REFLECTAREA UNOR EVENIMENTE LEGISLATIVE, CU IMPLICAȚII ÎN PLANUL INSTITUȚIEI PRESCRIPȚIEI RĂSPUNDERII PENALE, ASUPRA PROTECȚIEI VICTIMELOR TRAFICULUI DE PERSOANE
THE REFLECTION OF SOME LEGISLATIVE EVENTS WITH IMPLICATIONS IN THE PLAN OF THE INSTITUTION OF THE PRESCRIPTION OF CRIMINAL LIABILITY ON THE PROTECTION OF VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Summary/Abstract: The relatively recent period can be characterized by a lack of involvement of the national legislator towards the system of protection of crime victims. This aspect is proven both by the lack of reaction of the legislator, who failed to correct some provisions with an impact on the prescription of criminal liability, as well as by some uninspired interventions made on several general provisions of the Criminal Code, which established the non-prescriptive character of crimes of trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable people. As a result of the Decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania no. 297/2018 and no. 358/2022, by which it was found that the legislative solution, which provided that the interruption of the period of limitation of criminal liability is achieved by fulfilling any act of criminal procedure, is unconstitutional, the effects of the special prescription were removed retroactively. These effects were consolidated in the national jurisprudence and as a result of the direct incidence of the principle of applying the more favorable criminal law, provided for by art. 5 of the Criminal Code, which the High Court of Cassation and Justice, through a decision pronounced in the resolution of some legal issues, considered it applicable in the matter of the rules regarding the interruption of the prescription course. In turn, some of the legislative interventions that appeared in 2020 also concerned, in a critical manner, the institution of the prescription of criminal liability, since the legislator, out of the desire to increase the protection granted to minor victims, omitted to recompose the legal norm of art. 154 para. 4 Criminal Code, on the occasion of the amendments introduced by Law no. 217/2020. This fact had the consequence of returning for a short period to the way of calculating the limitation period in the case of crimes of trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable persons and child pornography committed against a minor, in a way specific to the more favorable criminal law. In this context, the legislator's intervention on the punishment limits and the declaration of the non-prescription nature of some crimes of trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable people seems to be a rather late reaction, which cannot cancel the harmful consequences of the inactivity of the actors with a decision-making role in correcting the criminal legislation. In the pages of this study, we will analyze the negative aspects generated by these legislative events, which determined a much lower standard of protection for victims of human trafficking and which are likely to violate the positive obligation of the Romanian state to investigate and sanction a series of serious acts repressed by international conventions ratified by Romania. Failure to fulfill this positive obligation on the part of the state and the implications of a defective legislative policy marked the way the rights and freedoms guaranteed to victims are protected in our country, because the criminal justice system must ensure a real and effective protection of the values protected by law, so that the objectives pursued by the various international legal instruments do not become mere intentions.

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