Europe 1 with AFP 9:45 p.m., September 01, 2022

Thursday, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin tried to defuse the hostility of the police to the reform of the judicial police by receiving their executives.

However, according to testimonies collected by AFP, his desire to maintain the heart of the project only reinforced this hostile feeling.

Gérald Darmanin tried Thursday to defuse the hostility of the police to the reform of the judicial police by receiving their executives, but his desire to maintain the heart of the project only reinforced it, according to testimonies collected by AFP.

The two parties have however agreed to a new meeting "in a month", according to the entourage of the Minister of the Interior and the participants, during which the leaders of the PJ will have to present proposals for amendment.

Many "rejected" proposals for reform

"It's shameful," protested a PJ investigator on condition of anonymity, pointing out that many proposals had already been made during the working groups on the reform.

"But all were rejected," he recalled.

A participant preferred to see the good side of things with "a fairly frank exchange" and "an important gesture" from the minister who received them, which he had never done before.

However, he added, "we understood that the reform would go to completion".

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Concretely, nothing has changed while the reform of the PJ, tested in three then five new departments, must be generalized in 2023. The project, carried by the Minister of the Interior and the Director General of the National Police Frédéric Veaux plans to place all the police services of a department - intelligence, public security, border police (PAF) and judicial police - under the authority of a single Departmental Director of the National Police (DDPN), dependent on the prefect.

Currently, each service is accountable to its hierarchy.

A single director for all police professions

Thursday, the Minister repeated his attachment to the departmental level and the creation of a single director for all police professions, which was felt by the participants as an end of inadmissibility.

The PJ police made it a red line.

For them, the departmental level has no meaning in terms of the fight against organized crime.

They fear a dilution of their specificity and the end of their independence vis-à-vis the administrative power.

In August, they organized themselves to sound the alarm by creating an association "apolitical" and "without union label": the National Association of the Judicial Police (ANPJ).

The police have since received the support of magistrates, starting with François Molins, one of the highest magistrates in the country.

On Wednesday, the latter said all the bad things he thought of a text which "is not going in the right direction" and "will have" disastrous consequences for the security of citizens and the independence of justice".

Darmanin "cannot imagine the extent of the discomfort"

On Thursday, the Prime Minister seemed to hear the anger of the PJ investigators.

“There are concerns that have been expressed, of course they will have to be addressed,” she said.

"It's going to end very badly", predicts an investigator, for whom Gérald Darmanin "cannot imagine the extent of the discomfort".

"We are heading for disaster. It would be better for him to say right away that we are giving up on dealing with organized crime in this country".

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A member of the ANPJ promises new mobilizations, platforms or petitions to make the minister understand that it is "not a sling" but "opposition, unease, great concern".

"We are the last bulwark against the mafia," he says.

The boss of the police, Frédéric Veaux, who has spent his entire career in the PJ and is leading the reform, concentrates the harshest criticism.

Some denounce his "autism" on the file.

"It is logical that the PJ is worried and fights, for fear of being dissolved in the great whole of investigations into small offenses that are quick and profitable to elucidate", confides a source close to the government, "they must obtain guarantees".

If some participants in the meeting on Thursday preferred to nurture the hope that Mr. Darmanin would reconsider his positions, others did not believe it, because the reform is "written for a long time".

She was also strongly supported by Emmanuel Macron during his presidential campaign.