Journalists and civic activists on October 10 protested in front of the Superior Council of Magistracy against the SCM regulations concerning the publication of court decisions on the websites of courts of law, IPN reports.
Promo-LEX lawyer Vadim Vieru told the press that the most important detail of these regulations is the fact that the name, surname and other data of persons involved in trials will not be revealed. This will impede a lot the work of investigative journalists and the general public’s access to resonant cases. “When a person goes to court, this should assume the risk that their name will appear on a public decision given that this decision is pronounced and is published on the court’s website. It is not something unordinary as we also have the websites of international courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, where the issued decisions have never been concealed, if only there are particular circumstances to justify this,” said the lawyer.
Investigative journalist Victor Mosneag noted that these regulations prevent access to the decisions published on the websites of courts of law. Besides the impossibility of looking for cases by name, the regulations also prevent the search by the number of the case as the agenda of hearings will be published three days before the hearing and will be removed immediately after this. The trace of the cases will be thus lost.
Investigative journalist Mariana Rata said it has been nine months since the possibility of looking for court decisions by name was eliminated and since the SCM promised to make amendments so that the journalists could use again the websites of courts of law to find the needed decisions. “We were told we will be included in a working group for working out the regulations on the publication of court decisions. Last Friday we were informed that we were invited to a meeting to discuss the regulations. In the evening of the same day, we found out that the regulations will be discussed and put to the vote today, while the meeting was scheduled for tomorrow,” she stated.
Nadejda Hriptievschi, programs director at the Legal Resources Center of Moldova, said the regulations should ensure access to court decisions. A version proposed by the Supreme Court of Justice is known at informal level and this is much better than the one suggested by the SCM, but this also needs to be improved.
“I continue to think that the authorities, especially the SCM in its current composition, want to adopt these regulations and to make the conditions of access to information harsher, especially the access to court decisions for investigative journalists, lawyers and others. I think it happens because the legal system of the Republic of Moldova, which is said to be reformed, is actually not reformed. It remained as it was, with serious corruption-related problems, while the Superior Council of Magistracy, instead of dealing with these problems, invents problems and imposes new restrictions,” said the executive director of the Association of Independent Press.