The Section for Prosecutors of the SCM contests some of the conclusions adopted by the Section for Judges regarding the prescription of criminal liability and claims that the analysis that was the basis of the decision does not fully reflect the causes that led to the closure of some files.
Inside the Superior Council of Magistracy, new tensions are emerging between magistrates on the subject of closed files as a result of the statute of limitations on criminal liability. On Thursday, June 11, the Section for Prosecutors sent a statement declaring its disagreement with the Section for Judges, which adopted, two days ago, a decision by which it found the existence of an attack on the independence of the judiciary and decided to defend the independence of judges.
In the document adopted by the judges, the issue of prescription was also addressed, that is, the situations in which the criminal trials have ceased because the deadlines stipulated by the law have expired. According to the conclusions included in the judgment, the courts ended up “cashing in” on the criticism of public opinion, although many of the cases spent a large part of their time in the criminal investigation phase.
This conclusion was based on a statistical analysis carried out at the level of the CSM, which centralized data from all the courts in the country regarding the cases in which the intervention of the prescription was found after the decision of the Constitutional Court in 2022.
Analysis is incomplete
The section for prosecutors believes, however, that a simple statistical analysis cannot correctly explain what happened in all the cases in which the statute of limitations intervened, nor how the prosecutor’s offices and the courts acted.
“This conclusion was substantiated by an analysis carried out at the level of the Superior Council of the Magistracy, which had as its object centralized statistical data from all Romanian courts regarding the files in which the prescription of criminal liability was found to have intervened after the publication of decision No. 358/2022 of the Constitutional Court of Romania.
In the opinion of the Section for Prosecutors, a simple statistical analysis is not able to highlight in a relevant manner how the prosecutor’s offices and the courts have approached the issue of the criminal statute of limitations in relation to the CCR decisions no. 297/2018 and no. 358/2022.
Thus, the analysis did not concern the moment when the limitation period was found to have expired, respectively from the first instance or later, in order to detect the evolution of judicial practice in the matter. Also, the analysis did not cover the situation of the cases in which the intervention of the prescription was found following the admission of an extraordinary appeal or based on subsequent binding decisions of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, respectively it did not cover the situation of the cases in which, at a given moment, the rules resulting from the CJEU jurisprudence were applied.
Regarding the assessment that the courts would have become the apparent owner of the responsibility for the prescription in public perception, the Section for Prosecutors emphasizes the fact that, over time, the debates in the public space on the subject of the prescription were not generated by statistical indicators, but by determined cases, regarding defendants in high-ranking public positions or in the area of the business environment, with large damages, in which the criminal trial would have been carried out in an arduous manner, without an objective justification.
The prosecutor’s department also emphasizes the fact that the issue of the prescription of criminal liability was generated by the Romanian Parliament, which did not amend the legal provisions that were found to be unconstitutional by decision no. 297/2018, an aspect also retained in the decision of the Section for judges of June 9, 2026.
In addition, we reiterate the permanent availability of the members of the Section for debating the necessary changes in order to improve the criminal legislation and criminal procedure, availability that we have expressed since the beginning of the mandate, in the year 2023″. it is stated in the communique of the Prosecutor’s Section of the Superior Council of Magistracy.
