Romanian Justice Minister Requests Dismissal Of General Prosecutor

The minister’s reasons for launching the request varied from procedural problems in Lazar’s appointment to the office in 2016, to the fact that he criticized the recent formation of a section to investigate magistrates.

In the announcement, Toader stated that upon documenting the prosecutor’s nomination for the office in 2016, he found that it a lacked a mandatory review on his recent activity, and that when he requested a copy from the country’s top judicial watchdog, CSM, it was dated one year after the decree which appointed Lazar as general prosecutor.

The minister also said that Lazar expressed critical opinions to the judicial reform pushed by ruling PSD-ALDE coalition, even after they were approved by the Constitutional Court, offering an example to the recently-established section to investigate judicial offences.

He also criticized the general prosecutor for growing the number of delegations between prosecutors' offices during his term, despite committing to lower them in his nomination prohect, and also for signing protocols with the Romanian Intelligence Service in 2016, which he stated “created the premises for a parallel judiciary”.

“The conclusion is that of the necessity to return to normalcy. This means to know and respect constitutional and legal competency, and an interpretation and exertion of the law on the principle of Constitutional loyalty (…) Therefore, we consider that the acts listed in the report, intolerable in the rule of law, demonstrate that the activity of Augustin Lazar contradicts legal obligations,” said the Romanian justice minister to conclude the announcement.

The proposal has a very high chance of leading to general prosecutor’s dismissal, as a similar request made in the case of former chief anticorruption prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi earlier this year ended with the Constitutional Court forcing President Klaus Iohannis to heed the minister’s recommendation, despite initially refusing to do so. The decision also gave the justice minister the sole competency to decide on the reasoning of dismissing chief prosecutors, whereas the president previously had the right to refuse the minister's request.

The assessment will be reviewed by CSM’s Prosecutor’s Section, although its opinion will be non-binding.

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