Supreme Re-Draws Five-Judge Panels For The Second Time In A Month

The court will also have to redo the selection at the beginning of 2019, so as to select different panels for the year.

Three of the six five-judge panels will handle criminal cases, including appeals of Lower Chamber Chairman Liviu Dragnea to his corruption prison sentence and cases involving former Prime Minister Victor Ponta and Government secretary-general Toni Grebla.

All cases handled by the previous panels will be assigned to the new panels, thus ending their suspensions.

The chances of significant progress in the cases will be low however, due to the very short time the panels will have until the 2019 selection.

The Supreme Court initially re-selected its panel in November, after a new judicial bill changed the selection procedure and a Constitutional Court ruling had them redraw the bills.

The draw was later invalidated by the Bucharest Appeal Court, who ruled that the Supreme Court should have waited for the constitutional ruling’s reasoning document to be published for specific guidelines on how to perform the draw.

Top judicial watchdog CSM recommended the court, however, to redo the draw and raise the number of panels.

 

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