New law on prosecution service to be presented by yearend

The Prosecutor’s Office of Moldova and the OSCE plan to finish drafting a bill on the prosecution service by the end of 2011. In a roundtable meeting involving experts from the Baltic States, Prosecutor General Valeriu Zubco said the reform will be implemented in stages, while the amendment of the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office will generate changes to the Constitution, Info-Prim Neo reports. ”Any reform aimed at reorganizing such an institution as the Prosecutor’s Office implies risks and essential changes as regards firing and hiring,” said Valeriu Zubco, stressing that the related risks in Moldova are not significant as the personnel policies are decided by the Supreme Council of Prosecutors and the Qualification Board. Valeriu Zubco also said that the role and place of the prosecution service and the powers of the prosecutors should be clearly defined. The Prosecutor’s Office intends to create a modern legal framework that would meet the European requirements. “The prosecution service will be demilitarized and will be granted another status. The prosecutors may have the status of magistrates,” the Prosecutor General stated. According to him, the status of magistrate will guarantee the prosecutors’ independence and the authorities will not be able to influence the prosecution process. Prosecutors from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whose countries’ prosecution services have successfully completed the transition to European norms, were invited to share their experience and best practices with their counterparts and experts from Moldova. “The project does not aim at providing a single model for reform - rather, Moldovan officials can learn about the experiences of the Baltic states when confronting the same problems, to see what worked and what didn’t work, without reinventing the wheel,” said Ambassador Philip Remler, the Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova. Deputy Prosecutor General of Lithuania Darius Romlasaitis expressed his certitude that the prosecutors in Moldova know what they have to do and the initiated discussions will stimulate the reformation process. “The reform must lead to evolution, not revolution,” he stated. The roundtable meeting is part of a larger project to support the prosecution service. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the OSCE Mission to Moldova and the General Prosecutor’s Office of Moldova in March.