Military justice is changing: the Council of Ministers, in fact, following the broader delegation provided for by law 17 June 2022, n. 71 concerning the reform of the judicial system, approved, yesterday, definitively, the legislative decree regarding the functioning of the Council of the Judiciary "with the stars" and the related system1.
Among the innovations, the introduction, in each military investigative office, of the figure of the deputy military prosecutor and the alignment, to the extent compatible, of the discipline of the Military Judiciary Council with that of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, with the increase in the number of the members appointed within it.
To explain the reasons for these innovations, the Military Attorney General at the Military Court of Appeal, Marco De Paolis, who, in"Note on the draft legislative decree containing provisions on the functioning of the Council of Military Judiciary and provisions on the military judicial system"2, in his signature, states: “The need to provide for the figure of the deputy military prosecutor also in the field of military justice was manifested in particular in the aftermath of the 2007 reform, when the number of military judicial offices was drastically reduced (from 9 to 3 in first instance and from 3 to one on appeal).
Although in the ordinary judicial system this figure is foreseen only for the large prosecutor's offices according to a very different proportion, the peculiar conformation of the territorial competences of the military courts (and therefore of the related prosecutor's offices), as well as the peculiar specialty of the figures of police officers military judicial (mainly Corps Commanders, i.e. soldiers not specialized in criminal law and military criminal law) is such as to require the presence in the military prosecutor's offices of a peculiar organic figure who supports and assists the chief prosecutor in the delicate tasks of managing a office which territorially extends, for each military prosecutor's office, for approximately one third of the national territory. Or which, in the case of Rome's military prosecutor's office, even embraces the vast foreign territory".
"As for the second aspect - continues the Prosecutor - the high and delicate functions that pertain to the governance of a criminal judiciary require adequate skills and adequate dialectics and broad discussion within the Council. And to obtain these effective operational tools it is essential that dialogue and discussion take place between a number of qualified subjects that is certainly greater than that currently expected, precisely to guarantee the best and most in-depth evaluation of the topics under discussion. This activity, which evidently does not always appear to be sufficiently guaranteed if the number of members of the body, which is actually divided into commissions even more limited in number, is as small as the current one of five".
The Minister of Defense, Guido Crosetto, is satisfied, according to which "the approval of the legislative decree on the military judicial system represents an important step that gives greater effectiveness to military justice. A provision that also guarantees a military justice system that is up to the challenges of our time"3.
