Summary

One of the key issues in the drafting of the new Code of Criminal Procedure is determination of the role of the police and the prosecutor’s office and the relations between them in the pre-trial procedure. The article focuses on issues which have arisen in this context from the organisational and legal perspective.
The author shows that the provisions of the draft Code which declare the independence of the police as an institution of pre-trial procedure and at the same time grant to the prosecutor’s office certain possibilities to give binding orders to the police only offer half-solutions. Thus, the responsibility for criminal matters at the pre-trial phase is divided between the Ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs depending on the fact whether or not the prosecutor’s office subordinate to the Minister of Justice has been involved in the proceeding of the criminal matter. However, this is not in conformity with the requirement for non-overlapping of competence.
The pre-trial procedure can be divided into two separate stages where both the police and prosecutor’s office act at their own discretion and would not have the possibility to interfere in each other’s activities. From the aspect of criminal law, this solution is problematic since due to the different objectives of the police and the prosecutor’s office, the actual goals of the criminal procedure may suffer.
The author argues that the prosecutor’s office should be regarded as responsible for the conduct of the whole pre-trial procedure and that the police should be given the possibility to be involved in the procedure through organisational-legal institutes. The author describes such possible institutes as devolving delegation, conserving delegation, and analyses the differences between delegation and mandate, as well as those between singular and general mandate and delegation, etc. The author seeks to find an answer to which of the institutes suits best in order to build up the pre-trial procedure so that the actual objectives of the procedure do not suffer and that the organisational and legal clarity and responsibility is maintained.