Cristian Tudor Popescu Source: AGERPRES PHOTO
Journalist Cristian Tudor Popescu harshly criticized Monday's decision of the Constitutional Court regarding the rejection of the draft law that provided for the reform of magistrates' pensions, stating that the CCR blocked the second round of last year's presidential elections because it is the only institution that wants to keep its “privilege” of “imparting justice in Romanian society”.
“Why did the Constitutional Court of Romania block, even if it had started, the second round of the presidential elections that would have made Dumnezeilă, the candidate promoted by the KGB, president? Out of patriotism, out of love for the country?”, asked the journalist, in a short message published on his Facebook page and entitled “The Russians were taking the bread from the mouth of the Romanian Justice”. Cristian Tudor Popescu thus refers to the cancellation of the first round of the presidential election won by the independent candidate Călin Georgescu.
“No. The CCR judges and magistrates simply got angry because the Kremlin was then throwing Romania into chaos, isolation and mockery, taking the bread from their mouths – because we, the Judiciary, are the only ones who have, together with the shameless pensions, the privilege of upsetting justice in Romanian society, sowing chaos and making fun of the citizens of this country, we, Romanian justice, not the Russians!”, wrote Cristian Tudor Popescu.
The Constitutional Court of Romania admitted, on Monday, the notification submitted by the High Court of Cassation of Justice (ICCJ) in relation to the law on the pensions of magistrates, for which the Government pledged its responsibility in Parliament on September 1, and established that the normative act is unconstitutional. The supreme court charged, among other things, that “once again, the importance of service pension in the economy of the principle of judicial independence has been ignored”.
The reasons invoked by the CCR concern the lack of approval of the Superior Council of the Magistracy (SCM), which could mean extrinsic reasons, i.e. of form, but not of content (intrinsic reasons), according to HotNews sources.
The law declared unconstitutional by the CCR stipulated that the magistrates' pension could not be higher than 70% of the last net salary received, compared to 80% of the last gross salary received, as it is now.
The normative act also provided for the establishment of the retirement age for magistrates at the standard age of the public pension system, namely 65 years. Now, magistrates can retire if they have 25 years of service, and in the Bolojan law the provision was that in order to retire, magistrates must have 35 years of service.
