Butikofer: Green Party in EP to propose organisation of debates about rule of law in Romania

The Co-Chair of the European Green Party of the European Parliament, Reinhard Butikofer, declared on Monday that the group he belongs to will propose the organisation within the European Parliament of a debate about the control and balancing mechanism of the rule of law in Romania. 

"I decided to come here [in Bucharest - ed. n.] to do two things: to prepare the visit of President Iohannis in Strasbourg, on October 23, when the president will address the European Parliament and I also wanted to prepare an initiative that our group hopes to launch in the European Parliament, with the proposal that when we meet again after the parliamentary recess, we hold a debate during the European Parliament's October plenary session about the mechanism of control and balancing of the rule of law in Romania. The European Parliament is the Parliament of all European citizens, which is why we consider that when the rule of law is threatened anywhere, in any country of the European Union, the European Parliament has to get involved," Reinhard Butikofer told a press conference at the Parliament Palace. 

He added that in the preliminary report presented to the Venice Committee in July, there are "reasons to be alarmed". 

"The Venice Commission wrote in paragraph 160 of the preliminary findings that" there are important aspects that are likely to undermine the independence of Romanian judges and prosecutors and the public confidence in the judiciary, and then, three paragraphs later, the Venice Commission details nine recommendations to the Romanian authorities. The Venice Commission does not say that the judiciary should not be reformed, it says that there are nine particular aspects that are a reason of concern, so they want to, and again, I quote, they want "the Romanian authorities to reconsider the system for the appointment or dismissal of high-ranking prosecutors", they want the authorities to remove, or better, to find the provisions, enabling the superior prosecutors to invalidate prosecutor's solution for groundlessness, to remove the proposed restriction on judges and prosecutors' freedom of expression, to supplement the provision on magistrates material liability, to reconsider the proposed establishment of a separate prosecutor's office structure for the investigation of offenses committed by prosecutors and judges, to reexamine the grounds for verification of CSM members. to remove the possibility to revoke elected members of the CSM, through the no-confidence vote of the general meetings, to identify solutions, enabling more effective participation of the CSM members, to abandon the proposed early retirement scheme. These are not superficial matters. They go to the very core of what we mean when we use the term "judicial independence", the Co-Chair of the Green Group of the EP said. 

Reinhard Butikofer considers that corruption is one of the system's most lethal vices.