The President of Innsbruck’s Higher Regional Court, Wigbert Zimmermann, sees further open construction sites in the fight against corruption in Austria. There is still a “problem” in this country, “if you look at the recent, recent past,” he said in the APA interview. To fill a gap, he pushed for the Transparency Act to be passed. Zimmermann also spoke out in favor of a discussion on the bias regulation of constitutional judges.
Zimmermann, who took office as President of the Higher Regional Court last autumn, referred to the not yet officially published report of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), which identified major shortcomings in the fight against and prevention of corruption. The lawyer believes Austria is on the right track with the reform of the criminal law on corruption presented by the government – but “a lot is still unresolved”.
The Transparency Act and the Freedom of Information Act were “widely discussed, but never passed”. The judiciary and federal authorities are “very open here. The big brakes are the municipalities and regional authorities, who fear a huge additional effort”. “It would be high time to give up official secrecy,” Zimmermann was convinced. You have to “turn around” the situation that “basically everything is open and transparent and you create exceptions, such as in family law. That’s not for the public,” suggested the President.
Events within the judiciary have also not been cast in a good light in recent years, after the suspended section chief Christian Pilnacek and the Vienna OStA chief Johann Fuchs were or are themselves prosecuted and there is a suspicion that the appointment of OGH Vice President Eva Marek to head the OStA Vienna in 2014 could have been politically motivated. The criticism was “taken seriously” by reforming the appointment procedures for the President and Vice President of the OGH and the judicial selection procedures. This would now “do good” for the judiciary.
However, Zimmermann saw a possible conflict of interest in the area of constitutional jurisdiction, when judges also work as lawyers, as is currently the case. Most recently, the work of constitutional judge Michael Rami made the headlines, who once also represented FPÖ politicians and most recently, for example, former actor Florian Teichtmeister. “In terms of the overall look, it’s not optimal,” said the chief justice. “We should seriously consider how we will do this in the future,” he said, bringing up a declaration of bias that already exists de facto in ordinary jurisdiction. Constitutional Court members are currently responsible for reporting bias and withdrawing themselves from the deliberations. However, Zimmermann did not see the fact that VfGH judges are nominated by the parties as a “contradiction”. The ordering process only has to be “transparent”.
Zimmermann was also able to “gain a great deal” from the suggestion made by WKStA head Ilse Vrabl-Sanda, who spoke out against restricting the seizure and evaluation of mobile phones and laptops and for the “acting” of electronic communication when it came to political decision-making processes acts. The Higher Regional Court President described himself as a “great supporter of fundamental rights and privacy. But where transparent decision-making processes should be involved, there should also be access”. If there was an “actualization”, one would also get out of the “‘private sphere’ of the chat traffic”.
Zimmermann found dealing with the presumption of innocence in public to be quite problematic. “Someone who is suspected is worth protecting,” he said in principle in favor of forgoing media reporting until charges were brought. However, he would not make the publication of an investigation a punishable offense; this should be accepted by the media “as a matter of compliance”. However, he conceded that in individual cases “there will always be a balancing of interests”. “Public figures will not have the same protection as private individuals”.
Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler (ÖVP) had recently spoken out in favor of strengthening the rights of the accused with regard to the protection of suspects or accused. Zimmermann admitted that proceedings, especially those of the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA), “objectively take a long time or too long”, but he spoke out against an absolute maximum limit for preliminary investigations. He found the existing legal regulation with a control mechanism by a court to be sufficient. On the other hand, he identified a “need for improvement” in raising the cost rates for acquittals.
He expressly welcomed a separation of criminal jurisdiction and politics through the creation of a federal prosecutor, as currently planned by the government. He assessed the model of a three-person senate proposed by the Ministry of Justice as good and sufficiently democratically legitimized. Zimmermann, on the other hand, could not understand the objection of Constitutional Minister Edtstadler that additional parliamentary control was needed. The reason why the federal prosecutor’s office has not yet been implemented is the “shyness about being able to give up influence. Of course I’ll cap that if there is an independent Senate. Because otherwise it’s difficult to understand, because that’s the norm there is no incredibly complicated story,” the Higher Regional Court President found in clear words. Currently, the Minister of Justice has the right to issue a directive to decide whether to charge or not to charge.