PM Dancila's letter to EC top officials confirmed (Commission spokesperson)

Premier Viorica Dancila sent President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans a letter, the EU executive body confirmed on Friday.

We can confirm having received the letter and the answer will follow in due time, a spokesperson of the European Commission said on Friday, at the request of AGERPRES.

Romania media wrote that the head of the Romanian government sent the two top EU officials a letter about the August 10 anti-government rally in Bucharest that was marred by violence between the gendarmes and protesters.

The Commission is closely following developments in Romania. The protesters have criticized the steps back in judicial reform and the fight against corruption, the Commission said on Tuesday after the blunt-force intervention of the Gendarmerie at the Bucharest protest.

"Peaceful protests ended in violence. Violence can never be a solution in politics," the spokesperson added.

EU authorities are facing calls to defend the rule of law in Romania, as the co-leaders of the European Parliament's Green Group request the European Commission to launch its rule-of-law mechanism, which is being deployed against Poland and debated for Hungary, The Guardian wrote on Friday.

"The people in Romania are looking for help from the European Union and I think we should give that," Ska Keller, the German co-president of the Green Group, told The Guardian.

While the group is not looking to copy the high-stakes legal action against Poland, which risks losing its voting rights in the EU over the controversial judicial reforms passed last year, the group wants the Commission to start talks with Bucharest over the judicial changes and the anti-corruption drive.

"There is a whole escalation ladder and we should start with procedure at the lower level," Ska Keller said.

As the Greens are only the fifth-largest group in the European Parliament, their influence is rather limited and the party's call for a European Parliament debate on Romania runs little chance to win broad support, less so from Socialist MEPs, who are believed to be reluctant to criticise their party allies in the Romanian government.

However, Romania is likely to face growing scrutiny as it prepares to take up the EU's rotating Presidency for the first time in 2019, the British paper concludes. AGERPRES (RO - editor: Mariana Ionescu; EN - author/editor: Simona Klodnischi)