Prime Minister Dorin Recean made the first statements after the special panel of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) annulled the decisions of the Pre-Vetting Commission regarding twenty-one candidates and ordered their re-evaluation.

The prime minister says he was not surprised by the decisions and that they contribute to the perpetuation of corruption.

“I want to say to the corrupt minority in the judges’ ranks that you did not surprise us. (…) I looked that there is a copy-paste and, in fact, an effort of defiance was attempted. You won’t succeed. We will continue to insist that we have legislation that allows the system to self-clean. I have also looked at the texts. Some of it I understand was written outside the Court. I want to warn those who participate in such an effort that this is perpetuating corruption and everyone who participated in these actions will be held accountable under the law,” says Dorin Recean.

Olesea Stamate, chairwoman of the Committee on Legal Affairs, Appointments and Immunities, also reacted, saying the decisions are an “attempt by corrupt groups in the system to block the extraordinary evaluation of judges and prosecutors” and that they were deliberately issued just now.

“The decisions were issued, in my opinion, intentionally at a particular time:

1. Immediately after the parliamentary vote on the vetting law
2. After the last plenary session of the Parliament, when the Parliament went into parliamentary recess
   and 3. Probably most importantly – from the moment the remaining judges at the SCJ received the notification from the vetting commission – from the moment they have 20 days to decide whether to go to vetting or resign. But before submitting their resignation applications, they decided to give one last message, one last attempt to sabotage the reform,” says Stamate.

She also said that she had examined some of the decisions and found in many of them a “clear abuse, a clear violation of the legal rules.”

“All the more clear is the intention to sabotage when we see that all the decisions have been annulled. So it was not thoroughly examined to see if indeed some deserved to be returned for evaluation or not. The principle of ‘after us and the flood’ has been followed”, says the Chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs, Appointments and Immunities.

On Tuesday evening, 1 August, twenty-one decisions of the candidates for membership of the Superior Council of Magistracy (SCM) and the Superior Council of Prosecutors (SCP) were made public, after the special panel of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) annulled the decisions of the Pre-Vetting Commission on the twenty-one candidates and ordered their re-evaluation.