PACE COMMISSION TO CONSIDER REPORT ON SITUATION IN MOLDOVAN JUDICIARY

The standing Commission for Legal Issues and Human Rights at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will analyze the current situation in the Moldovan judiciary system. A report to this effect will be prepared by the Commission Rapporteur Bernd-Bernhard Fabritius, who is also a Co-Rapporteur on Moldova to the Standing Foreign Affairs Committee at the German Bundestag.

On Thursday, the European parliamentarian met in Chisinau with Moldovan Prime Minister Pavel Filip and said that in the course of his visit to Moldova he would like to learn more about how the separation of powers principle is observed here.

“We are interested to learn more about the Moldovan judiciary’s independence of state structures, politicians, business community, as well as about the EU-Moldova Association Agreement realization and the assistance from the European Union the republic might need in this work”, said the parliamentarian, who is going to prepare the said Report before the end of 2016.

The interlocutors exchanged opinions about the list of priority reforms in the AA Roadmap, including the reforms of the judiciary, banking and finance system, business environment, which the Moldovan Government is projecting to realize by this upcoming July 31.

Premier Filip assured that the Government shall fulfill all its commitments to foreign partners. Pavel Filip said he hopes for signing a new Memorandum with the International Monetary Fund at the beginning of July and thus to defrost external financing.

“Thanks to mobilization and cooperation with the Parliament, we have managed to advance in legislation improvement, in particular to adopt the Law on the Prosecution Service, the “Integrity Package” etc. To improve our business environment, we have diminished administrative pressure on economic entities by imposing a moratorium on state-made checks, by simplifying many procedures and reducing the number of necessary permissive documents for business running. To better the situation in the banking and finance system, we have launched the preparation of a sectoral strategy”, said the prime minister.

As already reported by Infotag, the Republic of Moldova has been under monitoring by the Council of Europe for over 20 years now. In 2011, the CoE Co-Rapporteurs visited Chisinau twice to assess political situation in the country, progress of the judiciary reform, struggle against corruption and organized crime, Transnistrian conflict settlement progress, and to analyze the draft Action Plan to meet RM commitments. Then, they indicated the chief task for both the governing alliance and the opposition: the need to reach a consensus on domestic reforms in the republic.

In May 2012, the Co-Rapporteurs came here once again, shortly after which the Moldovan Parliament adopted the highly disputable Law on Ensuring Equality.

The Chisinau authorities have been long requesting to move Moldova over to the next, post-monitoring stage. However, Strasbourg would not agree to this, so far, because of Moldova’s backlogs in its commitments to the CoE, in particular in the judiciary reform and struggle against corruption and organized crime.