Proposition 53K2141

Révision de la Constitution. Projet d'insertion d'un article 157bis dans la Constitution.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Raf Terwingen
Ecolo Muriel Gerkens
Groen Stefaan Van Hecke
LE Benoît Lutgen
MR Daniel Bacquelaine
Open Vld Patrick Dewael
PS | SP Thierry Giet
Vooruit Karin Temmerman

Submission date

April 4, 2012

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

Brussels region constitutional revision institutional reform judicial reform jurisdiction legal system use of languages territorial jurisdiction

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld MR

Voted to reject

N-VA VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Bernard Clerfayt (MR) voted to reject.
• Peter Luykx (CD&V) voted to reject.
• Olivier Maingain (MR) voted to reject.
• Damien Thiéry (MR) voted to reject.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

June 20, 2012 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I refer to the written report.

Mr. Speaker, since both bills were discussed together and this treatment is detailed in the report that Mr. Landuyt will explain, I refer to the oral report of Mr. Landuyt.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, dear colleagues, I will present to you the overall content of the bill which has been the subject of discussions in our committee. by Mr. Landuyt, as regards him, will report on the discussions that took place within our committee.

In advance, Mr. Speaker, I would like to give a technical clarification since the committee decided to divide the bill into two separate proposals – I think it is important to emphasize this –, the first containing provisions regulating only a matter referred to in Article 77 of the Constitution, the second containing only provisions regulating a matter referred to in Article 78 of the Constitution.

Our committee made this decision by indicating very clearly, first, that the rapporteurs would make a single report on the discussion of all provisions of the bill, then, that there would be only one vote on the whole bill, vote which will nevertheless be considered as a vote on two bills, and finally, that there will be two texts adopted in a committee that will be transmitted to the plenary in the form of two separate bills. Article 1 of these two bills, which will have to be titled separately, will therefore have to be split. This is indeed the case.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, the proposal aiming at creating a judicial district of Hal-Vilvorde and establishing Dutch and French-speaking courts in the Brussels district, as well as the Court of Appeal of Louvain, has been the subject of an exposition in the head of one of its authors, in the present case Mr. and Bacquelaine. Therefore, it is on what he said in the committee that I base this report.

It is recalled that the organization of the judicial district of Brussels has been debated for many years, that the agreement on the sixth state reform intends to provide a response to this debate by proceeding to a fundamental reform of this district, a reform that touches the heart of the great balances that work for community peace.

This is the reason why the essential elements can no longer be modified in the future - under article 157bis of the proposed Constitution and to be adopted simultaneously with this proposal of law - except through a law adopted by special majority.

The draft law aims to faithfully translate the institutional agreement that provides for the doubling of the headquarters on all the 54 municipalities that currently make up the Brussels district, the division of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office into two prosecutors, one of which is competent on the administrative district of Brussels-Capital and the other on that of Hal-Vilvorde and, finally, the adaptation of certain rules of law concerning the use of languages in judicial matters.

First of all, I would like to point out the double seat. In order to ⁇ this, it will be necessary to amend both the Judicial Code and the law of 15 June 1935 concerning the use of languages in judicial matters. The adaptation of the Judicial Code concerns the doubling of existing courts, defines the relationship between the said courts and the prosecutor’s office and, finally, regulates the relations of the peace courts, police courts and judicial officers with the doubled courts.

As regards the division of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office, a provisional assignment of magistrates to one of the two prosecutors is provided in the bill. It is obvious that the required language requirements are also set for magistrates and other staff members. In addition, the proposal provides for rules on the deployment of a number of French-speaking magistrates from the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office to the Hal-Vilvorde Prosecutor’s Office. The latter also regulates their language skills and knowledge and defines the number of magistrates to be deployed.

The text also provides for appropriate rules regarding the language in which the files must be examined, as well as a regime for the entry into force of the reform, i.e. as soon as the new frameworks are fulfilled at 90 percent.

Finally, the draft law creates a coordination committee. This committee ensures the consultation between the two aforementioned prosecutors, in particular as regards the modalities of collaboration and deployment of French-speaking magistrates in Hal-Vilvorde.

