On freedom in national and international documents

(Targu Jiu)

 

The Romans said: ”Libertatem qui perdit, nihil potest ultro perdere” (“He who has lost his freedom can’t lose anything else”). One can appreciate that man has always wished to be free, freedom being one of the most precious values in the whole mankind’s existence.

In the dictionary freedom is defined as “the possibility of acting consciously according to his wish on condition of knowing the laws”.

In Romania the first official regulations on the man’s and citizen’s rights and liberties showed up at the end of the 19^th century, at the same time  with the setting up of the Romanian state. The Constitution in 1866 the fundamental rights and liberties were stipulated and guaranteed in articles 5, 21, 24. The stipulations were taken up in the Constitution in 1923 (articles 5, 22, 25).

Starting with 1938 until 1989 Romania entered a dictatorship era (royal, legionary, military, communist) which seriously damaged the possibility of expressing freedom. Thus, the Constitution in 1938 guaranteed the liberties but the introduction of the censorship, of the state of siege, then of war stopped the manifestations and allowed abuses and atrocities.

The communist dictatorship regime was brought under the regulation by three Constitutions (in 1948, 1952, 1965 ) whose regulations had a tricky democratic character. In the Constitution in 1965 the human rights and liberties shown in the articles 17 … 28 were cancelled by the article 29 which said that these liberties “can’t be used on purposes against the socialist system and against the working class”. They defined the possibility of the abusive interpretation regarding the expressing of the liberties, other documents and later laws underlying this. For example, the law of the press in 1974 established that the mass media’s only purpose was to “militate for applying the Romanian Communist Party’s policy”.

In 1989, due to the people’s free expression, the communist dictatorship was removed, and the Constitution in 1991 stipulated a new democratic regime where the man’s rights and liberties are properly understood (in the articles 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31).

At the international level, after centuries of violating the human rights and after attempts of defining and settlement, on the 28^th of December 1948 THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS adopted by the U.N.O. General Assembly founded this concern. Stressing in the first article that “all the human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”, the declaration defined the rights in its articles and created in the “preamble” that the stipulations are “a mutual ideal all the peoples and nations must aim at”. The stipulations were thoroughly studied, explained by the U.N.O. General Assembly in registers on the 16^th of December 1966.

At the European level, the beginning of today’s EU was also marked by the meaning for the human liberties. Regarding this, on the 4^th of November 1950 at Rome, “The European Convention of the Human Rights” was signed, which is a real catalogue of the fundamental rights and liberties.

After 1989, at the same time with the gradual increase of the EU members, a reconsideration of the meaning regarding the human rights and liberties was required. Thus it was achieved “THE CHARTER OF THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS” included in The Treaty from Nice signed in December 2000 and come into effect on the 1^st of February 2003. The Charter reunites in a single text the totality of the European citizens’ rights and liberties and has an important role both in the European unification and in the EU identification in the citizens’ Europe.

 

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