Necesitatea instituirii unor remedii eficiente în cazul depăşirii duratei rezonabile a procesului penal. Contestaţia privind durata procesului penal –
The necessity for the introduction of an effective remedy in case of exceeding the reasonable length of the criminal trial. Challenge of the duration

Summary/Abstract: The necessity for the introduction of an effective remedy in case of exceeding the reasonable length of the criminal trial is a natural consequence of the guarantee for reasonable time of procedures provided for in art. 6 §1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. First, this paper presents the European context and the evolution in time of the mechanisms destined to ensure the regulation of an effective remedy in this regard, addressing the reference time represented by the refreshing of the European Court of Human Rights’ case law in case Kudla v. Poland and the other acts adopted by the Council of Europe regarding this aspect. The next part describes the situation in Romania prior to the entry into force of the New Code of criminal procedure, when there was no remedy for exceeding the reasonable length of a criminal trial. In the light of the European court’s case law and the remedies provided for in other states, but also relying on judgments delivered by Romanian courts, the author argues for the mitigation of the sanctioning treatment applied to the accused as an effective remedy when the court finds that the criminal proceedings were of excessive length. Most of the article is devoted to the critical analysis of the challenge of the duration of the criminal trial, regulated in art. 4881-4886 of the New Code of Criminal Procedure, which entered into force on 1 February 2014. By referring to all the conditions imposed by this Code, as well as to the transitional provisions of Law no. 255/2013, the current study analyses the compatibility of the new regulation with conventional requirements in the context of the landmark judgment on the subject matter, in case Vlad and Others v. Romania, decided on 26 November 2013. The topicality of the subject is given by the transitional provisions which state that the challenge of the duration of the criminal trial can be filed only regarding trials initiated after 1 February 2014, meaning that such challenge can be filed only after 1 February 2015, given the fact that according to this provision it can only be filed one year after the initiation of the criminal investigation.

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