CAMERA PRELIMINARĂ DUPĂ DECIZIA NR. 641/2014 A CURȚII CONSTITUȚIONALE ȘI LEGEA NR. 75/2016. NOILE CARACTERISTICI ALE PROCEDURII ȘI CONSECINȚE PRACTICE

The Decision No 641/2014 of the Constitutional Court has radically changed the preliminary chamber procedure, transforming it into a procedure much closer to which it must be, in the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights, a criminal procedure conducted before a judge, even if it does not end in the ruling on the merits of the criminal charge, but it solves aspects of a particular importance on the merits concerned. The change has consisted in the overturning of the characters initially imagined by the legislator, overturning that has transformed the preliminary chamber procedure from a procedure conducted without the participation of the prosecutor, of the parties and of the injured party, with a limited contradictoriality between the prosecutor and the defendant and predominantly written, into a procedure involving the participation of the processual actors, completely contradictory and oral, in which it becomes possible to provide evidence on the main object of this processual phase (the legality of the evidence provided in the criminal prosecution phase and the legality of carrying out the acts by the criminal prosecution bodies). Unfortunately, the latest changes brought to the preliminary chamber by the adoption of the Law No 75/2016, although they represent a step forward in the attempt to make this criminal processual phase to comply with the elements of a fair procedure, do not follow precisely the spirit of the decision of unconstitutionality, as the legislator has still left question marks about the fairness of the procedure as regards the hypothesis that there have not been filed applications and/or pleas and as regards the limitation of the means of evidence.