The National Anticorruption Directorate’s (DNA) request for the Lower Chamber to approve its criminal probe against Social Democratic Party’s (PSD) Lower Chamber lawmaker Eugen Bejinariu was sent back to the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, for a period of two weeks, at the request of PSD MP Eugen Nicolicea, who reported “a procedural incident.”
The Judiciary Committee Chairman’s request was adopted with 80 votes for, 31 against and 2 abstentions.
“I want to report a procedural incident. I want to say that this request is being made on the basis of a report authored by the Judiciary Committee and at this moment we have a procedural incident, in the sense that Article 63, Paragraph 5 of the Constitution says that bills or legislative proposals included on the previous Parliament’s order of the day will continue the procedure in the new Parliament. We don’t have in the Constitution the continuation of the procedure for decisions or other kinds of documents. The same goes for Article 253 of the Regulations. So, there is no continuation procedure. I’m asking the group leaders to demand a resend to the committee in order to settle this procedural incident,” Eugen Nicolicea stated at the rostrum.
PSD’s Lower Chamber MP argued that the report in Eugen Bejinariu’s case is authored by a Judiciary Committee that no longer exists, considering that its current membership is different.
“Moreover, the report is authored by a committee that no longer exists. Back then there were MPs from other parties – UDMR, PPDD, for instance – and now we have USR. Notice that USR was unable to have a say within the committee, but parties that no longer exist did. [It will be sent back] for at least two weeks, because these procedural incidents may lead to the resumption of debates within the committee,” Eugen Nicolicea concluded.
The plenary meeting in which the DNA’s request for the Lower Chamber to approve its criminal probe against ex-minister Eugen Bejinariu should have been put up for vote was suspended on 5 December 2016, because the quorum was not met. An identical decision had been taken the week before, for the same reason.
