It is expected that the separation of the powers of the Attorney General will take place in two stages, with the Legal Committee choosing that it will follow the model of the Audit Office. That is, first to deal with the easy ones, which are the determination of an 8-year term and the control of his decisions, and then with the difficult ones, which are the breaking of his double role with the creation of the General Public Prosecutor.
The issue was discussed yesterday by the Finance Committee of the Parliament, with the Attorney General, Giorgos Savvidis, referring to his recommendation for an internal audit by a group of officials of the Legal Service, which was forwarded, but finally the bills came. He reiterated his concerns about the bills and stressed: The decision is not mine, it is yours, and the absolute judge of constitutionality is the Supreme Constitutional Court. Mr. Savvidis added that because the conditions are such that the President of the Republic is not expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, but neither is the Parliament and the course that will be followed is to make the separation, to move people if the law is deemed unconstitutional, then you understand what will happen. The major problem is how the law will be judged before its implementation, since the President and the Parliament agree on the separation, he said.
He spoke out against the position that the state's legal advisor should not be independent, since this carries risks.
On the issue of the separation of powers of the Attorney General, MP Fotini Tsiridou said that the bills came before us and the Committee was not happy to see the disagreement. There are many bills, they are before us and we tried as a Legal Committee to see how the reform can proceed without there being constitutional issues. She added that if the bills go ahead as they were submitted, they are likely to be deemed unconstitutional and the consequences will be terrifying. One option that the Legal Committee saw, with the overwhelming majority, is to look at the term, the other is the unaudited one and see how these issues are progressing.
At this point, the Attorney General stated that in order to review his decisions, an internal solution with regulations was promoted.
