The Draft Code of Ethics and Conduct for MPs should be essentially improved before being debated in the second reading, consider experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC). Expert Mariana Kalughin, in a news conference at IPN, said this is an important bill, but many of its provisions must be improved because these contain corruptible elements.
According to the expert, the informative note to the bill says this is an ordinary law, but according to the adoption clause, this should be an organic law. The bill was discussed and adopted in the first reading before the period of 15 days offered for coordination with civil society expired. Also, its economic-financial reasoning is defective.
“We consider that the bill is not sufficiently argued because a fundamental analysis of the conditions that would strengthen the necessary of adopting the bill wasn’t carried out. We refer especially to a statistic, qualitative and quantitative analysis of the way in which Parliament imposes penalties on MPs in general,” stated Mariana Kalughin.
She also said that the bill contains defective provisions concerning the institution of the post of ethics commissioner. “The draft law stipulates that the post of ethics commissioner will have subordinate staff, but all the provisions refer to the ethics commission and our perception is that it is the commissioner who will have to deal with the applications concerning ethical deviations of MPs, to conduct investigations and to compile a report,” said Mariana Kalughin. According to her, if the commissioner does not have subordinate personnel, this will be unable to appropriately fulfill the duties.
The bill does not define the conditions in which the contest to fill the post of ethics commissioner will be held. The commissioner’s status should also be clearly defined. “There are provisions that allow us to intuit that this commissioner will have the status of public servant,” said the expert. Mariana Kalughin considers this should be a public post so that the commissioner could investigate the violations committed by MPs.
CAPC president Galina Bostan said the analysis was carried out within the Vulnerability Expertise of Draft Normative and Legal Acts Project that is financially supported by MATRA Rule of Law and Good Governance Program.
