The event was chaired by Mrs. Diana Scobioala, the Executive Director of the National Institute of Justice. Welcome addresses were delivered by the head of the Council of Europe Office in Chisinau, Jose-Luis Herrero, president of Supreme Court of Justice, Mihai Poalelungi.
The European Convention on Human Rights sets the basic human rights and freedoms and provides for a mechanism for the protection of those. Moldova is part of the Convention since 1997 and is obliged to follow the commitments taken and assure abidance of all provisions of the Convention in order to avoid an eventual judgment against Moldova in Strasbourg.
In this context, the authors of the paper have analyzed and reviewed 196 sentences and 40 decisions of the ECHR against Moldova from 1997 until 2015 (31st of December). They provided a set of useful recommendations for every article of the Convention that should guide judges, prosecutors and lawyers in their daily activity especially in applying the ECHR standards at the national level, in this way decreasing the number of lost cases at Strasbourg Court.
The experience of Moldova in the last 20 years has motivated the authorities to take actual actions to improve the situation pertaining to the implementation of the Convention and the case law of the Strasbourg Court by Moldovan judges, lawyers and prosecutors. Due to continuous efforts, today for example it is observed a steady decrease of cases on ill treatments and torture brought to the Strasburg Court, that is due to the harmonization of the national law to the European one, institutional changes introduced within the Public Prosecutor Service and consolidation of the capacities of legal actors through different trainings, seminars, round table meetings and exchange of good practices.
One of the major issues found by the European Court in cases against the Republic of Moldova concerns violations of the right to liberty and security arising inter alia from the detention on remand not based on a reasonable suspicion that the applicants committed an offence and the failure of the domestic courts to give relevant or sufficient reasons on detention on remand.
”The Council of Europe supports Moldova for decades in many sectors such as: democracy, fight against corruption, justice sector reform, assistance to national human rights institutions, combatting ill-treatment and impunity and others. Thus we gladly welcomed the idea of the compendium and supported it. The paper is first of its kind and I hope it will be useful tool for the law enforcement authorities especially when implementing the ECHR standards in Moldova. At the same time you should continue working on improving your professional and institutional capacities to offer Moldovan society a fair, efficient and independent justice” mentioned Jose-Luis Herrero, Head of the Council of Europe office in Chisnau.
In February 2017, the Committee of Ministers has adopted the Council of Europe Action Plan for the Republic of Moldova 2017-2020 to support key national reforms and ultimately bring the Moldova’s legislative and regulatory frameworks, institutions and practice further in line with European standards.
The activity falls within one of the objectives of the project “Support to Criminal Justice Reforms to the Republic of Moldova”: To enhance capacity among key stakeholders to ensure the compliance of the criminal justice sector legislation with European standards and to support the institutional reform of the Public Prosecution Service.
