As their terms in office near an end, not all the ministers have presented a report of activity. IPN decided to offer the outgoing officials the chance to tell about their accomplishments and failures at the helm of their ministries.
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In 2009, Oleg Efrim was appointed Deputy Minister of Justice, but one year and half later he was promoted to Minister. According to him, the Ministry's team has many good professionals, highly qualified jurists who moved things forward, a young and dynamic team that sometimes met impossible deadlines, a team that accomplished difficult tasks and obtained remarkable achievements.
“The Ministry of Justice is the body that writes and promotes laws in the field of justice. I really hoped people would understand this. During my tenure, we focused our efforts on implementing the most complex reform of justice Moldova has known after the 90s. I'm proud that we managed to mobilize the best experts from public institutions, civil society, international experts, national and international specialized institutions, who helped us move forward despite the many challenges”, said the outgoing official.
The justice reform strategy
In 2011, the Strategy for the reform of the justice sector for 2011-2016 was voted unanimously in the Parliament, including the opposition. This was a big achievement for Moldova and the country's international partners appreciated it. The Ministry managed to attract over 18 international partners and involved them in the justice reform and even obtained 60 million euros as support from the EU.
Efrim insists that despite the skepticism and criticism directed at the Ministry, the reform is actually being implemented and each year has showed progress with over 60% of the annual goals being accomplished. “I still think that this strategy is already bearing fruits and will have a significant impact soon. We just have to show a little patience and be persevering in what we do. The justice reform strategy isn't just a paper, as some like to say. It's a guide for Moldova as a country that aspires to join the EU. It's not only about the Ministry of Justice. All the institutions in the field of justice share the responsibility for the successes and failures of the reform. The whole Cabinet, the Parliament and the judiciary are responsible for the implementation of the reform. We've shown that the reform of justice doesn't happen arbitrarily. It doesn't happen because of a whim of the Europeans or of the Ministry of Justice. It is necessary for the citizen to feel safe at home and that's the premise we've built on”, explained the minister.
During his tenure, several big changes were kicked off, from the legal education to the reform of the Constitutional Court. “Yes, this reform is expensive and costs over 126 million euros. It requires time and involves over 50 institutions and hundreds of people from very rigid and traditionalist sectors: judges, prosecutors, police officers, lawyers, anticorruption institutions, etc. We've tackled complex issues: amending laws, changing institutions, a lot of work has been put into the training of specialists and into changing the modus operandi of people who work according to wrong 'traditions'”, said Efrim.
Changes don't happen overnight
According to the official, the effects of the Ministry's interventions will be felt by the people only when these institutions start working according to the new laws, the new standards instead of making excuses and doing nothing. The real change will happen when everyone will stop offering bribes, will give up influence peddling or trying to influence judges, when the prosecutors will have real independence and the judges stop taking bribes to built palaces for themselves but will follow the law strictly, says Efrim.
“Even if there is still little trust in justice, things have improved. Changes won't happen overnight. I admit it's frustrating. As a citizen, I would love to wake up in a country where no judge takes bribes, where the corrupt judges, ministers and politicians are in jail, where every prosecutor doesn't overstep his boundaries and works only for the citizen, where investors have a fertile field for investments and can trust the Moldovan justice, where every police officer and civil servant is honest”, said the official.
“When we started the reform of justice, we set out from a serious premise: the justice system was ruined by under-financing. A judiciary that lacks resources is weak and can be blackmailed. We also targeted the lack of professionalism in all fields of justice, the lack of well-trained personnel, the lack of mechanisms to ensure the disciplinary accountability of judges and prosecutors, and the tolerance towards corruption”, explained Efrim. According to him, what has been achieved since 2011 is a promising and ambitious beginning.
Ambitions and the pace of reform
According to the minister, if the authorities maintain the same level of ambition and the same pace of reform, each citizen and society as a whole will benefit from it. “We've managed to provide sufficient financing for the judiciary and decent working conditions – not in order to satisfy the judges, but to provide quality services to the people. We've changed the membership and competences of the Superior Council of Magistracy so that this body will guarantee the professionalism and law-abidance of judges. We have made the audio recording of trials mandatory thus making them more transparent. We have made it mandatory for courts to use the integrated system of file management so that magistrates won't distribute them under the table according to various interests”, said the minister.
