Lia Savonea burst out in the recorded meeting of the CSM: “Let's discuss when justice was really captured in Romania.” Attack at Bolojan

The president of the Superior Council of the Magistracy, Liviu Odagiu, and the head of the supreme court, Lia Savonea, launched accusations in Tuesday's meeting of the judges of the CSM.

• They said that in the last year magistrates have been subjected to smear campaigns.
• “Absolutely false,” said the head of the ÎCCJ about something that Ilie Bolojan claimed.
• But there are more people responsible, think the two senior magistrates.
• “The population does not understand all these subterfuges, that we are in a state of law, that every person has the right to the presumption of innocence,” said Lia Savonea, head of the ÎCCJ.
• One of Lia Savonea's statements referred to the Recorder film “Captured Justice”.
• Which institutions did the magistrates report?

The section for judges of the Superior Council of the Magistracy adopted a decision to “defend the independence of Romanian judges” and decided to notify international bodies about the “unprecedented attack on justice”.

Head of the CSM accuses “a plan by which the judicial power is politically subordinated”

The president of the CSM, judge Liviu Odagiu, launched a harsh attack on the politicians, whom he accuses of wanting to subordinate the judiciary.

He emphasized that the material that is the basis of the decision regarding the defense of the independence of the judiciary includes “the express manifestations of the political factor towards the judiciary”, “press articles”, as well as “concrete actions of some politicians, who aimed at one thing: the destruction of the independence of the judiciary”.

The president of the SCM claimed that, against the backdrop of the smear campaign, public trust in justice fell below the European average.

“Our duty is to offer an answer to the citizens today, it is not our duty to victimize ourselves and that is not what I am asking you for. Let us try to preserve the strength and independence of the judicial system, of the judiciary,” said Liviu Odagiu.

“What I ask you is to guarantee rights and freedoms for the citizen. In the conditions that judges will reach the status of civil servants, they will become a function of the state, the balance between the strength of the state and the fragility of rights and freedoms will have no one to guarantee it.

What happened was a mechanism, a plan by which the judicial power would be politically subordinated and by which judicial independence would be lowered to the status of a civil servant”, accused the head of the Superior Council of Magistracy.

Lia Savonea: “Half truths were used”

Present at the meeting of the Section for Judges of the CSM, Lia Savonea, president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, said that the ruling on the defense of the independence of the judiciary is “an x-ray of how manipulation is done in a professional manner”.

She accused that “half-truths, half-lies were used, and in this way a manipulation and a stigmatization of judges and prosecutors, of all those who benefited from these pensions, was obtained.”

Reference to what Ilie Bolojan said: “Absolutely false”

“Yes, it was true that we had some conditions that were generated by the protection of independence, better retirement conditions both in terms of remuneration and the period of time we could do it”, explained the president of the supreme court.

“What was absolutely false was what the former prime minister said, during large public audiences and through prolonged campaigns: that (retirement no) is done by all judges at 49-50 years old, that it has statistics that did not matter that they were then presented in the real light by the Superior Council of the Magistracy. What the population remembered was that we are a privileged category”, added Savonea, referring to the prime minister Bolojan, but without naming him.

Savona: “To talk only about prescription, a form of manipulation”

The head of the ICCJ complained about a “mode of manipulation taken to the extreme: the disproportionate focus on criminal matters”, specifying that only 13% of the court's activity is criminal cases:

“Talking only about this criminal niche and from the criminal only about the prescription was also a form of manipulation and creating a false image, to generalize somehow, to amplify some simple ideas. When we discuss the criminal matter, willy-nilly we talk about corruption, about cases with violence, with serious accidents and of course they generate public emotion.

Or, by focusing on a case that, let's say, ended with an acquittal, not with a conviction, and by amplifying it, if it is continuously talked about and reduced only to this idea, that it was sent to court and no conviction was obtained, the population understood that, in fact, justice does not work”

“The population does not understand all these subterfuges, that we are in a state of law, that any person has the right to the presumption of innocence, to the trial of that person's case in a fair trial,” said Lia Savonea.

“We stigmatize the criminal judge”

In the opinion of the president of the supreme court, the criminal matter benefited from an excessive focus and that only certain cases “enjoyed the prescription of criminal liability”.

“Who is responsible for the statute of limitations? The judges? No. This material also says it very clearly and we all know it. The politicians also know it, those who politically used this matter as a weapon against the courts. The blame belongs to the Legislature, and we also see that the blame also belongs to the criminal investigation bodies, which, in an overwhelming proportion, sent the files they sent to the limit of criminal liability.

Then, we stigmatize the criminal judge because he is struggling to face European values ​​and European standards, to ensure the highest protection for Romanian citizens when we are in an apparent conflict of values ​​between the three courts: the Constitutional Court, the Court of Justice and the European Court for Human Rights”, added the president of the ICCJ.

“Let's discuss when justice was really captured in Romania”

Lia Savonea also referred to the “capture of justice”, the theme of the Recorder documentary, which since its publication on December 9 has so far collected 5.5 million views. The documentary is even entitled “Captured Justice”.

“Speaking of the capture of justice, let's discuss when justice was actually captured in Romania, because we can honestly talk about this topic: if it was and when it was, not now, when it tried to free itself from certain constraints.

And maybe that's exactly what's bothering: this independence that the judges have taken, to be guided by European values, by the real values ​​of the rule of law, it seems that the political power, the Government, the Parliament in Romania did not exactly like it.

And I completely agree with the conclusion that this decision tends to draw, if we succeed and accept it: that the purpose of this year-long manipulation, of these pressures, was to weaken the judicial power, to weaken the real independence of the judges”, added Lia Savonea.

Who did they report?

The SCM announced, at the end of the meeting, that it is notifying: the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Network of Supreme Courts, of Judicial Inspections, of Judicial Councils, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Consultative Council of European Judges, the international associations of judges (MEDEL, EAJ) – OECD and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Also, the Section for judges decided to send this decision of the CSM to the President Nicușor Dan, the Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the coordinator of the OECD accession process.