“Now major review. Stop prosecutors who can investigate everyone without answering anyone»- Corriere.it

“We will propose a profound revision” of the wiretapping regulations and “we will rigorously supervise any diffusion that is arbitrary and improper”. This was announced to the Senate by Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, according to which the interceptions through the «selected and controlled diffusion» they have become «a deadly instrument of personal and often political delegitimization».

Before the Senate Judiciary Commission, the former magistrate who has now become Keeper of the Seals used strong tones: “The mandatory nature of the prosecution has translated into an intolerable arbitrariness”. Because the prosecutor “can find ideas to investigate against everyone without answering to anyone”.

The Minister of Justice he then outlined the programmatic lines of his mandate. Nordio hoped for a reform of the penal code in a “guaranteed and liberal sense which can be implemented in part with ordinary laws and for the more sensitive aspects also with a revision of the Constitution”.

Still on wiretaps, Nordio declared before the senators that “whenever there is a violation of the secrecy of the investigation” through the dissemination of wiretaps, “the inspection will be immediate and rigorous”.

The minister’s report touched on various aspects of the “justice planet”, for example the revision of the crime of abuse of office, loudly requested by the mayors and on which even Prime Minister Meloni agreed: «The statistics on the crime of abuse of office are alarming to say the least. Out of 5,400 proceedings in 2021, 9 ended with convictions before the investigating judge and 18 in trial”. Furthermore, these proceedings “have an unsustainable average cost” and “it is necessary to acquire paper material and opinions that confuse the magistrates and boil down to acquittals, no grounds for prosecution or filings”.

Among the topics touched upon by Nordio, in particular, the “presumption of innocence” which “continues to be vulnerable”, an “arbitrary and sometimes capricious” criminal action and pre-trial detention “as an instrument of pressure”.

The eternal theme of the separation of careers was mentioned in the Minister of Justice’s report: « «It makes no sense that the prosecutor belongs to the same order as the judge because he plays a different role».

Nordio also demonstrated «great pain for the «sequence of suicides» in prison saying that he will fight to “avoid cuts and devolve any remaining available resources to the penitentiary sector”. 79 prisoners have taken their own lives since the beginning of the year, the highest threshold in the last 20 years.

“I hope that the chambers will be summoned quickly to elect the lay members of the CSM”. concluded Nordio, underlining that “such a delicate constitutional body cannot remain suspended”.