12-hour marathon clears abuse of office

After 12 hours of discussion, the Justice Committee of the House of Representatives closed its examination of the Nordio bill at 4 a.m. on the night between Monday and Tuesday, rejecting all amendments. The measure will be in the Chamber next week for final approval. Symbolic norm, the abolition of abuse of office, but then, among the qualifying points, the umpteenth package of changes to the discipline of wiretapping, the new discipline of pre-trial detention and the strengthened notice of guarantee in addition to the inappellability of acquittals.
Committee chairman Ciro Maschio, Fratelli d'Italia, does not hide his satisfaction: 'Commitment fulfilled, from next Monday the general discussion can start'. And on the drastic acceleration of the work, after weeks of stalemate, Maschio emphasises that 'in the Commission, the majority had repeatedly announced and reiterated its intention to respect the deadline of 24 June for the approval in the Assembly, and so it was. To avoid the risk of not having enough time available on Tuesday and Wednesday, it was decided to conclude in the night session. The opposition,' he added, 'had plenty of time to do its part, to harshly criticise the measure by intervening on all the amendments, in a session that lasted almost 12 hours'.

However, if the 5 Stars are asking the President of the Chamber of Deputies to return the measure to committee, contesting its accelerated and insufficient examination, Deborah Serracchiani, head of justice for the Democratic Party, attacks: "We will be in the trenches every night, in the Justice Committee and in the Chamber, just to oppose this Nordio bill that Forza Italia has pulled out after months, with the sole purpose of not being left holding the bag and at least being able to show off the scalp of the abolition of abuse of office.

Precisely with regard to the deletion of the offence of abuse of office, in recent days, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio has tried to neutralise one of the main arguments of his opponents, the contrast with the present, and above all the future, EU regulations with the new draft directive. At the meeting of the Justice Ministers of the EU countries last week, Nordio claimed to have won the consensus for a softening of the text of the directive, shifting the adoption of abuse of office in the overall arsenal of measures against corruption from compulsory to optional, enhancing, Nordio argued, the wide range of regulations in the Criminal Code to combat crimes against the public administration.
In terms of content, the Ddl contains measures of both substantive and procedural criminal law. In fact, the cancellation of abuse of office is accompanied by the rewriting of the offence of trafficking in influence, cancelling the changes introduced in the Spazzacorrotti law.

A prohibition on the publication, even in part, of the content of wiretapping operations is introduced in the wiretapping rules in all cases where the latter is not reproduced by the judge, in the grounds of a decision, or used in the trial. A prohibition is provided for to include in the transcripts of wiretaps expressions allowing the identification of persons other than the parties. Finally, an obligation is introduced for the prosecutor to remove from the transcripts expressions that are harmful to the reputation, or concerning sensitive data of persons other than the parties.