The third element of the proposal is the adaptation of the Law on the use of languages in judicial matters. The new regulation fully preserves the current rights of all legal entities in the Brussels judicial district. It goes without saying that the amendments to the law of 15 June 1935 are made necessary, on the one hand, to guarantee the current linguistic rights of the French speakers of Hal-Vilvorde and the Dutch speakers of Brussels and, on the other hand, to take into account the specificity of the peripheral municipalities.

It then specifies in a specific way the various changes to be made, changes that relate essentially to the change of language or the return requested by mutual agreement, the voluntary appearance before the court of its choice, the framework of the judge’s discretion in the event of a request for a change of language or a referral made unilaterally by the defendant and the introduction of a specific appeal against decisions rejecting a request for a change of language or a referral.

On behalf of the authors of the bill, Mr. Bacquelaine concluded his speech by considering that the bill to be examined is a perfect example of a balanced agreement between the Communities of our country.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, colleagues, I have the honour to further clarify the report. So far, 8 of the 144 pages have been explained. I will not read the other 130 pages, but limit myself to the general lines of the general discussion.

The speaking time was taken advantage of the cooperation between Mr Annemans and Mrs Pas, on the one hand, and by Mrs Van Vaerenbergh, reinforced by her colleague, Mr Weyts, present here, on the other.

Mr. Annemans pointed out his own proposal for a real split and outlined his history of the previous and current state reforms. He gave us an explanation of the strategy of the French speakers who are preparing for the division of the country. Ms. Van Vaerenbergh considers that the proposal does not meet the two objectives of the split, namely to stop the fracking of the Rand and to enable its own criminal policy.

In the light of her intervention, there is a discussion about the 20/80 ratio as included in the text. That relationship was, by the way, contradicted by the next speaker, Mr. Maingain, and translated into a 27/73 ratio. Mr Maingain also pointed out that many terms were, in his opinion, inaccurately defined in the legislative text and wondered which elements could be “essential elements” as stipulated in Article 157bis of the Constitution.

Mr. Van Hecke spoke about one of the most important judicial reforms of recent years, while Mr. Doomst defended the current proposal with the assertion that it fully meets the wishes that live in the Rand.

Mrs. Pas, finally, held the longest intervention, beautifully arranged in five points of criticism. First, bilingualism in Brussels would further deteriorate, second, the courts would not be split but decoupled, third, the facilities would be expanded, fourth, the Flemish concessions would not be limited to Flemish-Brabant, and fifth, the prosecutor’s office would be split, but that division would be reduced by numerous rules.

Every speaker is convinced and agrees that our dish is facing a problem of workload measurement. Everyone emphasized the importance of proper workload measurement in the future.

The article-by-article discussion was coloured by several amendments. The submitters of the proposal submitted amendments in response to the comments of the State Council. These amendments were approved with 12 votes for and 5 votes against.

The colleagues Pas and Annemans submitted several amendments that were the translation of their own proposal. Colleagues Van Vaerenbergh and Weyts submitted amendments, which were the translation of what they called "the not even ideal old proposal of Senator Vandenberghe, at the time".

These amendments never reached a majority, no more than 5 votes.

The amended proposal was approved with 12 votes for and 5 votes against. In application of Article 72, 2 of the Rules of Procedure, this text was split.

Mr. rapporteur, thank you for your good report.

Colleagues, the split of the electoral district BHV has been a delicate point on the political agenda for years. Division is a policy given. The problem has always caused a lot of frustration, because French-speaking parties during the electoral periods could carry out unlimited propaganda in our Flemish Rand.

Initially, there was less attention to the political agenda for the judicial district of Brussels. However, this may be more important than the electoral district, because the judicial district also interferes with everyday life of everyone.

I can describe the problem using two examples. First, in Halle-Vilvoorde, Dutch police services perform Dutch-speaking investigative acts. They are then confronted in Brussels with the French-speaking parquet. That is a first problem. The second problem is that the Brussels crime is not at all comparable to the crime of Halle-Vilvoorde. Brussels is a big city where more crimes are committed. In Halle-Vilvoorde, for example, we are less confronted with human trafficking.

