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Speech by Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă at the event marking the release of National Bank of Romania jubilee coins dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the 1923 Constitution

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Dear BNR Governor,

Your Majesty, Custodian of the Crown

Vice–Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies,

President of the Constitutional Court,

Dear members of the National Bank Board,

President of the Romanian Academy,

Your Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for the invitation. It is an honor for me to join you at this event to celebrate together 100 years since the adoption of the 1923 Constitution, the Constitution of Unified Romania.

I want to congratulate you on your excellent idea of releasing the two jubilee coins dedicated to the centennial of the 1923 Constitution.

Ladies and gentlemen, I quote: "The Romanian state must have an active national life. Only through this national character will it be able to make the most of its attributes, therefore its latent energy, only this way will it be a real factor of civilization, and it will be able to withstand, isolated as it is, in the region of unstable balance in which it lies".

The great liberal politician Vintilă Brătianu stated these words on the occasion of the debates organized by Dimitrie Gusti through the Romanian Social Institute regarding the draft Constitution of 1923.

These words are as relevant today as they were in the aftermath of the first world war, amid an acute need to confer unity of action and national consciousness to the Unified Romania, in all the territories that had been separated from the motherland until then.

If we were to identify the most important contribution of the 1923 Constitution, then this is without a doubt the fact that it fulfilled at the political and law level, the national project of a unitary national state. As Prime Minister Ion. I. C. Brătianu stated, it was "a new chapter in the more complete and lasting development of the country".

The entire effort of the Romanian nation and its intellectual, economic, and political elite was to unite citizens and institutions under a sole fundamental law, expression of political values, projections, and strategic options for the future.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The role of a written constitution is one preponderantly political and legal, less an economic one. The constitutions establish the form of government, the way of exercising power as well as the limits and objectives of power, and the rights and freedoms of citizens.

 Most of the time, economic policy is not the main objective of the founding political act of a state. Far too little is discussed about what we call the economic constitution of a state, the fundamental rules and institutions that are meant to build and guarantee the stability and performance of the national economy.

However, the 1923 Constitution was not only the expression of the values of political liberalism adapted to the needs of Romanian society at that time and the fundamental objective of the creation of a unitary national state.

Through its regulations in areas such as the right to private ownership and its limits, the right to association, the protection of the factors of production, and the rules regarding the exploitation of underground wealth or the acquisition of real estate, the Constitution of 1923 grounded economic liberalism in the spirit of its time with two fundamental elements: guaranteeing private property and securing contractual freedom.

How a constitution regulates the exercise of rights based on the institution of private and public property, the freedom of private initiative and the field of competition determine how the economic and social life of a nation will look.

Eventually, the desideratum of a mature and balanced society is to identify, within the limits of political and economic liberalism, all solutions to eliminate political, economic, and social excesses, inconsistencies, and errors of the national economy, with the aim of a fair distribution of economic goods at the level of society.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The 1923 Constitution of Unified Romania is part of the democratic constitutional heritage of the Romanian state and ensured the premises for the modernization and democratization of the Romanian nation.

100 year after the adoption of this Constitution, its democratic legacy obliges us to carry these values forward, to defend them at any cost, and to finalize the great political work of Romanian liberalism, which was, is, and will be the accelerated development of Romania as an integral part of a Western democratic society. This is our promise for the future.

Thank you and congratulations once again for organizing the event, Mr. Governor of the National Bank!