site.btaSupreme Court Refers Penal Code Texts on Vehicle Confiscation to Constitutional Court

The Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) referred to the Constitutional Court a request to declare unconstitutional certain texts of the Penal Code related to car confiscation, the SCC said Friday. 

The texts in question relate to the confiscation of a vehicle or the imposition of a fine equal to the value of the vehicle when it is not owned by the offender.

The request points out that there are no reasons for the draft law accompanying the creation of the new provisions mentioned and indicating the reasons and technology of their creation, respectively their meaning and purpose, as well as the objectives pursued by them.

"Setting aside this fact, and the fact of the inherently devaluing authority of the law, there is a lack of commitment to the observance of language norms and precision in the verbal framing of statutory prescriptions, and in the performance of purely technical acts such as referring to the exact text, to which the referenced norm corresponds, the result of the normative drafting in question is the transformation of texts that contradict the Constitution, in whole or in part, into part of the law in force," the SCC said.

The problems posed by the four provisions are insurmountable by interpretation in the way prescribed by the Statutory Instruments Act, because they involve the introduction of ambiguous prescriptions, of provisions that are contrary to fundamental provisions of criminal law and the regime of its basic institutes, such as punishment and preventive measures in the Criminal Code, and accordingly contrary to the concept on which each of these institutes is based, to their content, to the legal logic in their creation and to how they are intended to be implemented, the SCC statement said. 

According to the magistrates, the constitutional principle of legality, enshrined in the foundation of the rule of law, has been violated, as the predictability of legal regulation has been undermined and legal certainty has been destabilized.

The amendments to the Penal Code came into force in August 2023.