Analysis. Central Executive Council of the National Association of Judges: ‘It is a reform that doesn’t concern the actual needs of justice, but expresses the clear intention to implement control by politics over the judiciary.’

written by Mario Di Vito

Topic Italy

June 1, 2024

Twenty minutes is the time it takes to walk to the Quirinal Palace, the seat of the President, from the Prime Minister’s office at Palazzo Chigi at a leisurely pace. On Wednesday, around noon, that’s all the time it took for the Council of Ministers to approve the project for justice system reform which aims at a move towards the separation of the careers of judges and prosecutors, something that had always been an unreachable dream for Silvio Berlusconi in all his long years in government.

Justice Minister Nordio calls it an “epochal” reform. Meloni calls it a “just, necessary and historic” one. The text is only three pages and one line long, with eight articles (including transitional provisions). And its scope is quite a bit smaller than expected: the last meeting among the majority to iron out the details took place during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, after Mantovano and Nordio’s meeting with President Mattarella. The idea of defining the role of lawyers in the Constitution was dropped; same with the abolition of mandatory prosecution. The bill does, however, set up the separation of careers between the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office.

It doesn’t say so explicitly, but that is the direction: two High Councils of the Judiciary (CSM) will be set up, both headed by the President of the Republic, but with separate........

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