Csm, Pinelli: “The Board is close to default, we need to work harder”

The Superior Council of the Judiciary is close to default and needs to work harder. The newly elected vice-president Fabio Pinelli says so as he opens the first session of the plenum, in which he declares “the emergency is over” linked to the scandals (Palamara, Davigo) and proclaims the need to ensure one’s function “with correctness, transparency and fidelity to one’s mandate constitutional” in order to be once again an institution “deserving” of the trust of citizens and magistrates.

Given the “significant backlog”, starting from the appointments of the heads of judicial offices with gaps to be remedied dating back to 2018, Pinelli has launched an “accelerated process for the first 90 days” to give a sign of the “change of pace that the citizens expect”. The plan, “fully shared” with the head of state Mattarella and unanimously approved by the plenum, translates into the abolition of the traditional “white week”, the practice whereby work stops one week a month

In the next three months, the development of a “constituent project”, the result of an organizational rethinking “which identifies the functional junctions that cause inefficiencies”, is expected. The CSM is in fact in “serious functional difficulty, it has dilated times for discussion and decision”, which require “modifying these rhythms”.

This is demonstrated by the data on the appointments of heads of judicial offices. Not counting the openings dating back to 2018 and 2019, the CSM that has just taken office has inherited 35 managerial and 56 semi-managing appointments that should have been made in 2021, and almost the entire burden of 2022 with 81 managerial and 91 semi-managing still all to decide.

As for the confirmations of the heads of the judicial offices, scheduled every four years to remove the inefficient ones, there are 295 files to be defined, some dating back as far as 2015 (which means that the decision will come when it is now useless, because the following four years has already finished). The delays also involve the approval of the organizational projects of the judicial offices: those relating to the three-year period 2020/2022 “have not yet been evaluated except in part”. And 122 projects presented by the prosecutors and 167 by the heads of the judicial offices remain to be evaluated.

In the first plenum, the CSM gave the green light to the dismissal of some magistrates chosen by Minister Nordio to complete his staff. The first important appointments will arrive soon: the first president of the Cassation Pietro Curzio is about to retire (the government has a law ready to increase the retirement age of magistrates, but would like to approve it after Curzio’s retirement).

Still in the Cassation it will be necessary to fill the post of assistant prosecutor, where the challenge between the general advocate Renato Finocchi Ghersi and the general secretary of the CSM, Alfredo Viola, is expected. There are also the prosecutors of Naples and Florence to choose. In Naples the favorites are the prosecutor of Catanzaro Nicola Gratteri and that of Bologna Giuseppe Amato; in Florence the prosecutor of Livorno Ettore Squillace Greco and the Italian representative at Eurojust, Filippo Spiezia.