Romanian magistrates vote against abolition of controversial prosecution body SIIJ

The Romanian magistrates' body CSM, with 11 votes against 8, issued a negative opinion on the Government's draft law aimed at abolishing the controversial prosecution body SIIJ charged with investigating magistrates, G4media.ro reported.

This is the second time that CSM has issued a negative opinion on this matter. However, the review is consultative as part of the enactment procedures.

Abolishing SIIJ, although a broadly debatable topic in principle, turned into a focal target of the reformist alliance USR-PLUS (which nominated the justice minister - Stelian Ion) and a benchmark for the progress of the judicial reforms.

Justice minister Stelian Ion declared, when he took office at the end of 2020, that he would like the project to be adopted by the Parliament by the end of March at the latest.

The draft bill submitted by the new justice minister is based on the project made during the mandate of Catalin Predoiu, from which he eliminated the articles referring to the "super-immunities" of judges and prosecutors. The initial draft law provided that the start of criminal proceedings against magistrates should be conditioned by the opinion of the prosecutor general, and prosecutors and judges to be prosecuted only with the opinion of the CSM sections, these provisions being eliminated by the current draft.

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