Italy's right-wing government's controversial bill to strengthen the rights of defendants "is not a war or a clash with the judges...who must apply the law," foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Monday
''There is no war, no confrontation with the judges. We are convinced that in a democracy, as Montesquieu said, the separation of powers strengthens the balance," said Tajani.
"The laws are written by Parliament, not by the judges, who must apply the law," Tajani added.
The bill, which the cabinet approved last Thursday, limits the use of wiretaps, complicates procedures for ordering arrests, scraps the crime of abuse of office and curtails the right of prosecutors to appeal against acquittals for less serious crimes.
The bill's measures were long advocated by former premier and billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who died last week after years of legal battles with prosecutors. Berlusconi founded the conservative Forza Italia party, of which Tajani is the national coordinator and a co-founder.
The government claims the bill will help streamline Italy's notoriously slow and inefficient justice system but has been fiercely criticised by magistrates and opposition parties, who say it will make it harder to convict criminals.
Berlusconi frequently complained that the raft of legal woes he faced during his lifetime were due to "politicized magistrates" abusing their power for political reasons.
