Proposition 51K2299

Projet de loi portant réforme des carrières et de la rémunération du personnel des greffes et des secrétariats des parquets.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP MR Open Vld Vooruit Purple Ⅰ

Submission date

Feb. 15, 2006

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

professional career pay judicial power

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Discussion ¶

March 29, 2006 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

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Mr. Wathelet, if I am not mistaken, you are registered for this project as well as Mr. Wathelet. by Van Parys?

and yes!

Mr. Van Parys, you can do whatever you want! The word is free! Mr. Wathelet, you have the word.

I would like to repeat my two-minute speech.

I would like to emphasize the very positive nature of the project submitted. In fact, it aims to confer a status on staff B, C and D. At the level of justice, this has actually been the subject of a memorandum of understanding, the memorandum of understanding No. 249. The crucial question is what we are talking about, but most importantly who we are talking about. This is the issue that we have discussed in the committee and that has led to some discussion.

The [...]

Isn’t that the case, Mr. President? Talk about Project No.

Mr. Wathelet, you are registered for Project No. 2299, that’s right!

What about the graffiti? This is ⁇ too little discussed in the committee. Registered officers are not actually mentioned in statutes B, C, D; Registered officers have no status. This is also a specificity that they have long sought. They often advocated not to have them and not to be re-enrolled in statutes B, C and D. This project does not concern them.

Obviously, there is another project to which you referred, Mr. Massin, and for which another protocol would be discussed: the draft concerning the Agreement Protocol 293 which, in itself, concerns the secretaries and which would aim to retain a B status to a part of them. Those who are not body heads or service heads would benefit from a B status.

The officers are now in an extremely delicate situation because they obviously do not want to delay this project which is positive for statutes B, C and D. Furthermore, they fear that, a posteriori, in the event of a vote on the other project, they will apply a status that they would not have been able to negotiate beforehand. That is what I regret today.

It would have been more positive to have both discussions at the same time. This would have avoided a number of confusions and made the discussion more constructive. This was not possible. But again, despite this reservation, we cannot not vote for this project, because it is positive for statutes B, C and D. However, we hope that, in the future negotiations with the secretaries, the necessary arrangements will be made to ensure that the discrepancies heard today are softened.

Mr. Speaker, our group will approve the bill. Indeed, it is not the staff of level 1, but the staff of levels 2, 3 and 4, which are classified into new degrees and levels. For us, it is important that the staff remains a special corps and not become staff of the public office. It remains part of the judicial system, which is important in this. Therefore, it is also important that it is regulated by law and not by royal decree.

We support the design because it involves a significant improvement in the terms of appointment, selection, recruitment, promotion, mutations and the assignment of higher positions.

Finally, this will significantly improve the status of the staff concerned. The Minister of Justice informed the committee that the cost of the draft would be 14 million euros, which is significant. The Minister has assured us that the money is reserved. We have expressly requested that commitment, in such a way that it is provided not only in the legal provisions, but also in the means to implement the statute and the amended statute.

I would only like to take the opportunity to ask the Minister whether the necessary decisions have already been taken in the context of budgetary control to secure the holiday allowance for the magistrates, so that there are no misunderstandings.

I see a discourse from the Minister, which I verbalize.

I confirm, Mr President.

Then I am also reassured in this regard and our group can approve the bill tomorrow with a safe conscience.

Madame Marghem is the last speaker in the general discussion. What are you bringing here? With a handcuff. I ask you to speak in the direction of the Minister.

Certainly Mr President. I join this indispensable tool because of the presence of microbes at the level of my nose, but I reassure everyone: my brain is intact.

This will allow you to be brief.

I hope it. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, my dear colleagues, the bill submitted to your vote presents very positive points for the administrative staff of the offices and prosecutor's secretaries which I hurry to highlight from the outset, as well as the greater uniformity in the organization of this status and a greater clarity between the different degrees that are assimilated to the general degrees of the Public Service, both in terms of the conditions of appointment as well as the modalities of promotion, mobility and delegation to higher functions. It is indeed time for the organisation of the administrative staff of the greens and prosecutors to see the measures negotiated in the framework of the protocol signed in April 2003 come to fruition.

