The reformation of the Supreme Court of Justice, the first results of the pre-vetting commission and the social dissatisfaction led to the resignation of almost all the judges of the SCJ, said Minister of Justice Veronica Mihailov-Moraru. According to her, the resignations in the system are not a good signal for society and do not contribute to increasing the citizens’ confidence in justice in the Republic of Moldova, IPN reports.
Twenty of the 25 judges of the Supreme Court of Justice resigned over the past two weeks. According to the Legal Resources Center, the work of the SCJ will be practically paralyzed from the middle of April. The minister noted the leavings from the system are influenced by the bill to reform the SCJ, which envisions the assessment of all the judges of this Court.
“They have spoken about the justice sector reform, namely about the vetting mechanism, for a year and a half. The first stage is the pre-vetting of the potential candidates who want to form part of the SCM and the SCP. Meanwhile, during almost a year, the Ministry of Justice had worked intensely on the package of laws on the reformation of the Supreme Court of Justice, which envisions the assessment of the SCJ judges. This bill was twice assessed by the Venice Commission as we wanted this mechanism to meet the standards of the Venice Commission. We presented the bill in almost its final form to the SCJ judges. At that moment, they probably realized that this law will take effect. This moment coincided with the first results of the pre-vetting commission that examined the candidates who want to form part of the SCM. All these circumstances and the social dissatisfaction lead to these decisions to resign taken by the SCJ judges,” Veronica Mihailov-Moraru stated in the program “At 360 Degrees” on Radio Moldova.
The minister said the assessment of the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice is a more balanced mechanism than the assessment of the candidates for the post of SCM or SCP member. She discussed with the discontented judges and told them that the justice sector reform needs to take place as it was promised to the Moldovan citizens and to the European partners.
“They realized that that the bill concerning the assessment of the SCJ judges is a real vetting mechanism, not a filtering process. However, a judge cannot be removed from the system only due to some minor violations. There should be admissible margins for differentiating between incomes and costs,” stated Veronica Mihailov-Moraru, noting that many of the judges decided they should not better take such a test and should leave earlier.
On February 14, the Superior Council of Magistracy accepted the resignations tendered by 16 judges of the Supreme Court of Justice. A number of judges of the Appeals Court also resigned. Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu said the move is an act of resistance designed to block the justice sector reform.
