Prosecutors, judges in key offices to be subjected to external evaluation in Moldova

Chisinau, 31 July /MOLDPRES/ - The ethic and financial integrity of the prosecutors and judges in key offices of the justice sector will be subjected to external evaluation. Fifty five MPs adopted a draft law to this end in the second reading today.  

The document represents the third and last stage of the mechanism of external evaluation of judges and prosecutors from the main institutions of the justice sector. This is one of the international commitments taken by Moldova, in the context of the getting of the status of country candidate for accession to the European Union.

The legislative initiative comprises details on the subjects of the evaluation involved in this process, the procedure and criteria of evaluation, the procedure of contestation. Thus, in the process of evaluation of the financial integrity, the assets and expenses will be evaluated, related to the available and declared incomes. Also, decision-makers will verify the incomes and expenses not only of the subjects of the evaluation, but also of their family members.  

The evaluation of the ethic and financial evaluation will regard also more categories of subjects: about 140 judges (all presidents and deputy presidents of courts, including acting ones; all judges of the Court of Appeal), about 220 prosecutors (acting Prosecutor General, deputies of the Prosecutor General, prosecutors heads of sections or of departments, the anticorruption prosecutors and the prosecutors of the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crimes and Special Causes (PCCOCS), the chief and deputy prosecutors from the territorial prosecutor’s offices), as well as the candidates for eventual aforementioned vacant positions, which will win the contest till 2025.     

Two evaluation commissions, made up of six members, three national and three international ones, will be set up for the external evaluation of prosecutors and judges. Following the evaluation, the commissions will compile a report on the passage or non-passage of subjects, which will be submitted to the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM) and the Superior Council of Prosecutors (CSP). At the same time, a special panel of judges will be set up at the Supreme Court of Justice, which will consider the appeal submitted against CSM’s or CSP’s rulings which regard the passage or non-passage of the evaluation.        

Photo: Parliament