The debate on the draft amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code risks remaining on the most erroneous question that could be asked: is this draft pro or anti-SPAK?
The Criminal Procedure Code is not the law of a prosecutor's office, a court or a political moment. It determines how far the state can go when investigating a person: when it enters their home, taps their phone, seizes their property or deprives them of their freedom. Therefore, a procedural reform is not evaluated by the question of whether it makes the work of an institution easier or more difficult, but whether it establishes the right balance between the effectiveness of the investigation and control over the investigative power.

Changes were needed.
The problems that the draft seeks to solve are not new. We only need to look at security measures. For years, we have seen decisions where the importance of the accusation, the sentence or general formulas for the risk of deportation took the place of a concrete analysis: who this person is and why the arrest is really necessary. In the case of Hysa v. Albania, the ECtHR found precisely the lack of relevant and sufficient reasons for detention. Then, with decision no. 00-2026-736 (80), dated 4 May 2026, the Joint Panels of the Supreme Court determined that the court must realistically examine the less restrictive measures and justify why they are not sufficient. Just a few months later, the draft requires that the risk be “concrete and present”, that the measures be based on concrete facts and that detention in prison be imposed only when other measures, even combined, are not sufficient. Here, something must be made clear: an important part of the draft does not invent new standards. It attempts to turn into written norms the standards that Strasbourg and our Supreme Court have already formed.

The same trend is seen in the construction of the charge. The draft requires that the prosecutor, when sending the case to court, justify each element of the crime and show concrete evidence for each of them. When the law requires a specific purpose, it must be proven separately and cannot be automatically deduced from the consequences. This is consistent with a direction that the Supreme Court had previously developed: an illegal act or a resulting consequence does not in itself prove criminal intent or intent. The novelty of the draft is that it brings this control much earlier. The prosecutor must have the complete charge at the moment he requests the trial, not wait for what is missing to be “completed” during the trial.
So, in some areas the path is clear: jurisprudence has seen the problem, the courts have formulated the standard, and the draft attempts to give it a clear procedural consequence.

Even the position of the lawyer needed to change.
Equality of arms has long been talked about in our criminal process. But a principle can be very beautiful in text and almost invisible in practice.
During the investigation, the prosecution has at its disposal the judicial police, experts, laboratories, public administration, as well as instruments of control, seizure and interception. There is an entire state apparatus to search for and record evidence. The defense attorney, to a large extent, has been the one who waits for the file, reads it and tries to oppose what the other party has produced. If equality of arms begins only after one party has created almost all the material on which the trial will be held, it is a delayed equality.
The new head of defense investigations changes this ratio. The defense attorney can contact individuals, take statements, document circumstances, request documents, create a defense file, and, in certain cases, present the elements directly to the judge.

This does not turn the lawyer into a private prosecutor. Equality of arms is not equality of powers: the prosecutor exercises public power, the lawyer does not. But if we have chosen an accusatory process, we must also accept its consequence. The defense cannot remain simply an opponent of the prosecution's evidence. It must have a real opportunity to seek and build its own evidence. Otherwise, we boast of the accusatory system in theory, while in practice we maintain one of the most typical features of the inquisitorial model: the creation of evidence mainly in the hands of the body that has also built the hypothesis of the accusation. The registration of the name of the person against whom investigations are conducted should also be seen in this light. The draft allows the judge to intervene when the investigation is actually directed at a person, but his name has not yet been registered. The person, for his part, can request control and, when there is an unjustified delay, the retrodating of the registration. It is not simply a matter of the registry. A person cannot be sufficiently suspected for the state to gather evidence against him, but not sufficiently suspected for the rights recognized by the law to be activated.

Why the label "draft against SPAK" is not enough
One provision of the draft directly affects the special system: Article 9 proposes to change the competence of the GJKKO for certain charges against its judges and prosecutors of the Special Prosecution Office. This provision should be discussed and justified separately. But it cannot be concluded from it that the entire reform is “against SPAK”. The limitation of detention in prison, judicial control over digital interventions, defense investigations, timely registration of the person, control over evidence and the new standard of the preliminary hearing apply to the entire penal system. And, as we have seen, some of them comply with standards that Strasbourg and the Supreme Court had established before today’s debate.
Therefore, a necessary separation is needed. A specific provision that affects SPAK may be opposed, but this does not make “anti-SPAK” a reform that, in the rest, regulates the relationship between every prosecutor's office, every court, and every person under investigation.

Not every objection from prosecutors stands, but some should be heard.
The Prosecutors' Association has raised concerns that the changes could fragment investigative powers, slow down investigations and limit the means of seeking evidence. It has also opposed the risk of a kind of “fragmentary investigative judge”, without changing the investigation model as a whole. This concern is not without foundation. In an adversarial system, the separation of roles must be clearly maintained: the prosecutor leads the investigation, the judge checks the legality of interventions that violate rights. If the judge starts to choose the direction, method or strategy of the investigation himself, the line has been crossed. Equally reasonable is the concern about the automatic use of disciplinary liability for procedural violations. A decision can be wrong and corrected by a higher court, without necessarily being a disciplinary violation of the judge.
But not every objection carries the same weight. The fact that judicial review requires more time or more reasoning is not in itself an argument against it. In criminal proceedings, some difficulties are precisely the price of legality. When the state seeks to take away freedom, to open the contents of a phone or to penetrate deeply into private life, it is normal that the burden of explaining why it is doing so is heavier.

