“If you educate the people to like the scaffolding, if that’s what you gave, that’s what you got!”

“It is a lack of legal capacity to explain certain legal notions in a way that the public can understand. If you are afraid of what people say then you leave things idle. Mr. Predoiu is a very good jurist. It was surprising to see him bend to the decisions of the CCR. Mr. Predoiu said that only the CCR device matters, not the considerations. Any jurist knows that the considerations of the CCR decisions are equally binding. I think it was a huge misinformation. There are things that cannot be interpreted, because they are nailed down. CCR said that a value threshold is needed to describe an intensity of harm to the natural person. These things had to appear whether we like it or not. In the EU there is rather abuse of power. Not every civil servant at the counter does this, but the one with power and authority in the state. Society has an appetite for criminal law: to send people to prison. You don’t necessarily recover the damage by going to jail. Threshold is needed because gravity is totally different. The CCR and the Venice Commission say that criminal law must be the last rationale in legislation, because it is very expensive. If the damage is not so great, we can take it back from the person through civil and administrative sanctions. We don’t always have to get stuck in criminal law where no one counts how much it costs. If you educate the people to like the scaffolding, that’s what you gave, that’s what you got! Criminal law must be used when the offense is serious and causes great harm. Most importantly we get our money back. The problem is not not to go to prison at all, but to go to prison in extremely serious cases and to recover the damages. People are sent to prison all on our money. We must be very careful in the legislation regarding sanctions and criminal law. Abuse in the workplace is not necessarily an act of corruption. CCR said it is not about violating a secondary act, but about the law. And here we have a legislative problem. I don’t know what the poet wants to say. It is a lack of predictability. How can it not affect people? It is a criminal law sanction. Maybe I have a judge in Giurgiu who looks at 2 lei and a judge in Cluj who can look at 1 million lei. If the Parliament is paralyzed because it has no book science, then let it go home. It is a lack of real transparency of the Parliament and a lack of debate. I was very hurt and scared by what happened in the Parliament. The Romanian Parliament no longer exists,” said Georgiana Iorgulescu, executive director of the Center for Legal Resources, in the OFF/OnTheRecord show, on Aleph News.

The former member of the CSM claims that, in the case of changes to the CP and CPP, the Romanian Parliament has no expertise:

“The problem is never the people. No one is obliged in this country to know Law. The Parliament has the obligation to discuss, the Ministry of Justice has the obligation to communicate. There are CCR decisions that have been sitting idle for 6 years and suddenly you are in a hurry: there are 250,000 lei, there are 9,000 lei, there is 0. There was no substantiation behind it. At the root of people’s worry is mistrust. The biggest riot was in the Parliament. We have Parliament only on paper. The light goes out, the president of the Judiciary Commission has a secret meeting with I don’t know who and the game is stopped. We no longer need Parliament. We have a single authority in the state – the Executive – and constitutionally this thing belongs to the dictatorship. It is written in the Constitution that the Parliament is the only legislative authority. Civil society, in a democratic world, is asked if it wants to take part in the debates. It is the citizen’s right not to have expertise as long as you – the Ministry of Justice, Parliament – have the ability to explain and not do things under the table. If you, parliamentarian, know so much that you are afraid why I am writing on Facebook, forgive me, the problem is not with the citizen. The problem is always with the one who has the power. The criminal policy of a state is made by the Ministry of Justice. This is what we are talking about, the lack of legal qualification and lack of expertise. We don’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel”.

The return of the SRI in the criminal process, after 7 years, raises big problems, believes the head of the Center for Legal Resources. Because in the CPP nothing is secret, while at SRI everything is secret. And, thus, the procedural guarantees are different:

“The criminal procedure code is the theme of my life. It is not only about corruption cases. Intelligence services anywhere in the world have a very clear line of demarcation: they collect information, they don’t collect evidence. Intelligence services are not criminal investigative bodies. They were before 1989, they are not anymore. Judicial police officers are criminal investigation bodies. In 2016, the CCR resolved the issue: the SRI does not collect evidence regarding common law crimes, but collects information regarding threats to national security. A danger does not turn into a crime. Proof that in 2021 there were 3128 MSNs and there were only 2 national security files. We have a new article that says: recordings resulting from specific information gathering activities can be used as evidence in criminal proceedings. I turned myself back into the criminal investigation body I was previously banned from. Why is it not good? Because the procedural guarantees are different. Everything the SRI does is secret, it is classified, including information from the criminal process. There is nothing classified in the Criminal Procedure Code. They are different worlds. The problem is that MSNs will be exact and can be used for almost any type of crime. It is a total overlap with the Code of Criminal Procedure. The consequence is the following: the evidence is classified, how do I defend myself? The philosophy – he has nothing but to listen to anyone or because I have nothing to hide – is very serious: the right to private life is sacred. I will change my inner and outer behavior, which leads to a distortion of who I am as a person. It is about the transformation of the individual without him realizing it. During Ceausescu’s time, we all assumed that we were listened to in one way or another. During the communist era, I spoke in a whisper, I had a hidden behavior, without having anything to hide. The right to private life is one of the fundamental rights. If we give up so easily, this is where we return. After 7 years, to return from where you left, means that it is kind of ok from the society. Was there any discussion about the role of SRI in society? If there is a rape on MSN, it is said that the SRI is obliged to do what any citizen does, because it is flagrant”.

The amendment of the CPP by the Romanian Parliament raises many problems for lawyers as well, says Iorgulescu:

“I can’t defend you if I don’t have ORNISS. I, the judge, request the SRI, which is related to the Executive, to declassify or move to another classification level of the evidence. Access to classified information from the file is conditional on holding the ORNISS authorization. If the SRI says that it does not declassify the evidence, you must change your lawyer and get one with an ORNISS certificate, with a green light from the SRI. The CPP amendment violates the CCR decision. Who is in charge of the issue of ORNISS certificates? Whose business is it? It is much more serious: we will have a unique list of lawyers who have been certified by ORNISS. The right to defense is totally violated, such a thing does not exist anywhere in the world. Since when does the Executive triage lawyers? I’m very disappointed, I expected the lawyer’s guild to come out in the second second. It is a very serious violation of the right to defence. Everything is extremely serious and there is a great silence. It is very important to hear the opinion of the guild”.

If the CCR decides on a jurisprudential revision, it must be substantiated and convincing. Because such changes occur when they are events of a serious social nature, believes the executive director of the Center for Legal Resources, in the OFF/OnTheRecord show, on Aleph News:

“I am very curious what will happen at CCR. I would be very surprised to see how he motivates because it will be very difficult for him. Probably the abuse will stop and the services will pass. I am willing to discuss CCR after seeing their reasoning. I am extremely curious how they will overturn some extremely well-founded previous decisions. It will be a revival, but it must also convince us. It must be legally based. The jurisprudential upheaval occurs when there are events of a serious social nature. We need as a country to understand that the police is the main institution in which an extremely large amount of investment must be made.
“Is there no trust? Let’s form it! We have DOS. If we have invested 30 years in MSN and not in the Police, obviously they do not have the levers to operate. What are we doing as a society? Let it go, sir, it is better to go as we have done so far at the hands of the SRI. The SRI work area is not a criminal area. What factual basis did they have when they asked for 3128 mandates on national security? The CSM report has remained in the fish tail even now. A lower court judge cannot really censure a ÎCCJ judge. If 3,000 warrants resulted in 3,000 crimes, then the ÎCCJ would be paralyzed. The problem is with the ÎCCJ in the matter of issuing national security warrants. It’s a national security risk when we ever find out why there are so many MSNs in this world. We may have surprises on MSN.”