Romania’s justice minister promises to eliminate unclear provisions in justice bills

Romania’s justice minister Florin Iordache announced that he would present to the Government some “coherent measures” related to the criminal law, after public consultations on the prison pardon and the changes to the Penal Code on Monday. He said that he would take into consideration the observations submitted by the participants to the public consultations held at the Justice Ministry’s headquarters. “For the two draft bills, we have received over 3,000 requests from individuals and associations. We will analyze the proposals,” Iordache said, according to local Agerpres. He added that all the unclear provisions as well as those that create discrepancies in the two bills would be eliminated. “I don’t want to say what we will eliminate and if we eliminate and how they will look like,” he said. He added that only after he finalizes the new draft bills he will talk to Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu to decide the next steps on how to get the bills approved. At the beginning of the consultations, the justice minister said that the bill on pardoning several categories of convicts would not apply to violent criminals, such as murderers and rapists, or to people convicted for corruption. The initial draft bill, which the Justice Ministry published on Wednesday, January 18, provided that inmates with sentences under 5 years would be pardoned, with the exception of violent criminals and other categories. The bill also ruled that inmates over 60, pregnant women, and inmates with children under 5 in their care would have half of their sentences cancelled. In this case, there were no exceptions for the pardoning, so the measure included violent criminals as well as those convicted for corruption. Moreover, the draft bill also pardoned those with suspended sentences, despite its declared goal of solving the problem of overcrowded local prisons. As for the changes to the criminal law, Iordache said that these were only aimed at fixing some provisions in the Penal Codes as recommended by the Constitutional Court. He added that the Constitutional Court has found six new articles in the law that need fixing, in addition to the six that the Justice Ministry already included in its new bill. Thus, the new draft bill will try to fix all these articles at the same time. However, top people in the justice system, civic associations, and journalists showed that the bill would decriminalize some important corruption crimes and make it harder for prosecutors to investigate others. For example, abuse of power would only be a criminal offense if the damage to the state budget were higher than RON 200,000