Strengthening Intelligence Oversight in Romania

The following paper evaluates the Romanian oversight of intelligence sector. The oversight mechanisms differ from one democracy to another; that's why, we firstly should understand the relationship between the secrecy required for maintaining the value of the information and to protect the sources and methods and the democratic need to exert control over all public institutions. The hypothesis is that a democratic state imposes both a demanding factor of legislative oversight and, in the same time, a deterrent factor of the parliamentarian oversight. In order to prove my argument I will define oversight and how it can be explained the need in a democracy of legislative oversight over intelligence services. I will emphasize the relation between democratic principle of transparency and need to know of the people. The methodology I used is related to Romanian legislative oversight on intelligence. Intelligence oversight is a necessity and it does not impose only limits over the legislative oversight, but also deters parliamentarians from willing to deal with it. I will refer to oversight as supervision, seeking to determine the efficiency of the intelligence security and their capacity to successfully fulfil its mandate.