The Constitutional Court on April 16 ruled that the provisions of the law on the testing of the professional integrity of judges are constitutional, except for some articles. The Court’s president Alexandru Tanase said the state has the right to test the professional integrity of all the public functionaries, without exception, but the problem resides in the testing method and the institution that is empowered to do it, IPN reports.

“If the deficiencies identified by the Constitutional Court are removed, the given law can function further,” stated Alexandru Tanase.

National Anticorruption Center vice director Cristina Tarna, who represented the Government when the given challenge was examined, said the articles that were declared unconstitutional blocked practically fully the testing of the professional integrity because these provisions refer to the testing mechanism, but this mechanism was declared unconstitutional. The assessors will be unable to film or record the tested person’s behavior. The provision saying that the person subject to the integrity test is fired if it’s established that this person was involved in acts of corruption was also declared unconstitutional.

“The assessors cannot do acts with justified risk, the justified risk being those acts that are planned or are taken to document the lack of integrity of the public servants. In this respect, the assessor must commit certain violations with respect to the tested public servant and this is against the law,” stated Cristina Tarna.

The challenge concerning the constitutionality of provisions of the Annex to the Law No. 325 of December 23, 2013 on the testing of the professional integrity was submitted by a group of Communist MPs. According to the authors of the challenge, these provisions do not ensure the necessary balance of powers in the state and can affect the independence of the judicial system.