The confusion of the magistrates is growing. After the tribune of 3000 magistrates published in Le Monde, describing a growing discomfort, the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation François Molins drove the point home on Monday: he denounced the “untenable working conditions” and the “structural lack of means ”of justice, in a speech described as“ scandalous ”by the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti.
During the formal re-entry hearing of the Court of Cassation, François Molins spoke to Prime Minister Jean Castex and the Minister of Justice of the “groundswell” of the platform signed at the end of November by more than 7000 magistrates and clerks for denounce their working conditions and in turn observe a “crisis” that “no one can deny”, which leads to “suffering” and “loss of meaning”.
Magistrates exercise a “passionate profession”, declared François Molins. “A passion for justice which has, perhaps wrongly, led us to accept for too long what should not be, that is to say the chronic insufficiency and the inadequacy of the means which are available to us. given on a daily basis to fulfill our missions (…) which in reality might only be carried out thanks to the unlimited dedication of magistrates and judicial officials ”.
François Molins underlined the recent efforts to increase the budget of the ministry, which has seen two successive increases of 8% over the past two years, and to recruit. “But these efforts, and in particular those made over the past year through the recruitment of a thousand contract workers, apart from being insufficient, are they not in reality the expression of a certain lack of confidence on the part of the State? in his righteousness? “Asked François Molins.
Tense exchange
“If this confidence existed, it is indeed (some) permanent job creations for magistrates and clerks that would have taken place,” he said. At the end of the speech, Eric Dupond-Moretti had a tense exchange with François Molins, before qualifying with his collaborators the remarks of the Attorney General as “scandalous”, noted an AFP photographer. The Minister of Justice then spoke with the Prime Minister on leaving the Court of Cassation, repeating the term “scandalous”.
Contacted by AFP, his entourage spoke of a “frank exchange”, arguing that “the part of the speech concerning hiring at the ministry was truncated and false”. He assured that “2000” and not 1000 contract workers had been hired and regretted that François Molins did not mention the announcements aimed at increasing the number of magistrates.