95% of the Moldovan citizens who support the accession to the EU consider that the justice reform is crucial for Moldova’s European integration, shows the first national public opinion survey on integrity in the justice sector - Justice4Moldova – that was presented by the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE), in cooperation with Magenta Consulting, at a news conference hosted by IPN.

Dumitru Slonovschi, Magenta Consulting director general, said that every third respondent (30%) believes that the situation in the justice system has improved in the last three years, while about a quarter (25%) – that the situation has worsened. The top three problems of the justice system in Moldova that were spontaneously named by the interviewees are: corruption/bribery (53%), “nepotism” (12%) and incompetence of specialists in the system (9%).

Respondents answered that they trust lawyers more often (35% have some or very much trust); 30% say they have a lot of trust in the police, while 22% in the judiciary and prosecution systems. The ranking of opinions about certain actors in the justice system is rather similar on the level of trust – most of the participants have a positive opinion of lawyers (72%), civil servants (71%), the police (71%), judges and prosecutors (58% each).

According to the survey, gender, age or affiliation to an ethnic group would not influence the level of trust in judges and prosecutors in the case of at least one third of the respondents. At the same time, about one in three persons (35%) say they would trust a young judge/prosecutor more, and about one in four (26%) would trust a woman judge/prosecutor more.

Some 42% of the respondents said that judges and prosecutors are generally independent.

The survey respondents evaluated the activity of Moldovan courts in terms of some characteristics. Thus, to a greater extent, respondents agreed that courts have competent/professional specialists (71%), and 63% believed that the courts are accessible to everyone. However, respondents believe that courts are not efficient enough (61%) and not transparent (60%).

At the same time, just over half (56-57%) of respondents consider the current salaries of prosecutors and judges to be appropriate, and about a third (32-34%) perceive them as too high.

Most often, respondents mention that, between 2021 and 2023, they interacted with the following three categories of legal professions: notaries (46%), the police (38%) and lawyers (21%). At the same time, nearly each fifth respondent interacted with courts (17%) and one in ten respondents interacted with prosecutors (11%).

The data was collected between November 24 and December 22, 2023. The survey covered a sample of 1,143 respondents from the general population, women and men aged 18+.  Its margin of error is +-2.9%

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