Augustin Lazar: Law on creating coherent intervention framework to minor's benefit needs to be completed

The General Prosecutor of Romania, Augustin Lazar, on Thursday remarked, in the opening of the session of the French-Romanian working group for family and child protection, that the legislation for creating a coherent intervention framework to the best interest of minors needs to be completed and modified.

"In February 2018, a Romanian-French working group was created with the special purpose of identifying dangerous situations minors are faced with and signal them to the relevant judicial and administrative child protection authorities. The idea belonged to the French Embassy in Bucharest and to the Federation of Non-Governmental Organizations for Child Care and was based on such previous experiences, with its objective to ensure a better protection to the children, including through legal means. More exactly, the initiators wanted to create a more efficient mechanism for the circulation of significant information from the institutions that had them, usually various administrative authorities, to the decision-making factors in the judicial area (...) - in the French mode, the prosecutors play a significant part in building cases involving minors. We think that there is need of the modification and addition of the legislation in this area, in order to create a coherent intervention framework to the best interest of the minors. In this regard, the support and expertise of the French partners are very precious, and the Public Ministry wishes to continue this partnership," said Lazar.

He underscored that justice for minors has become a priority of the Public Ministry as of late and mentioned the need for a specialized network of prosecutors in this field.

The General Prosecutor showed that, considering their lack of maturity, the children need special care and protection, including friendly judicial services, adapted to their age and needs.

He also specified that in 2017 the statistics of the Public Ministry showed a number of 3,888 minor defendants, representing 6.5 per cent of the total number of defendants sent to trial. Among them, 480 minors were to trial under arrest. We noticed a 7.9 per cent-almost 8 per cent increase in the number of minor defendants arrested compared with the previous year. This is a figure that should make us think. (...) There were 50 minors indicted for murder. There were also 56 minors sent to trial for rape. As many as 2,263 minors were arrested for offenses against property, among whom 1,478 were sent to trial for theft and 700 for robbery," indicated Lazar.