Today, July 14, 2017, Necuvinte Association, through a representative, participated in the public debate on the proposal to amend the Law 217/2003 on the Prevention and Combating of Domestic Violence, organized by the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men, the initiator of this proposal, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Labor and Social Justice.

The debate has been long awaited, because Necuvinte Association has sent a point of view on numerous provisions that affects the functioning of the current emergency protection order, as well as unconstitutional and/or unenforceable provisions brought as duties of the Romanian Police.

Having the primordial interest in the victims of domestic violence and the need to amend this law in a way that does not hinder their access to justice, we have been very interested in this debate, hoping to hear the views of the two institutions that would have to apply the new legal provisions, namely the Romanian Police and the Public Ministry.

The debate held today was attended by 16 people, 5 representatives of the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men, 2 representatives of the National Institute of Statistics, one representative of the National Council of Magistracy and 8 representatives of the civil society.

The Ministry of Administration and Interior, the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police and the Public Ministry were not represented at this debate.

Mrs. Secretary of State Aurelia Gratiela Grăghici spoke in the first 75 minutes of the debate, and among other themes, she drew attention to the fact that most of the proposals for amending the text proposed by the agency coordinated by her came from Necuvinte Association,  but our proposals were not considered useful, although the representative of the National Council of Magistracy made the same comments to the law.

We request an official answer from ANES, punctual and detailed on every observation submitted by the Necuvinte Association with no. 64/AN/31.05.2017 to which we received on 20.06.2017 this answer: “Regarding the comments made on the normative draft proposal in question, we mention that your proposals have been analyzed and will be discussed within the the public debate that will be organized according to the provisions of Law No. 52/2003. “

In our opinion, today’s debate was not public in the sense that not all the decision-makers involved in the implementation of this law were present and did not took into account all the observations made by civil society.

Necuvinte Association’s point of view was sent to 5 public institutions. We received an answer from 4 of them. The National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men did not respond to our appeal and did not took into account any relevant comments made to the legislative proposal.

We consider that today’s debate was strictly a checkmark of the provisions of  Law 52/2003 on the transparency of decision-making in the public administration and not one aimed at adapting the current proposal to the comments received from those who had a different view then the official point of view of the agency.