Creation of Ethics Committee postponed again

The Parliament's Legal Commission on Wednesday postponed, for a second time, the advancement of a bill proposing the creation of an Ethics Committee, explaining the bill needed further adjustments, Info-Prim Neo reports. At the first postponement of the bill, the Legal Commission members sought to change the makeup of the Ethics Committee, an autonomous state body whose intended role is to deal with conflicts of interest in the public sector. The current version of the bill proposes five members on the Committee, one representatives from each the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and the Anticorruption Center, in addition to a chairman and a deputy appointed by Parliament for 5-year terms. This time, concerns appeared in the Legal Commission that the three members on the Committee, besides the chairman and the deputy, would lack stability in their posts due to the method of their appointment. “We need to develop a mechanism to ensure stability for the other Committee members as well. These should be also appointed by Parliament, and the modality of their dismissal should be the same as that of the chairman and the deputy chairman, meaning with the Parliament's two-thirds' majority”, argued Liberal MP Valeriu Munteanu. The draft Ethics Committee Law received the Government's approval on March 30. Under the bill, the Committee will supervise all the issues related to the incomes and property owned by government officials, judges and prosecutors to prevent conflicts of interest.