Considerații privitoare la (in)admisibilitatea cererilor de sesizare a Curții de Justiție a Uniunii Europene în vederea pronunțării cu titlu preliminar asupra interpretării unor dispoziții comunitare în legătură cu prescripția răspunderii penale
Considerations on the (in)admissibility of referral requests to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of some community provisions in relation to the prescription of criminal liability

Summary/Abstract: Using solemn legal terms, our constitutional law stipulates, according to Article 124 paragraph 2, that: „Justice shall be one, impartial and equal for all”. Unfortunately, such apodictic provision still seems to be a desideratum difficult to obtain/maintain. We are especially referring to the larger-than-it-should-be scourge of the non-uniform judicial practice, which reveals even the inequality of justice. In this context, it is obvious that today, in the matter of statute of limitation for criminal liability (with reference to the undermentioned decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania and of the Supreme Court of Justice), the so-called principle „every man for himself”/„and the devil take the hindmost” seems to be applied, the consequence being that justice becomes a forbidden „lottery”. Usually, the judges/magistrates have a patriotic response, as a result of spontaneous associations between the principle of legal certainty and the national law. In other words, supposedly exists a certain „legal patriotism”, which however should not exclude taking into account Romanian's status as a member state of the European Union and the legal consequences of this status. For some time, exceeding the boundary of some professional rivalries (acceptable to some extent), the unjustified assault regarding some decisions of the Constitutional Court (qualified as „beneficial to criminals”) seems to be the prime concern for some judicial structures. In view of the above, the present approach shall focus, on one hand, on the issue of (in)admissibility of the applications initiating proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union, which have been repeatedly submitted by prosecutors, regarding national criminal law's compliance with Community law – based on the findings of unconstitutionality with respect to Article 155 paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code, which was declared by Decision no. 297/2018 of the Constitutional Court, taking into account the clarifications made by the Constitutional Court through Decision no. 358/2022, both in correlation with Decision no. 67/2022 of the Supreme Court of Justice, and, on the other hand, on the applications for suspension of criminal proceedings based on decisions that were given in similar cases in which the proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union were initiated. For the correct systematization of our opinion presented below, we consider it useful to: (i) indicate the legal provisions regarding applications initiating proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union; (ii) determine what is the meaning of the notion „fraud against European Union's financial interests”; (iii) demonstrate that those kinds of applications are inadmissible; (iv) present the state of applications for suspension of criminal proceedings which are similar to those in which the proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union were initiated.

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