Eric Dupond-Moretti is trying to extinguish criticism around the location of the future judicial city of Marseille, which is to replace the current court, split between various sites and too cramped. Faced with requests from lawyers and certain traders, the Minister of Justice announced the launch of a consultation on the project.
“Before deciding, I hope that under the aegis of the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, we carry out local consultation with all the players without exception: lawyers, magistrates, clerks, administrative staff, Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI ), town hall, elected officials, deputies, Metropolis, Region… by the summer”, explains the minister in an interview with the regional daily Provence published Monday on its website.
A court currently spread over seven sites
Due to lack of space, the services of the country’s third largest court after Paris and Bobigny, with interregional jurisdiction in matters of organized crime, health, transport or the environment, are currently spread over seven sites. In February 2022, after public alerts from the highest magistrates of the second city of France, Eric Dupond-Moretti announced a “Marshall plan for Marseille justice”, including the construction of a new judicial city of 40,000 square meters of here 2028. But finding a consensual location turns into a headache.
The ministry is ready to put 350 million in this construction, specifies Eric Dupond-Moretti who assures that “nothing is finalized” between the different options. Keeping this “city” in the city center as desired by the Marseille bar and the CCI “poses a technical problem”, explains the minister. Relocating to land in La Capelette, in the 10th arrondissement? “There are technical difficulties linked to the proximity of a waste treatment center,” he replies.
Finally, there remains the option of building this city in the Euroméditerranée district, near the center and the port, with two possibilities, details the Keeper of the Seals. The first would see a judicial city of 350 million euros where “everything would be grouped together” with three years of construction. The second would include “a courthouse on Euroméditerranée, a remaining part (in the historic palace) of Monthyon (the labor courts and trade), 370 million for four years of construction”. But “we are no longer in a judicial city”, in this case, he underlines. And if the first possibility were validated, he proposes “to use the Monthyon site for the Bar School (Edase) and an annex of the National School of the Judiciary (ENM)”.