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The anticorruption prosecutors who attended the General Meeting of the anticorruption agency's investigators rejected most of the proposals to amend the Justice package as presented by JusMin Tudorel Toader, the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) said on Tuesday in a release.
According to the cited source, "the vote cast by the prosecutors who participated in the General Meeting on the discussed proposals has revealed that in their current form, the amendments to the Justice package represent a form of pressure on the professional activity of the prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate."
The prosecutors unanimously rejected the switch of the Judicial Inspection under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, considering that this move "is likely to harm the magistrates' independence."
The "unjustified amendment of the current regime on the judges' and prosecutors' liability" was also voted down.
The cited source also informs that the establishment of a specialized directorate within the Public Prosecution Office, tasked with prosecuting the crimes committed by magistrates, was also rejected "as no justification was presented" for this; as for the introduction of certain requirements for the candidates to the National Institute of Magistracy regarding the minimum age of 30 and at least 5 years of effective length of service, DNA argues that "they do not fit the social realities and will make recruiting enough well-trained and morally upright magistrates" difficult.
The introduction of the requirement for a prosecutor to have a minimum seniority of 15 years to promote to the Prosecution Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice "was considered excessive in relation to the current structure of the magistrates' body and the experience required to exercise this office (the proposed seniority for the position of Prosecutor General is of just 10 years)," the DNA release mentions.
According to the DNA, the following proposals were rejected by a broad majority: the procedure of appointment to management positions with the Public Prosecution Office, for which the judicial system proposed a procedure similar to that for the appointment of the President of the High Court of Cassation and Justice; the increase to 8 years of the seniority for a prosecutor to qualify for being appointed to the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism — DIICOT and the National Anticorruption Directorate — DNA, as this is not based on an analysis of the experience in human resources acquired during the operation of the two agencies and does not correspond to the identified need for the management thereof; the increase to 7 years of the required seniority as a prosecutor for the promotion to the prosecutor's office attached to a tribunal, and a required 10-year seniority for the promotion to the prosecutor's office attached to the Court of Appeal," which are arbitrarily established lengths of service that do not correspond to the specific responsibilities of these offices," the release said.
The proposals regarding the extension of the managers' terms to four years (which however does not apply to the current terms), as well as the removal of the possibility for retirees to be re-hired as judges or prosecutors with the courts and prosecutor's offices where they served until the date of retirement got the prosecutors' majority vote.
