The European Commission's report on the state of Romanian Justice is due soon. We already know it will be very critical of the justice court system, which the head of state emphasized last Sunday when he delivered a brief speech for the Justice Day. But please don't worry that the report will assail those responsible for the present state of things. Like every year, what the EU officials announce will be very rough and clear and in the end it will prove mere words. Everything will be sweetened in the last minute, as we are used to. It has already been agreed that the safeguard clause will not be activated, although Romanian Justice fully deserves it and although it could have been the only chance for our system to recover, at least for fear of the public opinion. For years on end the officials in charge of monitoring Justice have done more evil than good by deciding to be more relenting than the case and by thinking we deserve one more chance. The monitoring officials have not become aware that to be relenting in the Balkans means to be mild, just as they have not understood that Romanians achieve things only if pushed from behind. They have kept on finding excuses for the faint progress of Justice, for the poor laws changing every year because of incompetent politicians who use the laws in order to cheat and avoid Justice. So Romanian Justice has taken politicians as an example, deciding to see to its own financial interests. Courts are in charge of thousands of trials by magistrates asking for abrogated financial rights, so the courts reach favorable sentences. Courts decide on their own professional qualifications, as high as possible, just like the anti-corruption prosecutors did, although the law settles any promotion is made by examination. How can we describe the Justice officials' will to clean their own house, since no magistrate has been sanctioned for reaching abnormal solutions ending up with people deprived of their own homes or innocents imprisoned for years? Measures are taken not even when the "judicial error" is admitted by Justice itself by decision revising and, which is more serious, by ECHR sentences against Romania. The European Commission's report will be useless unless it calls things by their true names, unless it mentions the thousands of complaints from Romanian citizens, pointing to magistrates' abuses. It will be failing if it thinks the fight against corruption isn't working only because of political interference meant to get some cases against MPs stuck. This is about times when corruption is overt and almost all the public acquisitions and the big bids are preferential. Everything that is being built, from roads to residential quarters, is dedicated to someone. The true problem of Romanian Justice is not the majority of magistrates who do their job honestly, sacrificing their personal time, health and lives, but the groups who rule it, groups who have got power over the system and who decide who heads which court. They reach solutions depending on personal interests and those who oppose it are driven away. Such people are friends of politicians and the big lawyers' companies that have huge profit coming from state institutions, right now disguised carriers of bribe (the commission contract, that is). These are the magistrates who are not responsible, no matter what happens. This should be the target of the EU officials, who should forget about the stories with imperfect laws. Even if good of bad, they are not applied everywhere the same way, anyway. Who is still cleaning our Justice, unless there emerges some powerful personality from among the present rulers, so powerful to lead to a change of consciousness? Maybe from our "beloved" Superior Council of Magistracy we shouldn't expect anything anymore. This institution is working separate from public interests, it feels no care about those who need to be done justice and it only decides in favor of magistrates complained against, just as it is very good at wasting public funds on "juridical tourism" or privileges the privileged don't deserve.

Razvan SAVALIUC