2023-09-14 15:31:36
This announcement follows a study by KU Leuven which concluded that there was a lack of separation between the federal power and the judicial power in Belgium.
Flemish Minister of Justice Zuhal Demir (N-VA) announced on Thursday the start of intra-Belgian discussions on the defederalization of justice. She affirms that these consultations will be carried out primarily between ministerial cabinets, with the Federal Government (Vincent Van Quickenborne, Open Vld), the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (Françoise Bertieaux, MR) and the German-speaking Community (Antonios Antoniadis, SP).
Interrogates, the Bertieaux cabinet reframed the nature of the discussions. “Regular contacts take place between cabinets concerning the competence of Houses of Justice (for example electronic surveillance or public procurement). A hypothetical defederalization of justice was never mentioned during these meetings,” assured his cabinet. “As it is, in his mind, a defederalization of justice is also excluded“, we added.
The federal level would also be involved via the French-speaking Minister of Institutional Reforms David Clarinval (MR), while its Dutch-speaking counterpart Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) would not have responded to the invitation.
Separation of powers
Last February, a study by constitutionalists from the Catholic University of Louvain (KU Leuven), Stefan Sottiaux and Arvid Rochtus, had makes a big noise. The two specialists compared the distribution of this competence in Belgium with that in fifteen other states of a federal nature, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Australia, and examined the weak points of the Belgian system.
Belgium is “the great exception” because it “still knows a very unitary Justice“, according to Mr. Sottiaux, who sees it as a “democratic deficit” for federated entities.
Zuhal Demir sees a “fundamental democratic problem” in the fact that the federated entities do not have the three powers.
“The latter have two of the three pillars of the separation of powers: the legislative and the executive. But the judiciary was forgotten along the way. This means that the federated entities continue to be dependent on the federal level to manage their policy, for example environmental. And that the Federal Minister of Justice cannot be held responsible for his choices at the regional level.”
For Zuhal Demir, this study shows the possibility of a “defederalization of competencess which would put entirely Justice in the hands of the Communities and would limit federal powers to what the Communities still want to do together”. She sees a “fundamental democratic problem” in the fact that the federated entities do not have the three powers.
A “very bad idea”
This vision of things is not not shared by everyone in the North of the country. Groen MP Stefaan Van Hecke called it a “very bad idea” and a “wrong priority”. “Belgians are not expecting three different sets of rules for inheritance, marriages, divorces, liability.”
And if there are problems in Justice, it is not defederalization that will solve them, according to him, but refinancing and faster procedures. “It would be a nightmare for citizens and businesses than having a split judicial system with different applications of commercial and corporate law, adds the MP Gilles Van Burre, head of the Ecolo-Groen group. Three different criminal codes, three criminal procedures, three civil codes… This is a recipe for even more delays and higher costs.”
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