Proposition 52K2271

Projet de loi modifiant la partie XII de l'arrêté royal du 30 mars 2001 portant la position juridique du personnel des services de police, confirmée par la loi-programme du 30 décembre 2001.

General information ¶

Submitted by

The Senate

Submission date

Feb. 5, 2009

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

professional career pay police

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR FN VB

Abstained from voting

Groen Ecolo

Party dissidents ¶

• Jean Cornil (PS | SP) abstained from voting.

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 4, 2010 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

This draft law is aimed at a category of police officers. More specifically, these are staff members who previously held the rank of commissary of the municipal police and who either were chiefs of class 17 bodies or were appointed into a class 20 bodies without ensuring the direction of them.

The compromise that has been found improves, of course, the career prospects of these Commissioners. Thus, they will be able to compete for the functions of Division Commissioner and be appointed to this higher rank by a favorable assessment.

I have finished, Mr. President.

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief, because this is a technical discussion and colleague Arens has just presented an exceptional report – as usual!

This law will allow former commissars chief bodies of class 17 communes as well as police commissars of class 20 communes who were not chief bodies to claim the rank of division commissary.

The procedure has been defined and, in this regard, I think there will be no problem. My group will support this project that comes to us from the Senate.

I simply wanted to take advantage of this exchange to clarify that we had co-signed a bill submitted by the MR in order to extend the scope of this text to the former commissaries heads of bodies of communes of class 15 and 16. It seemed fair to us. However, we have not reached a consensus on this issue. But I think I can say that we will return to this proposal in the interior committee. And we will be able to take advantage of the debates on the evaluation of the reform that will continue with your hearing, Mrs. Minister, from next Wednesday.

For the rest, we will approve the bill as submitted to us.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, colleagues, I would like to agree with what Mr. Frédéric said. We are voting today on a draft that we cannot, of course, oppose, because it is about additional benefits for a certain category of police officers. I also received from the opposition the bill on which Mr. Frédéric had signed it. I hope this will be discussed in the committee soon.

I have a more fundamental question to the Minister. Today we approve something good for a certain category of police personnel. We will also approve something for the category that Mr. Frédéric and I talked about. I hope that this really happens. Of course, there are still categories that are at the door to knock. I think, for example, of certain degrees of the former judicial police.

At Paars we had the very clear vision of not opening the Pandora’s box. We have now opened them. That is not a problem for us. This, however, is in sharp contrast to what the minister says, that after ten years of police reform, the statute should be thoroughly reviewed. This is also stated in the report by Willy Bruggeman.

We are now approving draft laws and proposals for certain categories of police officers. This is of course not a problem. This, however, is contrary to what Mrs. Turtelboom and also the previous ministers, including you, Mr. Speaker, have announced, namely that after 10 years some matters are considered fundamentally such as the statute, the KUL standard, the discipline matters of the police and so on.

I think it is good that we get a clear answer from the Minister on this. It has been discussed several times in the committee, but the plenary session is another matter.

I think it’s good that the police know what they’re doing. One must realize that the approval of bills and bills for certain categories of police officers raises expectations among other categories of police officers who find themselves disadvantaged in the police reform, which is now 10 years behind.

I will not be surprised by my remarks either. We will join the solution proposed by this bill, given that this text is the outcome of long discussions that have been held in the Senate, that the minister has subscribed to the results obtained, that it is the result of a good compromise and that it improves the career prospects of the Commissioners concerned.

However, we remain attentive to the situation of the 15th and 16th class commissioners. For us, the bill submitted by the Senate does not dispel the risk of a domino effect and is likely to establish discrimination by granting advantages to certain classes of civil servants and not to others.

We had, along with other majority groups, submitted a wider bill than the one we are going to adopt today and also incorporating other classes of commissioners into the promotion procedure. Indeed, in the current situation, the officers of the former gendarmerie corps, of the municipal police and of the judicial police are divided into lower or higher officers, i.e. the respective degrees of commissary or of division commissary.

The commissary-in-chief of a municipality (classes 15 and 16) as well as the commissary (classes 17 and 20) were divided into subordinate officers and received the new grade of commissary. At the same time, gendarmerie officers were divided into senior officers from the grade of Major and received a new grade of Division Commissioner.

It is therefore obvious – I myself requested it in the committee of the Interior – to disjoin our proposal in order to be able to reopen the debate – I have already done so for other categories of the former judicial police in particular – in the discussions we will have on the evaluation of the police reform.

Listening to my colleagues’ remarks, it seems that the only consistent vote is either the one we are going to vote, or an abstinence. In fact, it is already known that this compromise will cause appeals.

We need to be careful of this Pandora’s box that most people want to open.

Today, I hear colleagues say that this is a project impossible to reject, but that we must hurry to reopen the debate because other categories will be in the same situation and will also be demanding. I feel like we have limited ourselves to a small group that deserved, of course, to benefit from these promotions, but we are also aware of the possible domino effect and the problems that will follow. Especially since this debate will have to be part of a comprehensive debate regarding the work in progress.

Sometimes I feel like we put the chariot before the bulls. It is important to take the time to think about this situation that will cause more problems than solve them. The project will not remedy the dissatisfaction of certain bodies; we will soon find ourselves with other proposals that risk canceling that one or bringing us to revive it, or even lead us into a process of domino effect impossible to control.

I would also like to know how, from a budget point of view, once this Pandora box is opened, we will be able to respond to all requests.

I hope that beyond the majority discipline, at least one of my colleagues per group will express his hope for a reopening of the debate and for a more serene and serious work.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, following a few comments, I would like to emphasize that this draft is based on a bill that has been approved in the Senate. So it is a bill that is an initiative of a number of senators. At a certain point in the Senate a proposal and a compromise solution was reached, which was then amended, thus having a bill here in the Chamber.

I agree with the colleagues that this ten years after the police reform should be the closing point for the transitional law and that we should more conduct the fundamental debate on the challenges of tomorrow and on the statute, rather than continue to work with small adjustments.

I emphasize once again that it was a proposal in the Senate that was carried out very widely there.