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The Ministry of Justice (MJ) organizes a public debate on Wednesday regarding the draft law on the amendment of the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, reads a press release on the website of this ministry.
The draft law for amending and supplementing the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, which is submitted to public debate by the MJ, does not provide for a minimum damage limit for the crime of abuse in office.
According to the draft published on the MJ website, paragraph 1 of the Article 297 of the Criminal Code states that "the action of the public servant who, while exercising their professional responsibilities, fails to implement an act or implements it faultily, by infringing a law, a Government Ordinance or a Government Emergency Ordinance, thus causing damage or violating the legitimate rights or interests of a natural or legal entity, shall be punishable by no less than 2 and no more than 7 years of imprisonment and the ban from exercising the right to hold a public office."
The text is thus in agreement with a Constitutional Court's decision, the current phrase "wrongly exercises" is replaced by the phrase "implements it faultily, by infringing a law, a Government Ordinance or Government Emergency Ordinance," the rest of the provisions remaining unchanged.
The draft also amends the first paragraph of Article 301 of the Criminal Code on Conflict of Interest, replacing the phrase "commercial relations", declared unconstitutional, with the phrase "relations specific to professionals".
Amendments are also made to the article of the Criminal Code regarding the enhanced confiscation, in the sense of transposing into law a European Directive on the freezing and confiscation of the crimes' tools and products committed in the European Union.
The draft also brings in line some articles of the Criminal Code concerning corruption and in office offenses committed by persons other than civil servants, as well as road traffic offenses with the Constitutional Court decisions. The provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, Law 304/2004 on judicial organisation and Law 253/2013 on the execution of punishments, of the educational measures and other non-custodial measures ordered by the judicial bodies during the criminal trial are also modified for the same reasons.
The proposals, suggestions and opinions with a recommendation value related to the draft piece of legislation under debate may be submitted in writing to the MJ by post or by email. Moreover, two public debates will be held on April 26 and May 15.
