An increase in the budget and an arsenal of measures: Eric Dupond-Moretti unveils Thursday his “action plan” from the Estates General of Justice, marked by a new increase in the budget of the ministry to respond to the finding of “advanced dilapidation” of the institution. According to a source familiar with the matter, the Keeper of the Seals, who arrived at Place Vendôme in the summer of 2020, will commit on Thursday to increase the Justice budget from 9.6 to 11 billion euros in 2027.
This commitment will finance the hirings already announced
Over five years, this commitment represents an additional envelope of 7.5 billion euros, a budgetary effort which far exceeds that granted under the five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy (+2 billion) as under that of François Hollande (+2.1 billion), it is argued at the Chancellery. This funding will be secured in a forthcoming programming and orientation law to finance the promises to hire 10,000 justice officials by 2027, including 1,500 magistrates, and to mitigate the “chronic under-formatting of the workforce” noted by The general state.
The roadmap to be presented by Eric Dupond-Moretti from 10 a.m. to the press will be inspired by the some 50,000 consultations of professionals and citizens carried out within the framework of these Estates General launched in October 2021, and the very alarmist summary report submitted to the Head of State in July.
The plan should introduce mechanisms to speed up civil justice procedures
Despite a further increase in the Justice budget for 2023, many lights are still red today: magistrates and clerks took to the streets at the end of November to shout their “dismay” and prison overcrowding has just broken records.
In detail, the plan should also introduce mechanisms to speed up the procedures of civil justice which, according to the report of the States General, is experiencing a “slow downgrading” and “no longer manages to settle disputes in decent conditions” while ‘it represents 60% of judicial activity (divorce, employee-employer litigation, etc.). Criminal justice should also be on the menu with a titanic project: the overhaul of the code of criminal procedure which will be done largely “in constant law”, without new law. This reform, announced at the end of October by the Head of State Emmanuel Macron, aims to simplify this procedural bible, the number of articles of which has swelled by nearly 40% between 2008 and 2022.
Alongside this “recodification”, the executive should also initiate a reflection on the inflammable subject of the procedures governing judicial investigations. The States General had judged the current system, which is based on three types of investigation (flagrante, preliminary, judicial information), a factor of “inequality” and confusion, but had declared themselves in favor of maintaining the investigating judge.
The situation in prisons should also be mentioned
The minister should also mention the situation in prisons “increasingly frightening”, according to the recent diagnosis of the Comptroller General of places of deprivation of liberty. In December, the number of detainees broke a record for the second month in a row, with 72,836 detainees for 60,698 operational places, i.e. a density of 120%.
Faced with this chronic evil, the States General had pleaded for a mechanism fixing for each establishment a threshold of “major overcrowding” beyond which could be “considered” measures of “regulation” of the prison population. This mechanism is favored by some unions, while the Chancellery traditionally prefers to insist on the ongoing construction of 15,000 new prison places planned by 2027 and on the entry into application of already existing reforms.