It was then debated at the party's 9th Congress in July and adopted by the MAN, sitting as a Constituent Assembly, on August 21, being published in Monitorul Oficial that day.
The document that formed the legal basis for the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu (who had come to power that March), this constitution brought changes to the organization and name of the state, and to the expression of its foreign policy.
The "brotherly" alliance with the Soviet Union was replaced with the principle of "respect for national sovereignty and independence, equality of rights and reciprocal advantage, non-interference in internal matters".
These rights were effectively neutered in practice by a provision that banned organizations "of a fascist or antidemocratic character" (carried over from its predecessors), and another that forbade the exercise of constitutional freedoms "for purposes against the socialist structure and the interests of those who work".
As for the state organisation, alongside the MAN, which in theory remained the supreme leadership organ, the office of president of the republic appeared for the first time in Romanian history (via a 1974 amendment), with attributes that gave it, in the framework of the existing system, dictatorial powers.