The Supreme Council of Magistrates must review the regulations concerning the procedure and conditions for appointing the instruction judge. Also, all the instruction judges must be named for a fixed term of three years and must be banned from holding office two times consecutively. These are some of the recommendations of a report on the reformation of the instruction judge service compiled by the Legal Resource Center of Moldova, IPN reports.

One of the authors of the study, the Legal Resource Center’s head Vladislav Gribincea Wednesday said the report presents the current situation as regards the reformation of the instruction judge service and assesses the way the instruction judges are confirmed as common law judges. It also refers to the training of judges who are named as instruction judges within courts of law and their workload.

Author Ion Guzun said that since 2003, all the courts of law of Moldova, except for the specialized ones, have included instruction judges whose task is to examine complaints against prosecution bodies, concerning preventive arrest, authorization of searches, phone tapping, etc. The report shows that in November 2013, 87% of the instruction judges were former prosecutors or prosecution officers who had a pronounced pro-accusation attitude.

It was established that after the instruction judge service was instituted, the number of instruction judges didn’t raise even if the workload increased substantially. Given the reduced term allowed by the law for the instruction judges to take a decision, this led to a poor quality in their work.  As a result, Moldova was convicted in multiple cases by the ECHR.

According to author Sorina Macrinici, a ban should be imposed so that the former instruction judges are unable to hold this post again during the next three years at least in order to ensure their integrity in the judicial system. They should be appointed before taking over as instruction judge so as to be able to attend training course at the National Justice Institute meanwhile. They should serve for a fixed period of three years, without the possibility of extension .

The report “Reformation of the instruction judge service in Moldova” was produced with the support of the Justice Program of Soros Foundation Moldova.