That crime with which Halle-Vilvoorde is faced falls into that large whole of the Brussels problem, which leads to impunity in the region. Brussels has other priorities. We also know much less about the sensitivities of our region. This leads to a sense of impunity. In Brussels there is also a huge judicial backwardness and mismanagement. This causes a lot of frustration.

Therefore, in politics, much more attention has been paid to the judicial district.

The N-VA is absolutely in favour of the division of that judicial district Brussels, because, first, impunity in Brussels, the Flemish Rand and Halle-Vilvoorde kordaat must be addressed. Second, it must also be clear where the language boundary lies, where Brussels ends and where Flanders begins. Every French speaker who comes to live in Flanders should know that he lives in Flanders and that he must integrate in Flanders. That is why the division of the electoral district and the judicial district is so important.

But does the proposal of the eight parties presented now meet the objectives? We cannot even say that the Flemish interests were sold; they were simply given away! One has not only given away those Flemish interests, one has done something above it, because one has also given the price that one should have normally received for it. That is the agreement that is presented today.

Let me stop at the two points. I have said that the division of the district is important for the N-VA because we must address impunity once again. This also means removing the judicial lag. State Secretary Verherstraeten has said in the committee that he is firmly convinced that with the present agreement the judicial lag will be removed. It does not matter if it is a Dutch-speaking or a French-speaking backward. This is the first gift we give to the French speakers. That first gift consists in the fact that there will be only a Dutch-speaking backwardness. French speakers will be able to remove their backwardness, while Dutch speakers will be able to grow backwardness. This is already proven by figures.

I can give you the examples. For the Dutch-speaking Labour Court, the delay will double annually.

For the Dutch-speaking Court of Commerce, it will even triple. At present, there is a concrete delay of 439 cases. In the future, an annual downturn of 1,265 cases will be measured.

The Dutch-speaking court of first instance is currently doing very well. Currently, more cases are handled in that court than they enter. They are working to remove the backwardness. When the present agreement is applied, further judicial lag will be created.

I repeat that on the French-speaking side the backwardness will be removed. For the French-speaking Commercial Court, the annual default is reduced by 40 %. In the case of the court of first instance, it is reduced by 70 % and in the case of the labour court by 80 %.

The figures of the Dutch-speaking courts are significantly declining, while the figures of the French-speaking courts are significantly improving.

Mr. Secretary of State, can you explain again where the balance is for that aspect in the agreement?

I immediately come to the second gift we give to the French speakers, which is also confirmed by the High Council for Justice. The aforementioned Council is a bilingual body, which has drawn up an official report on this subject. In that report, the High Council for Justice confirms that the French-speaking side will recruit massively magistrates and staff. On the Dutch-speaking side, on the other hand, a mass of magistrates and employees must flow away.

What are the consequences of the mass outflow of magistrates and employees? This is very characteristic. In Brussels, there will be only one criminal judge left for the Dutch speakers in the future, to deal with all criminal cases of the entire Halle-Vilvoorde, i.e. of all 35 municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde and of the 19 municipalities of Brussels.

All matters, from in Bever to in Zemst, go to that one criminal judge. It ranges from drug and violent crimes to heavy, financial fraud and social fraud to tax fraud. All those Dutch-speaking cases will have to be settled by that one Dutch-speaking criminal judge in Brussels.

The youth judges are also cut. From four juvenile judges one goes to two juvenile judges. There will no longer be a policy on the youth issue. We will have to release individuals because there are not enough judges who can make the acts they should make in time.

I can also refer in this regard to the Council of State, which also pointed out the responsibility of the legislator in this regard. In fact, the Council of State states that if the legislature approves this agreement and if in the future matters will not be dealt with within a reasonable time, the legislature is responsible for the outcome. This is a blameful failure of the legislator.

The agreement does not only interfere with the lives of those who come into contact with the court of Halle-Vilvoorde, on the inhabitants of Halle-Vilvoorde or Brussels. The agreement covers a much wider domain. It is not only the Flemish people who live there who come to the court in Brussels, because the court of Brussels is of course competent for a much larger whole. The Court of Brussels, of course, also deals with all cases against any government in Brussels, the Belgian, Brussels and Flemish government, but also, for example, consumer disputes against a company such as Electrabel. All of these issues are dealt with in Brussels. The impact of this agreement cannot be underestimated.

