The Government is not very receptive to the recommendations and requests made by nongovernmental organizations. In a news conference at IPN, a number of civil society organizations repeated their call to the Government to modify the procedure for selecting and appointing Constitutional Court judges.

“Regretfully, it has been an ordinary practice during the last two years. Earlier, it hadn’t been better either. The Government is playing the ‘ostrich’ and is hiding its head in the sand every time civil society highlights deviations and conflict situations. The authorities prefer to keep silent and we every time try to get an answer in this respect,” said Olesea Stamate, head of the Association for Efficient and Responsible Governance.

Head of the Leal Resource Center Vladislav Gribincea suggested that the Government should say trenchantly if it does not want things to be changed. In time it pleaded for implementing the best European practices, but didn’t yet react to the civil society’s proposal to select Constitutional Court judges, which is based namely on this practice.

The civil society requests that the Government should propose changes to the legislation so as to make the holding of public contests to choose and name Constitutional Court judges compulsory. “Without an equitable and transparent procedure for appointing judges, it will be hard to increase confidence in the Constitutional Court and to improve the quality of the decisions taken by it,” stated Vladislav Gribincea. The first such call made to the Government remained without an answer.

The six judges of the Constitutional Court are designated by the Government, Parliament and the Supreme Council of Magistrates, which name by two judges each. The legislation now does not stipulate holding a public contest for selecting and appointing judges of the Constitutional Court.