Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis launched a national security debate on Facebook, asking whether Romania’s General Prosecutor should be a member of the Country’s Supreme Defence Council - CSAT or not.

Iohannis is very active in social media and his Facebook page, which has 1.38 million fans, is updated several times each day. After the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, on Wednesday, he changed his profile picture to “Je suis Charlie”, a solidarity message with the victims of the attack.

“Not only terrorism but corruption and organized crime as well are threats to the national security of any state, and prosecutors are in the first line of the fight against illegal networks of any kind,” said Iohannis in a Facebook post. “I recently launched a debate: should the General Prosecutor participate or not in CSAT meetings?” Iohannis continued his post.

This post came just days after Iohannis first launched the proposal that Romania’s General Prosecutor should be a member of CSAT. This stirred some criticism from people saying that this would be a breach of the separation of powers.

Iohannis said on Wednesday, January 7, in a TV debate, that “we must get past this unfortunate paradigm that the three state powers should guard each other,” and that he doesn’t share this belief. He said that the General Prosecutor’s presence in the CSAT is not a mix of state powers but a cooperation of these forces.

“We have the separation of powers so that the state works better, not to have them fight against one another. Quite the opposite, everybody should cooperate to solve Romania’s issues, including on national security,” Iohannis said, according to Hotnews.ro.

The Country’s Supreme Defence Council – CSAT is the authority which coordinates all activities related to national defense and national security. The President is the head of the CSAT. The other members are the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Defense, Internal Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Economy, Finance, the directors of the two main secret services (SRI and SIE), the Chief of the Romanian General Staff and a presidential adviser on national security.

editor@romania-insider.com