“While the far right has never been so close to power, it is urgent to guarantee the independence of the prosecution” | EUROtoday

En July 2022, the environmental group within the European Parliament commissioned a report on the capability of the French authorized system to withstand a possible “authoritarian shock”. Passing France to “autocratic stress test”the regulation professors and jurists commissioned delivered a transparent commentary: our nation is especially poorly ready to face a strategy of dismantling counter-powers initiated by an authoritarian majority.

This alarming report ought to have prompted a begin. On the opposite, it was relegated to oblivion, with out anybody making an attempt to attract conclusions from it whereas there may be nonetheless time. While the far proper has by no means been so near gaining energy, it’s pressing that parliamentarians conform to erect a number of safeguards earlier than the 2027 presidential election, at the beginning the constitutionalization of the independence of the prosecution. Otherwise, we threat taking the identical path as Viktor Orban’s Hungary or Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Poland.

If the independence of magistrates is, in France, theoretically assured and successfully ensured – regardless of latest, typically virulent, accusations in opposition to sure publicized choices – the identical isn’t true for magistrates of the general public prosecutor’s workplace. Responsible, on behalf of French society, for initiating proceedings in opposition to offenses in opposition to felony regulation, these magistrates – prosecutors, deputy prosecutors and substitute prosecutors – should not unbiased of the federal government. The European Court of Human Rights has reiterated this on a number of events, notably throughout two judgments in 2010 [Medvedyev et Moulin]judging that they may not be thought of as actual “judicial authorities” lack of ample ensures of independence and impartiality. Their dependence was for a very long time twofold: of their appointment and their profession but additionally within the directions that the chief might previously tackle to them immediately.

Dangerous coverage

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