We all know what a bad deal is about. Mr. De Clerck, I can’t get down to say it again. It is indeed signing. However, it proves of amateurism that an agreement can be based on incorrect numbers. You admit that these are wrong figures. These are figures that are not representative to base an agreement. It is acknowledged and yet it is being built on it.

You have acknowledged it in the committee. It is actually a political agreement. Everyone says these are wrong numbers. We know the impact. Almost every interest group has written our letters and pulled the alarm bell. However, we continue with those wrong numbers, with that 80/20 ratio. You have tried to explain in the committee, you are not out there. Once again, it became clear that the wrong numbers were there.

By the way, I can refer again to what is written in The Time. There, the magistrates once again confirmed how it really went in the facts, with regard to the e-mail story. To deny that the figures are wrong and say that you did not know it, unfortunately, will not succeed, because the facts are there black on white and were published everywhere.

These erroneous figures are also accused by the magistrates. The High Court of Justice has already mentioned this. He issued an official opinion on 30 May 2012. The judges also wrote an analysis note. It was signed by all Dutch-speaking judges of the court of first instance and of the labour court of Brussels, by the Conference of Dutch-speaking presidents of the courts of first instance, the Conference of Dutch-speaking presidents of the labour court and by the National Association of Magistrates. However, it was promised that, in the event that the figures were incorrect, an adjustment would follow gradually during the parliamentary debate.

I refer to Mr Di Rupo. In his policy statement, he stated that the judicial district Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde will be reformed in a precise and ambitious way. Should the figures for the distribution of the frames prove to be incorrect, they would be adjusted. It all seems to be blabla. There has been a debate and the figures are not yet adjusted. The agreement is implemented as initially agreed.

I will return to the committee meetings. It has also shown how little respect the eight parties have for, for example, the High Council for Justice. His advice is thrown aside and thrown into the trash. The State Council has criticized a number of fundamental issues. They throw that advice like a prop paper into the rubbish.

Mr. Verherstraeten, this morning the governor of Vlaams-Brabant draws the alarm bell. He also fears that the parquet will not be a full-fledged parquet because there is not enough staff present.

We just received a letter from the officers. They have the same criticism. Nevertheless, they just continue. People do not want to listen.

This reform is bad. The N-VA shall submit an amendment asking the agreement to enter into force only when the results of the workload measurement are known. (from the Romanian)

Mrs Van Vaerenbergh has the word.

Mr. Speaker, in the meantime we are waiting for that workload measurement, but the eight parties are apparently very hasty, because they cannot wait for the results of that measurement. They just want to implement the agreement. However, the rapporteur has said that everyone agrees that workload measurement is the only objective tool for determining the frameworks.

Then comes the fourth gift to the French speakers. That workload measurement is promised, but we already know that that workload measurement will not be objective. Those who read the texts clearly notice that this is a legal work and that there is simply further work on the French-language texts. In fact, it is clear from the text that there is no intention at all to carry out an objective workload measurement, and at all not to take into account the results of that workload measurement, if it ever existed. This workload measurement has been boycotted for fifteen years.

Instead, we get something that is sold as a workload measurement. Now it is already clear that it will not be a real workload measurement, but that the frames will simply be randomly recorded.

The result of all this is the following. The Dutch-speaking judges have been working for years to remove their judicial lag. The French-speaking people have been saying for years that they can no longer be the boss and they have left everything to work. Now it turns out that the Dutch-speaking judges should be fined because they must deliver judges, while the French-speaking judges get a gift because they get more judges and additional staff.

In the end, the French-speaking parties were not satisfied. The frameworks are already fixed before there is a workload measurement. The workload measurement is not objective; it is not a real workload measurement, because in addition to the workload measurement, sociological and demographic data must also be taken into account. Furthermore, the French-speaking parties have demanded and obtained that the results of that workload measurement would not be taken into account. They now receive 80% of the framework. Even once there are results from a workload measurement, that 80% can never or never be reduced. It remains 80%, and that percentage can only increase.

What do the Dutch-speaking judges get? They already have the guarantee that there will be fewer judges, and they are not sure if the workload measurement will ever come.