However, it is regrettable that the dialogue on the profession of secretary and secretary of prosecution could not take place, both on the form and on the substance of this question. Our group had indeed been arrested by representatives of these professions, either as part of the ASBL Ceneger or by the SLFP Judicial Order or even spontaneously by field actors and secretaries. It was clear that the latter had doubts and concerns regarding the recognition of their professional status, namely the classification in level A. For the secretaries, to this concern is added that of the official representation of their office during possible negotiations or in the negotiations that have already taken place. My colleague Wathelet referred to it recently.

These concerns are not new. The Minister clearly stated her choices: reservation of status A for chief secretaries/chief secretaries and chief secretaries/chief secretaries of service as well as the willingness to recognize a trade union status for chief secretaries.

These questions therefore take a particular aspect within the framework of this bill. Indeed, the logic underlying this choice of status for registered officers is drawn, namely that the other registered officers, the field registered officers, must therefore now be considered as level B personnel, corresponding to the former level 2+. However, in the context of Protocol 249, the negotiations conducted were not aimed at secretaries or level A personnel. This question, it has been repeated to them, would be discussed later. In this perspective, we can understand the fear of the secretaries, but also of the prosecutor’s secretaries, of seeing this current project and the measures taken today have direct or indirect consequences on their profession. Our committee concern has therefore been to ensure that the legitimate concerns of a profession, which we have always regarded as the preeminent role in the exercise of good justice, find echo in the parliamentary debate; it is still this concern that drives us today.

Faced with the concerns of our fellow citizens, our task as elected citizens is not to ignore them but to seek to calm them by giving them answers. These answers, Mrs. Minister, we sought them by asking you about the scope of the bill which, according to the reading we have made of it, seems to have implications for the secretaries and the secretaries of the prosecution, while they were supposed to not be targeted by the latter. The demonstration of the misunderstanding that we might have had of the text, Mrs. Minister, if you had considered it useful to proceed, would undoubtedly have been reasonable for our doubts and we would have bowed before the wisdom of your reasoning. Unfortunately, this was not your choice, under circumstances that we deeply regret; no constructive response has been given to us, the debate itself being stifled in the egg.

It is therefore disappointed by this absence of debate but aware of the importance of this new status for the staff of the transplants and prosecutor's secretaries, and in order not to delay further the implementation of the modernization expected since the negotiations started in 2002, that we will vote on this draft.

Nevertheless, our movement will remain very attentive to ensure that the debate on the status of prosecutors and prosecutors takes place and that the recognition of their function is at the level of the tasks and responsibilities they assume. Recently, in your reply to a parliamentary question, you mentioned that the tasks entrusted to the secretaries did not require, in your opinion, the possession of a university degree, that the requirement for such a degree seemed to you excessive, so that, as only holders of a university degree can be taken back into level A, the secretaries were de facto classified in level B.

This approach seems to us to be in total contradiction with the one previously defended. In fact, we remind you that Protocol 249 – which is the foundation of your project – is the result of a balanced agreement that expressly provided, under a function weight based on the Compass methodology, that the secretary’s position was heavy enough to be classified in level A. This weighting is justified by a description of the function whose tasks were deemed worthy of this level.

This analysis, focused on the content of the function which conditiones its classification in the different levels – and not vice versa – can be repeated for the functions of secretary whose responsibilities, you will grant me, are at least as heavy as those of prosecutor secretaries. The regular extension of the competences assigned to hospitals that require knowledge and/or academic or similar experience, as well as the recommendation of the Council of Europe regarding the discharge of the duties of magistrates to their direct collaborators, secretaries and secretaries and, finally, the example of our European neighbors where the academic level or equivalent is required for secretaries and secretaries, advocate for this reasoning.

We therefore call on you, Mrs. Minister, to make every effort to resume negotiations with these professions essential for the proper functioning of the judicial institutions and to take into account their claim to integrate within level A.