PM Citu: I will put SIIJ abolishment on coalition agenda

Prime Minister Florin Citu stated on Monday that he came to the coalition meeting with a proposal to abolish the Department for Investigating Crimes in Justice (SIIJ), mentioning that the solution is constituted of "taking into full consideration the opinion of the Venice Commission."

"I will put on the agenda the abolishment of the SIIJ, because it's very important for me and for the efficient functionality of the public justice service for citizens for this institution to be abolished. We are coming with a proposal, you know very well, the Justice Minister asked the opinion of the Venice Commission in the spring, an opinion which is very good, but there are many aspects of that opinion that were not discussed in the public space. That is why we believe that if the opinion of the Venice Commission is fully considered, we have the solution to exit this temporary impasse in which we are now. And we come today, together with Ms. Scantei, with a solution on the coalition table," Citu mentioned, agerpres reports.

In context, the chair of the Senate's Legal Committee, Iulia Scantei, stated that the National Liberal Party (PNL) remains consequent to the draft adopted by the Government in what regards the two major objectives: the abolishment in this parliamentary session of the SIIJ and the "unequivocal" observance of the material competence of prosecutor's offices in Romania, mentioning that the recommendations of the Justice Minister may be transformed into legislative solutions.

In her opinion, the SIIJ "is not only an institution created by the PSD [Social Democratic Party] to be used as an instrument of pressure on judges and prosecutors that do their jobs, but was also used as a mechanism to extract certain cases from the competence of the DNA [National Anticorruption Directorate], politicians' corruption cases."