Now, there is a joint web portal of courts. People can see the schedules and rulings of courts and other relevant information. “We have also set strict conditions for the employment, evaluation and promotion of judges and limited their immunity. Now, they can be criminally prosecuted and stripped of their assets for corruption. You probably know about the two judges sentenced to 7 and 8 years in jail”, said Efrim.
As a result of the amendments introduced by the Ministry of Justice, civil servants can be fined with 200,000 lei and sentenced to up to 15 years in jail for taking bribe. Meanwhile, those who offer bribe to civil servants risk 12 year in jail and fines of up to 160,000 lei. “We have created the National Integrity Commission and from this autumn we are promoting the notion of civil confiscation to ensure that all the civil servants with undeclared assets will be stripped of them and punished according to the law”, said the official.
Improved infrastructure
Oleg Efrim reminded that the construction of a new prison with 1600 places was started in order to close the Jail no. 13 in the center of Chisinau and offer proper conditions to the inmates, according to European standards. An underage prison has been created in Goian according to Norwegian standards. Over 40 courts, prosecutor's offices and police commissariats now have special hearing rooms for children victims or witnesses of crimes. They are assisted by specialists during the investigation.
Surveillance cameras have been installed in all the penitentiary institutions and police stations to prevent acts of torture. Another innovation is the electronic monitoring of convicts on probation who will wear an electronic tracker on their foot and won't have to meet for confirmation with the probation officer. A Council has been created for preventing and wiping out discrimination and ensuring equality. The system of state-provided free legal assistance has been expanded and now over 40,000 people benefit from free quality services of lawyers.
“I'm proud that the Ministry of Justice in 2013 has made Moldova the 5th country in the world and the 2nd in Europe to use the e-apostille. Together with our colleagues at the Civil Status Service we've managed to introduce over 10 e-services so that people won't have to wait in queues for certificates and will pay less for them”, said the Minister.
According to him, there are at least 70 accomplishments worth mentioning. The outgoing official is proud of having managed to do so much in a relatively short time. In recent years, the Ministry of Justice prepared dutifully to ensure the quality, professionalism and transparency of the act of justice and to make the changes felt by the people. Now, it's up to the law enforcement bodies to show their openness to reform.
Things to do
The Minister admits that there are several tasks he and his team haven't managed to carry out. The most important of them is the reform of the prosecutor's office, which yet to truly start. “I'm glad that the Parliament voted the Concept of Reform of the Prosecutor's Offices, but I'm disappointed that the same Parliament is yet to examine the draft amendment to the Law on prosecutors, which has been ready since last summer. Because of these delays, we lost 1.8 million euros from the EU support and this is a heavy loss for the justice system”, said Efrim.
Another unaccomplished task is the reform of the Constitutional Court, but the outgoing official is confident that after the appointment of the new Cabinet, the new Minister of Justice will start this reform because it's an absolute necessity. Efrim says that he was often asked by Moldova's development partners about this reform and is sure that 2015 is the right moment to launch changes in this field.
“The Moldovan laws are good. In most cases, we have the expertise of the Council of Europe, of the Venice Commission, of the World Bank and other international structures that evaluate our laws, bills and decisions when we prepare them. This is true for most of the documents promoted by the Ministry of Justice in this period. The biggest problem is that the law isn't applied by the bodies supposed to apply it. The causes can be numerous. We still have to work a lot so that the prosecutors, the judges, the National Integrity Commission and the Anticorruption Center will apply the law correctly and equitably without finding excuses to not do their duty”, said the official.
Oleg Efrim hopes the next Ministry of Justice will take into consideration these observations and that justice reform strategy will be implemented with enthusiasm and professionalism. “We all expect visible improvements of the justice system and honest persons in office so that the people felt safe and comfortable in Moldova”, concluded the official.
Mariana Galben, IPN
