• Eric Dupond-Moretti announced this Thursday around sixty measures resulting from the work of the Estates General of Justice.

  • In addition to a large budget increase, the Keeper of the Seals promises an increase in hiring, the establishment of "participatory" civil proceedings and an overhaul of the code of criminal procedure.

  • The Union of Magistrates believes that the measures announced are “in the right direction.

How to reform a justice considered "too slow and too complex" by citizens and out of breath by those who render it?

This is the delicate equation to which the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, has engaged.

The former lawyer-star unveiled this Thursday around sixty measures to "refloat" an institution on the brink of crisis.

Main objective: to "simplify and modernize" the procedure in order, in particular, to drastically reduce the duration of justice while reducing the workload of the magistrates.

"Justice has been the subject for thirty years of political, budgetary and human abandonment", he insisted.

He immediately announced an unprecedented budget increase.

Since his arrival at Place Vendôme in 2020, the justice budget has increased by 8% per year, from 7.6 billion in 2020 to 9.6 billion currently.

This Friday, he promised to increase the envelope allocated to justice to nearly 11 billion euros in 2027. An increase which will make it possible to revalue salaries, to finalize the plan to create 150,000 prison places by 2027, to modernize the courthouses and to recruit massively to strengthen the workforce.

"The announcements are rather in the right direction," said Ludovic Friat, president of the Union of Judges.

The dilapidation of our institution is recorded and means are given to try to improve the situation.

And the magistrate added: "We are not naive,

we are now waiting to see how these announcements will be implemented.

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“Sanctuary” job creations

Eric Dupond-Moretti has promised to table a programming and orientation bill in the spring to "sanctuarize" the promise to hire some 10,000 justice officials - including 1,500 magistrates - by the end of the five-year term.

“In five years, we will have recruited as many magistrates as over the past twenty years”, welcomed the Keeper of the Seals.

Among the priority projects, the setting up of reinforcements that can be quickly mobilized in the courts most in difficulty and the setting up of a "real team" around the judges in order to give them the possibility of refocusing on their core profession: “listen and decide”.

“1,500 magistrates is good and in five years we cannot imagine training many more,” notes the president of the Union of magistrates.

But this is only a step, we must continue the effort.

We know today that in the investigation, three times more magistrates and at least 1.5 times more juvenile judges are needed.

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Concretely, the Keeper of the Seals intends to halve, by 2027, the delays in civil proceedings - like divorces or disputes of all kinds - which represent 60% of the decisions rendered by the courts (it is necessary today count on average two years).

To do this, Eric Dupond-Moretti intends to promote the establishment of "participatory" justice by experimenting, as in Quebec, with amicable procedures which would give the judge the role of conciliator from the start of the procedure before leave it to the lawyers.

“We are not against experiments, provided that there is a real feedback, not as for the generalization of criminal courts”, insists Ludovic Friat.

Another track:

the establishment of a "caesura" which would allow the magistrate to decide only on the question of responsibility, then leaving the parties to agree on the amount of the damage.

In the Netherlands, this measure would, according to Eric Dupond-Moretti, settle twice as many disputes in half the time.

Overhaul of the criminal procedure code

A major project also awaits the criminal field: Eric Dupond-Moretti announced the overhaul of the code of criminal procedure which has become, according to the report of the States General, "excessively complex and illegible, even for the most experienced".

The Keeper of the Seals has set itself the goal that by the end of the five-year term, the heaviest criminal cases will be tried within a year, the others within six months.

“We have done a lot, but there is still a lot to do,” acknowledged the minister.

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  • Justice

  • Eric Dupond Moretti

  • Justice Ministry

  • Modernization

  • Court