The publication of judgments in simplified and depersonalized version on the national portal of courts of law hampers the lawyers’ access to the cases of clients and journalists’ access to cases that feature public figures involved in acts of corruption, money laundering or other illegalities against the state. Such concerns were stated in public debates staged at the Ministry of Justice on March 10. On the other hand, Minister of Justice Vladimir Cebotari said the electronic case module includes a search mechanism that enables access to all the cases, while those interested in accessing also personal data could register at the National Center for Personal Data Protection and would thus encounter no obstacles. But a decision will be taken after the round of consultations, IPN reports.
President of the Lawyers Union Nina Lozan considers the Ministry of Justice deliberately excluded the search of cases by name and surname of persons involved in trials. This simplified version hampers the lawyers when these look for clients’ cases. “Personal data were and will be posted on announcement boards in all the courts of law. I don’t think the publication of the name/surname of the person in a trial affects the intimate, family or private life of this person,” stated Nina Lozan.
Director of the newspaper “Ziarul de Garda” Alina Radu said there is an evil goal to prevent civil society and journalists from having access to cases featuring politicians, members of the Government and Parliament, judges, prosecutors and other public figures involved in cases of corruption, money laundering and other crimes against the state and society. All the decisions to this effect were taken without initiating public consultations and without informing the subjects. “The data belong to the people and the state manages them. We are interested in the corruptibility of this state and in the data of public figures. When the protection of personal is invoked as a reason, this should no way refer to public figures who present personal data when they hold office, in tax returns,” stated Alina Radu.
For his part, Vladimir Cebotari said there are instruments that ensure access to personal data, but the people do not want to use them, inventing different excuses. He presented the Ministry of Justice’s solutions. “We created the electronic case module and require that all the participants in trials should be allowed to register in this module and have access to electronic cases. This instrument will ensure a search engine that will cover all the cases. If they want to also access personal data in any lawsuit managed by the judicial authority, the persons registered in the module should only be registered as operators at the National Center for Personal Data Protection and will thus face no limitations,” he said.
The public debates on the issue haven’t been closed. A new session was scheduled to take place in 15 days.
