No minister can be held accountable for his political opinions or for drafting or adopting a regulatory document, says the Constitutional Court while motivating the decision on institutional conflict between the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) and the Government on controversial GEO 13 adoption.
11 days ago, the Constitutional Court admitted the Senate Speaker’s appeal on the judiciary constitutional conflict between the Government and the National Anti-corruption Directorate arisen from the DNA’s investigation on the circumstances in which Grindeanu Cabinet has adopted the controversial emergency ordinance 13 amending the criminal codes. The constitutional judges have thus ruled that there is a constitutional conflict in this case.
The CCR argued that by starting investigations on the ministers who signed the GEO draft, DNA assumed an attribution that it doesn’t actually have, namely the control over the adoption way of a regulatory document.
“Only the Constitutional Court is empowered to check the adoption of the Government’s simple or emergency ordinances, and no other public authority” CCR notes in the motivation released in Friday.
“No minister can be held accountable for the political opinions or actions undertaken to draft or adopt a regulatory document as law,” the judges claim.
The judges argue that probing into legality aspects of the Gov’t simple or emergency ordinances “is exclusively related to resorting to the fundamental law, meaning the Constitution.”
Furthermore, the CCR magistrates draw a parallel to the parliamentary immunity, arguing that “this immunity related to the decision-making action is also enforceable, mutatis mutandis, to the members of the Government, as delegate decision makers.”
The Constitutional Court also says that the anti-corruption investigation on the GEO 13 adoption had created a conflict between the Public Ministry, implicitly DNA and the Government for, if a minister had been held accountable, it would have meant that the separation of the state powers would be broken.
As for the opportunity of adopting primary regulatory acts (laws, simple or emergency ordinances), the CCR states that “the regulatory document is the exclusive expression of the law giver’s will.”
“Therefore, only the Parliament cand decide the fate of the Government’s regulatory document, by passing the draft bill/ordinance or vetoing it”, the CCR concludes.