Romanian president, justice minister clash again over prosecutor independence

It has become a habit in Romania to debate the prosecutors’ status and invoke the article in the Constitution that states that prosecutors are under the justice minister’s authority. This does not mean that they are subordinated to the justice minister and that some people deliberately make this confusion to place prosecutors under political control, president Klaus Iohannis said on Wednesday at a conference where the Public Ministry presented its report for 2017. “It’s just an attempt to weaken the prosecutors’ power and subordinate them to political factors, which is unacceptable,” Iohannis said. He added that Romanians don’t want “criminals to make the law and magistrates to be subordinated to politicians.” Justice minister Tudorel Toader, who didn’t attend the conference, reacted on Facebook saying that no one claimed that prosecutors were under the justice minister’s control. The justice minister asked for the dismissal of the National Anticorruption Directorate’s chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi, at the end of February. The president hasn’t answered that request yet. Last week, Iohannis praised DNA’s results in fighting corruption in Romania while Tudorel Toader didn’t attend DNA’s report presentation. The report presented on Wednesday by the Public Ministry shows that prosecutors in Romania had 1.7 million cases to analyze in 2017 and managed to solve over 530,000 of them. Almost 60,000 defendants were sent to court last year. editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Presidency.ro)