Why the appointments of chief prosecutors at DNA, the General Prosecutor’s Office and DIICOT are vital. What kind of people will Minister Predoiu and President Iohannis nominate?

Justice Minister Cătălin Predoiu has opened the selection procedure for new chief prosecutors (General Prosecutor’s Office, National Anticorruption Directorate, Directorate for the Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism), whose terms of office expire next year at the end of February.

The current line-up of chiefs, also selected by Minister Predoiu, has proved mediocre or even catastrophic, as G4Media warned three years ago. Predictably, Georgiana Hosu had to resign as head of DIICOT in September 2020, a few months after her appointment, after her husband was convicted of corruption.

Gabriela Scutea at the General Prosecutor’s Office and Crin Bologa at DNA have delivered little, but neither have they made for perfect servants. They didn’t live up to public expectations, but neither were they party lackeys. It is therefore hard to believe that their terms will be extended for another three years.

Cătălin Predoiu himself now has the opportunity to show that he understands the importance of the three key positions in the system of power, and to make somewhat more inspired choices as a result. The election of truly independent, strong and professional chief prosecutors is again becoming a vital issue for the balance of power in the state.

There is a real risk that in 2024 all power will go to the PSD. Now, we all saw during the Dragnea regime how important some key institutions, especially the judiciary, proved to be at a dramatic moment for Romanian democracy. At that time, it was essential that the General Prosecutor’s Office, DNA or DIICOT remained standing. In order to bring them down, the PSD then destroyed the justice laws in Parliament. The damage has not been fully righted even today.

With weak or mediocre prosecutors the power system will be out of democratic control if in less than two years we end up with a single party ruling the country. The new chief prosecutors will serve until February 2026. No one is saying that they cannot be replaced by the new power, as Liviu Dragnea and Tudorel Toader did with Laura Codruța Kovesi, but it is a long process with inevitable political costs.

On the other hand, Justice Minister Cătălin Predoiu will be under pressure from all sides to make new mediocre proposals that will guarantee peace of mind for the politicians in power. What interest would the PNL or PSD have in installing powerful prosecutors at the head of the General Prosecutor’s Office, DNA and DIICOT? They have been governing for a year without being seriously bothered by any state institution and the bulk of the money from the NRRP is only now starting to come in. Who wants to wake up, just now, with prosecutors at the door?

Why would Klaus Iohannis beat himself up by appointing chief prosecutors who might take him to task on his way out of office for the BMW affair or the Covid vaccine donation deal? No one wants a return to the Basescu era, when the head of state’s own family ended up being investigated.

But the situation is more complicated than it first appears. First of all, the Liberals will have to hand over the head of government to Marcel Ciolacu in six months’ time. According to the coalition agreement, the PSD will have the position of prime minister from May 2023. He will run the country for a year and a half, share public resources, big contracts and important functions. The PSD will organize the 2024 elections if the protocol is respected. Can the Liberals and Klaus Iohannis afford to give them playing space all over the field without the PSD fearing any institution?

Perhaps the liberals and the head of state have not realized that the PSD has already colonized key areas of the judiciary, which it controls in force: The Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM) and the High Court, where Lia Savonea cuts and hangs.

Take a look at the CV of the man backed by the PSD to represent civil society in the CSM, a 70-year-old communist prosecutor, a sinecurist. You will realize that Ciolacu’s party has not changed its true intentions toward justice very much. It may have hidden them better, but it has never given up its plan to bring criminal justice under control.

The Judicial Inspectorate of the CSM, headed by the wife of a former PSD prefect, further excludes judges from the judiciary in an exemplary fashion for their courage in sentencing corrupt politicians to prison. The methods of intimidation of magistrates from Dragnea’s time are still used, only today no one takes to the streets to defend justice.

So the PSD has already taken over the CSM and the High Court, which are the end of the judicial funnel. Do Minister Predoiu and President Iohannis realize how important the appointments of new chief prosecutors have become in this context?

The PSD’s forceful colonization of key state institutions is not only manifesting itself in the judiciary, but also in other control bodies such as the Competition Council. All this is already happening while the PSD does not yet have the Prime Minister and does not yet have all the power in the state.

Add to the above picture another reality: the justice system is emptying at the high speed of its best professionals. Experienced prosecutors and judges are retiring in droves in order to benefit from special pensions at today’s rates. Even if they are protected by CCR decisions and the amendment of the special pension law does not directly affect them, no one is at risk. Most prefer to leave the system once they reach 25 years of service.

The new chief prosecutors will therefore have to work with fewer people. Then, let us not forget, however, that the Government has adopted a number of amendments to the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure to bring the two laws in line with a number of decisions handed down by the Constitutional Court. The codes will now go back to Parliament, where there is a risk that they will again be chopped up by the PSD, PNL, UDMR majority.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope. The annihilation of justice or the accelerated degradation of the press cannot continue indefinitely without consequences. The European Commission has a monitoring mechanism that makes the granting of European funds conditional on respect for the rule of law. This mechanism has already been used in the case of Hungary, which has had to implement a series of reforms.

But Romania may not get there if it ensures in time that the internal control mechanisms that ensure balance in the state (justice, the press) work, especially when power is in the hands of parties with strong anti-democratic reflexes. For this reason, the appointments that Minister Cătălin Predoiu and President Klaus Iohannis will make in a few weeks’ time at the head of the major prosecutors’ offices are vital in the long term.

Traducere: Ovidiu Harfas