Demining operation on Place Vendôme. On the eve of a national day of mobilization of legal professionals which promises to be massive, the Minister of Justice defended on Monday the human and budgetary toll of justice under the Macron five-year term. “When we arrived, justice was in a state of absolute emergency, assures Eric Dupond-Moretti. We have fixed the most pressing emergencies. “Relying on graphs and numerous figures, the minister first tackled” the renouncements and abandonments of past decades “, and again touted a” historic “budget for justice since his appointment at Place Vendôme.
“I want to be judged on my record. Not on that of my predecessors. The Minister of Justice emphasizes that “the three least important budgets of the ministry are those of 2014, 2015 and 2016”, that is to say when his chair was occupied by Christiane Taubira. While in 2022, the budget will be 8.9 billion euros against 6.8 billion euros in 2017, or “an increase of more than 30% over this five-year period”, insists Eric Dupond-Moretti. As regards the budget for judicial services strictly speaking, for the functioning of the courts in particular, it has increased by 18% in five years.
“A lot of things have been done”
“There was a need for magistrates” which “required significant job creation”. Their number has increased by 8.85% between September 2017 and September 2021, argues the former criminal. Over the same period, 870 clerks were recruited. The vacancy rate among registry officials is falling, to nearly 6% currently, against 1.39% in the judiciary. The Minister recognizes “two points to be improved, concerning the functions of judge of liberty and detention and judge of protection disputes”. The presidents of the courts of appeal and the attorneys general will be questioned “from this week” to ascertain their needs for magistrates. It also announces the perpetuation of “1,414 three-year contracts”, recruitments made within the framework of local justice.
Almost three weeks after a forum of magistrates and clerks alerting to their suffering at work and a loss of meaning in their missions, the Minister wishes “to set up psychologists in each of the courts of appeal as soon as possible, beyond the toll-free number which already exists seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, on which we will communicate more ”. Eric Dupond-Moretti also wants to establish “a sponsorship of young magistrates”. Finally, he announces that a “dedicated and autonomous budget” will be delegated to each of the jurisdictions in order to improve “well-being at work, material conditions of everyday life”. As for the late hearings denounced by magistrates, he asked for “specific elements” to “take any decisions”.
“During our five-year term, I don’t hesitate to say that a lot has been done. Whether it is purely in terms of budget, IT or office automation, the step that we had to take was considerable, ”says Eric Dupond-Moretti. But “the evils of justice cannot be reduced to the sole question of means”, adds the Minister. According to a diagnosis carried out by the General Inspectorate of Justice, which calculated the impact of the staffing problem on the status of cases not yet judged in the courts, “insufficient resources” are at the origin of 31.8% of “stocks” in first instance and 10% of “stocks” in appeal. An “old problem” which is the subject of an expertise by several working groups of the States General of Justice, launched by the government in mid-October.
“It absolutely does not call into question our mobilization”
Assuring to have “heard and taken into account” the call to unite before the courts, he nevertheless denounced the “ulterior motives of some, as well as the temptations of instrumentalization in a pre-electoral context”. The Keeper of the Seals concludes by indicating that he will not go to the Parisian demonstration organized in front of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. What differentiates him from his colleague from the Ministry of the Interior, who was present at the rally of the police at the call of their unions in front of the National Assembly last May.
“This press conference is likely to mobilize those who still hesitated, it absolutely does not call into question our mobilization”, confides to 20 minutes Ludovic Friat, General Secretary of USM (Union Syndicale des Magistrates). “The ministry is seized on the basis of a forum which mobilized two thirds of the profession, and we were entitled to a very technocratic response from the Minister of Justice, surrounded by his two directors who produce an avalanche of figures in us saying “we do not understand, we have everything”. It lacked empathy and human “, judge the trade unionist, who denounces” an exercise of self-justification and self-satisfaction “.