Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis announced yesterday that he would send back to the Parliament the law on PhD schools.

The Romanian president refused to promulgate the emergency ordinance arguing that the amendments brought by the Parliament would contravene the need to have a transparent system.

If the law had been approved, it would allow the same universities that granted PhD titles to analyze the plagiarism complaints in the case of PhD works. In other words, the law would ask universities that have tolerated plagiarism to punish plagiarism.

The law would also allow people to give up their PhD titles without any consequence.

The country has been dealing with several cases of plagiarism in PhD works among politicians in recent years. The best-known case was that of former Prime Minister Victor Ponta. Many other former and current officials have also been accused of plagiarizing their doctorate dissertation papers.

editor@romania-insider.com