Prosecutor General Alex Florenta met on Tuesday at the Victoria Palace with Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan to discuss the special pensions reform, pointing out on the occasion that the calculation methods regarding the length of service in the judiciary and the retirement age need to be staggered in order to avoid creating imbalances and discrimination between magistrates.
"The Prosecutor General highlighted the negative effects on the justice system and on human resources in particular, the periodic revisitation at short intervals of important elements of the magistrates' statutes has, despite the constant nature of the Constitutional Court's jurisprudence on the matter. Thus, starting with 2017, the law on the judges and prosecutors' statutes has been amended 3 times, and the provisions regarding service pensions 4 times," the Prosecutor General's Office said in a release, agerpres reports.
Alex Florenta emphasized that the provisions of Law No. 303/2022 on the statutes of judges and prosecutors regarding service pensions, as amended by Law No. 282/2023, meet both the constitutional requirements regarding the need to ensure the independence of the judicial system, the predictability of the status of the magistrates and the security of the workplace relationships of magistrates, as well as the requirements of the European Commission.
Thus, the retirement conditions established in 2023 were the subject of extensive consultation, and following their adoption, the reform carried out through Law No. 282/2023 was termed by the Commission as satisfactory for the achievement of NRRP benchmark 215.
Alex Florenta emphasized the need for really staggering the calculation of eligible seniority in the magistracy and the retirement age.
"In accordance with certain arguments presented (the need for the pension not to exceed the salary, the need for a phased increase in the retirement age), the methods of calculating the eligible seniority in the judiciary and the retirement age proposed in the draft regulatory act must be subject to a real staggered approach, in order to avoid creating obvious imbalances and discrimination between generations of magistrates and same-generation magistrates. He pointed to the fact that, given the need to avoid generating imbalances in the functioning of the judicial system, the way how the retirement age was increased in the public pension system - for men over a period of 15 years, and for women over a period of 20 years - is highly important," the Prosecutor General's Office also notes.
The Prosecutor General stressed that the need for a reform of the judiciary cannot exclusively and separately deal with a certain aspect related to the status of the magistrate profession, without taking into account the recurring problems faced by the judiciary, in particular the excessive workload caused by understaffing and the high legislative instability.
"In absence of a wide set of such intercorrelated measures, the goal pledged through the statement of reasons accompanying the draft regulatory act - specifically increasing the quality of the act of justice - not only cannot be achieved, but will even generate an opposite effect, which will reflect in the longer duration of trials, difficulties in the functioning of courts and prosecutors' offices and, ultimately, in the impossibility of providing an act of justice that meets the citizens' expectations," the cited source shows.
Alex Florenta also pointed to the importance of loyal cooperation between the state powers, as well as to the fact that any legislative move to amend justice legislation must be carried out based on real and effective consultation of representatives of the judicial system, so as to identify the best solutions for the optimal functioning thereof.
Comentează