The Venice Commission has no remark against the Vetting Law, which vets
Judges and Prosecutors. The opinion for the four questions was published
by the Voice of America.
Regarding the first question, if there is conflict of interest for the Constitutional Court judges who are reviewing the case, since they also are subject to the Vetting Law, the answer of the Venice Commission is:
“Disqualifying constitutional judges due to the existence of conflict of interest would totally exclude the chances of having a judicial review of the Vetting Law, for its constitutionality. This would undermine the guarantees secured by a functional judicial review of the legislation. This situation may be considered by the Constitutional Court as an extraordinary circumstance which could require avoiding the disqualification principle with the purpose to prevent failure of justice”.
The second question is related to the independence of the judiciary when vetting of Judges and Prosecutors is done by institutions depending from the central government. The Venice Commission answers:
The High Inspectorate of Declaration and Audit of Assets, the Information Securing Directory and the Appeal College Commission have features similar to judicial institutions and have the competence to verify evidence collected by executive institutions. According to Venice, this system does not violate the competences of the judiciary.
As for the third question, which is about either the Vetting strips Prosecutors and Judges of their right to address internal courts, Venice says that “The Vetting Law offers enough elements to conclude that the Appeal College could be considered as a specialized jurisdiction which offers judicial guarantee for persons affected by the vetting procedure”.
As for the fourth question, on either the private life of judges and prosecutors is violated, according to Article 8 of Human Rights, Venice says:
“The vetting of their image is an intervention, but it cannot be seen as an unjustified intervention or opposed to Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention”.
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