Premium
The Senate's plenum has rejected on Monday the legislative proposals of amending the Penal Code and the Penal Procedural Code, initiated by the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in the previous legislation and which were declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR).
The senators voted in favor of rejecting the two draft laws, being registered, to each of the two bills, 87 votes "in favor" and 48 "abstentions".
The Judicial Committee and the Committee for constitutionality of the Senate also adopted, last week, in a joint session, reports to reject the legislative proposal of amending the two codes.
The chairman of the Judicial Commission, Iulia Scantei, said that the PSD projects of amending the criminal codes aim at reducing the barring periods of penal responsibility for serious crimes, at reducing to half of the punishment the limits for some corruption crimes and crimes in office, mitigating circumstances in order to reduce by one third the special limits of punishment foreseen in the acts of terrorism, corruption, crimes against the financial interests of the European Union, those regarding the judicial regime of the illegal drugs, but also for crimes against the religious freedom and the respect due to the deceased people, against the national security, against the armed forces' fighting capacity.
The liberal senator said that the PSD bills would have allowed "a faster and easier release of the criminals, because the minimum duration of the punishment has been reduced, including in the case of grave actions with prison punishments higher than 10 years".
The Constitutional Court rejected in 2019 the bills amending the two codes, following notifications of president Klaus Iohannis, of the National Liberal Party (PNL) and Save Romania Union (USR).
The legislative proposals of modifying the Criminal Code will be forwarded to the Chamber of Deputies, the decision-making forum in this case.
