On Tuesday, 8th January the Minister of Justice repeatedly submitted a letter to Ivars Bickovics (Ivars Bičkovičs), the Chairperson of the Council for the Judiciary, with a request to put on the closest agenda of a meeting of the Council for the Judiciary a matter concerning cancellation of immunity of judges in cases of administrative violations and decide on support to amendments to the Law “On the Judiciary” and Law on the Disciplinary Responsibility of Judges.
The Minister of Justice stresses that the reform of administrative sentence system has come to an end – the Parliament has adopted the Administrative Responsibility Law which will come into effect on 1st January 2020. Since the new law states that administrative arrest will no longer be a possible sentence and the matter of immunity of judges is currently addressed on a public level, Dzintars Rasnacs, the Minister of Justice, invited the Council for the Judiciary to discuss a possibility to cancel the immunity of judges in administrative violation cases.
The matter concerning immunity of judges in administrative violation cases has been repeatedly put on the agenda of the Council for the Judiciary pursuant to requests by the Minister of Justice, however, examination of the request has been postponed to a time after reform of the administrative sentence system, that is, after excluding the possibility to use administrative arrest as a type of punishment.
Additional information
The Minister of Justice submitted letters to the Council for the Judiciary concerning cancellation of immunity of judges and prosecutors in administrative violation cases on 27th August 2015 and 10th October 2017.