PM Orban: Ombudsman relapses, files constitutional challenge to Quarantine and Isolation Law

Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said that the Ombudsman has once again challenged the Quarantine and Isolation Law in the Constitutional Court, adding that in his opinion, this "already appears to be an attack on Romania's fundamental interests". "After three weeks during which we were deprived of all possibility to act for the treatment under medical supervision or to isolate or quarantine thousands of citizens diagnosed as coronavirus-positive, and after having our hands tied as regards the possibility to isolate the contacts of each coronavirus-positive person, after seeing what serious and dramatic effects the lack of a legislative framework has had, the Ombudsman relapses and attacks a law that was adopted by Parliament, an act adopted following a Constitutional Court decision issued precisely at the Ombudsman's notification. Things are already headed in a direction that I personally do not understand, and this persistence in challenging fundamental laws that allow the government and the health authorities to fight the epidemic, to protect the people's health and life, already appears to be an attack on Romania's fundamental interests," Ludovic Orban told the government meeting on Friday. The Ombudsman filed today a constitutional challenge to the mandatory hospitalization for 48 hours of COVID patients and the secondment on order of medical workers, both provided for in the Quarantine and Isolation Law. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Florea, editor: Mihai Simionescu; EN - author: Simona Klodnischi, editor: Simona Iacob)