Nor is the argument that defense investigations are unnecessary because the prosecutor has the obligation to collect evidence in favor of the person convincing. The prosecutor's objectivity is his obligation. The autonomy of the defense is the defendant's right. One does not replace the other. If we truly want an accusatory process, we cannot simultaneously demand that the creation of evidence remain primarily in the hands of one party.

The draft also has serious problems.
Accepting the philosophy of some of the changes does not mean accepting the draft as it is.
The most obvious problem is related to the media. Point 14 of Article 103 goes so far as to require that even the journalist or media outlet that already has the material in their possession obtain judicial authorization to publish it:
“In any case, publication cannot be carried out without judicial authorization.” The protection of investigative secrecy, privacy, the victim and the presumption of innocence is necessary. But a general regime of prior permission for publication is a much deeper interference. Especially when the proceeding body retains, in certain circumstances, the right to inform the public, a new inequality is created: the institution can give its own version of the case, while the journalist needs permission to publish the document with which he can verify it. This part should be rewritten.
Even the defense investigations, although one of the best innovations of the draft, have not been resolved to the end. The draft requires that the written statement taken by the defense attorney, after being signed by the declarant, be certified by a notary. Such a requirement must have a strong justification. If the lawyer identifies himself, documents the action, makes legal warnings and is responsible for the way he performs it, it remains to be seen whether notarization really brings an additional guarantee or just a formality and cost.

And the cost is no small matter. The prosecution uses the police, experts and laboratories with state funds. The defense investigation may require IT experts, financial experts, registrations, travel, technical verifications and documentation. If all this depends only on the defendant's economic capabilities, we risk creating the same right on paper and two completely different defenses in practice. Equality of arms that depends on the wallet is not complete equality. The draft also leaves several problems that practice has made obvious without sufficient treatment. In simulated operations, the requirement that, before the operation begins, there be concrete and verifiable data linking the person to the criminal activity should be codified more clearly. Otherwise, the line between detecting a crime and inciting it depends too much on how someone explains the event after it has ended.
A complete chain of custody regime is lacking for physical evidence. For drugs, weapons, biological samples or other items, a clear path must be followed from seizure to expert and then to court. The integrity of the evidence cannot be based solely on the assumption that each link has functioned properly.
Procedural inaction also remains a problem. Rights are not violated only when the prosecutor makes an incorrect decision. They are also violated when no decision is made at all, when the request remains unanswered and time erodes in practice a right that the law recognizes in theory. Similarly, property measures require a deeper analysis of proportionality, duration, the concrete connection of the property with the criminal act and the consequences for third parties or economic activity.
The other problem is the legislative technique. In some parts, the draft uses very long provisions, with many conditions, exceptions and consequences within the same paragraph. It is not just a matter of language. In criminal procedure, an unclear sentence can decide whether evidence is used, whether a person is kept in prison or whether an intrusion into privacy was lawful. An unclear norm gives the interpreter exactly the space that the reform seeks to limit. Therefore, the draft needs not only political and legal debate, but also deep technical editing.

What should the consultation do, before approving the draft?
It would not be serious to either reject the entire draft or approve it as is.
Its best philosophy must be preserved: individualization of measures, prison arrest as an extrema ratio, real judicial control, timely registration of the person, defense investigations, control of digital evidence, an indictment that proves each element of the offense, and a preliminary hearing that is a real filter, not simply a stop before the trial.
The time until approval should be used to correct what is currently weak. The boundary between judicial control and the direction of the investigation should be more clearly defined. The regime for the media should be rewritten. Procedural violation should be separated from disciplinary liability. The defense investigation should be financially resolved for persons without means, and the notarization of statements should be reviewed. The rules on simulated actions, the chain of evidence, property measures and procedural inaction should be supplemented. And the entire text should pass a serious filter of legislative technique.
Consultation is not an obstacle to reform. It is the opportunity for a reform with important ideas not to be undermined by solutions that can be corrected before they become law.
Ultimately, the reform must be subjected to a simple test: “Does it make abuse of power more difficult, without making effective investigation impossible?”
If the answer is yes, we have not weakened criminal justice. We have made it more credible. Because the efficiency of a system is not measured only by how easily the state can arrest, control or seize. It is also measured by the ability to detect and punish crime by proving, whenever it interferes with the freedom of the individual, that the interference was lawful, necessary and proportionate. This is the deeper meaning of many of the proposed changes: not less state, not less prosecutorial, and certainly not a procedure “against SPAK”, but less procedural power without explanation and more responsibility for the way that power is exercised.