Venice Commission: There is by no means a financial threshold for abuse of office

Romanian newspaper „Adevarul” has obtained the official position of the Venice Commission on the most problematic legal issue in Romanian politics of the past year: the so-called prejudice threshold that should be imposed in defining the crime of abuse of office, the threshold below which the deed would be decriminalized.

Two decisions of the Constitutional Court and Emergency Ordinance no. 13, which led to massive street protests earlier this year, were based on a misunderstanding of a report by the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s legal body.

The misinterpretation has now become an obligation imposed on Parliament to establish a financial threshold for the prejudices caused by the crime of abuse of service. At the request of the newspaper „Adevarul”, the Venice Commission clarified the scope of the report and the meaning of the conclusions it had in mind when drawing up the report.

„The report on the relationship between the political and criminal responsibility of the ministers refers, according to its title, only to the situation of the ministers.

It states: ‘… the Venice Commission considers that national criminal provisions on’ abuse of office ‘,’ excess of authority ‘and other similar expressions should be interpreted narrowly and applied with a high threshold so that they can be invoked in cases where the deed is of a serious nature, such as serious crimes against national democratic processes, violation of fundamental rights, undermining the impartiality of public administration, etc. ‘. (paragraph 102).

Therefore, the nature of the act is decisive, and the threshold to which it refers is by no means a financial one. Moreover, this threshold applies, of course, only to the general rules of criminal law on abuse of service, but not to other offenses such as corruption, money laundering or abuse of trust. ‘

Justice Minister, Tudorel Toader, said last week he would come up,in short term, with a bill on the threshold of abuse of office .