At a plenary vote session on Tuesday, the Chamber of Deputies passed by 155 ayes an unqualified motion on justice matters tabled by the Social Democratic Party (PSD).
As many as 60 MPs did not vote. The chamber debated the motion one week previously.
The 80 sponsors of the unqualified motions are calling on Justice Minister Raluca Pruna to step down after the minister told a plenary meeting of the Supreme Council for National Defence (CSM) that she lied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) when telling them about the funds earmarked for penitentiaries in Romania.
"On June 14, 2016, Justice Minister Raluca Pruna went before the ECHR to lodge and support a piece of legislation including measures taken and to be taken to improve detention conditions at Romania's penitentiaries. After her presentation, the justice minister told a plenary meeting of CSM of October 6, 2016 that 'I went before ECHR and lied - and I mean lied well - by telling that we had secured the 150-million-euro budget for each of seven penitentiaries, almost one billion euro in total, but that was just good intentions, as in reality the money was not in the budget.' Mrs Pruna's misstatement is a lie in relation to two things: a lie regarding a document bearing the signature of Romanian dignitaries, while the second is the fact that a high-ranking dignitary of Romania lied to an intentional organisation," reads the motion.
The motion says Parliament has approved 1,157,669,000 lei for the National Administration of Penitentiaries for 2016, 71,855,000 lei of which were own revenues. Since the budget was approved and up until June, more pieces of legislation were approved bringing additional funds to what had been earmarked.
"How could they have possible earmarked in one year more than one billion lei for the construction of seven penitentiaries when there was no feasibility study? Who authorised Raluca Pruna to go before ECHR with a document comprising misinformation? What measures did the prime minister take when he learned about the false representations of the justice minister of June 14, 2016? He cannot pretend he did not know, given that it was about a document that was forwarded to an international body in a case involving Romania. Was the justice minister compelled to submit the correct information to ECHR?" reads the motion.
The motion also mentions reproaches from magistrates' association about the magistrates' actual workplaces.
Comentează