the substance”. Point 5 of the resolution picks the second exit without equivocation: the objectives of the proposals justify action at European Union level. It is not a reasoned opinion, so it is not sent to Brussels through the channel in the law, it contributes to no subsidiarity challenge and it does not delay the discussion of the proposals in the Council and in the European Parliament by a single day.

The only verifiable effect among the 145 points is point 20 of Resolution no. 75: the Government, through the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and in cooperation with the competent authorities, is to present to the specialised parliamentary committees, within 90 days of the adoption of the opinion, an assessment of readiness for implementation, with responsibilities, a timetable, estimated costs, possible funding sources and indicators on access to tickets, interoperability and complaint handling, plus an analysis of the national derogations that may influence passenger protection. The opinion was adopted by the Chamber on 28 October 2026, so the deadline falls due on 26 January 2027, a Tuesday. The wording is „recommends”, not „requests”, and the law attaches no consequence to the document failing to reach the committees.

For anyone reading from the outside, the practical conclusion is short: from 29 October 2026 no obligation, no charge, no procedure and no competence changes. What has changed is that Romania’s position on nine European files is written down and published, so it can later be compared with what the Government defended at the Council table.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In the domestic legal order, nothing. The resolutions do not amend, supplement or repeal any rule, they transpose nothing and they set up nothing. The useful comparison is not with legislation but with the previous batch of the same kind, Resolutions no. 57-63/2026, voted on 23 September 2026 and published on 25 September 2026 in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 817, also on pages 2-9. There it was 146 points on seven communications; here it is 145 on nine documents. The volume is practically identical, the structure is not.

The first difference: the September 2026 batch commented only on communications, so subsidiarity scrutiny had nothing to act on. The October 2026 batch contains, for the first time across the two batches, three draft regulations, so the reasoned opinion route in Article 14(3) was available. The Chamber did not use it and went for a finding of compliance.

The second difference: the previous batch had no point with a deadline. The October one has one, point 20 of Resolution no. 75, with a date, an addressee, a list of contents and a forum to present it to. It is little, but it is the first.

The third difference concerns the pace of the procedure. In the previous batch, between the committee opinion and the plenary vote, between 99 and 148 days had passed. This time, four of the seven opinions waited 43 days and three waited 127. The faster half of the batch is therefore two and a half times faster than any of the September opinions.

What has not changed is how attention is spread. In the previous batch, four of the seven resolutions named Romania in no point at all. Now there are three, numbers 69, 73 and 75. In total, 20 of the 145 points name Romania, a Romanian institution, the port of Constanța or the Republic of Moldova.

The Senate followed with a batch of its own. In five resolutions adopted on 2 November 2026 and published on 5 November 2026, the Senate challenges the proportionality of the proposed EU regulation on satellites in the 2 GHz band and asks for a five-year transition instead of two.

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