Referral on technical surveillance mandates declared inadmissible

The Supreme Court of Romania dismissed as inadmissible a referral for the resolution of a legal question submitted by the Court of Appeal of Bacău, thereby upholding the procedural status quo and leaving the lower court’s handling of the specific issue to be determined without higher guidance. The dispute concerned a procedural question in criminal matters regarding whether a prosecutor is obligated to refer a request to the judge for rights and freedoms under Article 148(10) of the Code of Criminal Procedure when assessing the necessity for a surveillance collaborator to use technical devices for photo or audio-video recordings, specifically in the context where a technical surveillance mandate for video, audio, or photographic surveillance already exists. The decisive legal basis for the dismissal is the procedural framework governing the submission of legal questions to the Complete for the Resolution of Legal Questions, implying that the specific factual or procedural circumstances did not meet the statutory criteria for admissibility under Article 477 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which mandates the obligatoriness of decisions from the date of publication in the Official Gazette.