Mr. Verherstraeten, you claim that the workload measurement will come by 2014, but the High Council for Justice has already announced that on the basis of the data currently available, the workload measurement can not come before 2017.

What happens while waiting for the results of the workload measurement? There are transitional measures. These are actually the gift number six, because they are of course in the benefit of the French speakers. I can give a characteristic example. For years, the Flemish parties have resisted the continuous extension of the system of additional judges, who were appointed outside the language framework and do not have to meet the language requirements. Among the transitional measures, the added judges are rewarded, as they are now simply appointed.

I come to the core of the whole story. The goal was to make it clear where the border of Brussels lies and where Flanders begins. French speakers should know that they live in Flanders and that they need to integrate. For years we have been asking for the division, but what do we get now? We do not have a division, but a doubling. That is a very big difference.

While previously there were two-language French-speaking judges, who were competent in Brussels-Capital and in Halle-Vilvoorde, in the future there will be single-language French-speaking courts, which will also be competent on single-language Dutch-speaking territory. The French-speaking courts will also have jurisdiction over the 35 Dutch-speaking municipalities.

In the future, there will be two separate courts in Halle-Vilvoorde: the Dutch-speaking courts with jurisdiction over the entire territory, and the French-speaking courts, which also have jurisdiction over the 35 municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde, while that is not their territory. They will compete there, and thus one comes into the situation that a court case can pass to a French-speaking court as easily as to a Dutch-speaking court.

There are two types of justice: a French-speaking and a Dutch-speaking. I wonder if there is another country where this is possible, where one can choose to which court one goes, possibly depending on the result that one wants to obtain with the trial. With the arrangement agreed, it is clear that one may live in Flanders but that one can be treated as if one lives in bilingual Brussels. Flanders is divided into a bilingual territory. It does not stop there. This duplication is also contained in the Constitution. That means, in fact, that the demand for a division will never, often, come again.

That is not all yet. In addition to the split, we have in Halle-Vilvoorde at the parquet also French-speaking parquet magistrates. The question then is, of course, why French-speaking parket magistrates should come there. Why can a Dutch-speaking parket magistrate who is perfectly bilingual, as is often the case today, not do the same work for which now that French-speaking is predestined? I still do not understand in all the discourse why that should be specifically a French-speaking parquet magistrate. In the committee we have submitted an amendment on this subject, which we will submit again here today.

With that we are not there yet. In addition to the French-speaking courts and the French-speaking parquet magistrates for Halle-Vilvoorde, we also have French-speaking mother-in-law. The French speakers are given a veto right in purely Dutch-speaking files in Halle-Vilvoorde. Of course, Dutch speakers – how can it be otherwise – do not get the same rights in French-speaking matters.

What do we get? We have less bilingualism in Brussels. While the language law now requires that two-thirds of the magistrates in Brussels must be bilingual, this is reduced to one-third. Again, the French speakers are therefore rewarded for their laxity of the last years. Moreover, the bill does not even specify that one-third applies within each language group. This is a legal prutswork.

Less bilingualism is also a clear signal of the world-strange vision of those eight parties. A bilingual capital needs more bilinguality, not less. This will also have a negative impact on the handling of the files in Brussels. In fact, files handled in Brussels very often contain bilingual documents. This decline is also part of the proposal, but it fits into the symptomatic policy that the eight parties want to conduct: that policy breathes no respect for the Dutch speakers, especially also in Brussels.

The most striking thing I would like to mention is that the Prosecutor of the King and the Labour Auditor in Brussels will have to be French speakers once and for all in the future. That in the capital, which is still bilingual! A job ban for Dutch speakers is a prime. The State Council has also pointed out this. If the legislature determines that the top job of the Attorney of the King of Brussels will once and for all be a French speaker, so if that job is reserved for a certain language role, this means that one can occupy a certain job only provided that one has a French-speaking or a Dutch-speaking diploma, according to the Council of State. In that case, there must be a very good responsibility for it.

State Secretary Verherstraeten, you have stated in the media and in the committee that we should not see a professional ban in that, because in the new prosecutor’s office of Halle-Vilvoorde we get a Dutch-speaking prosecutor of the King. It cannot be compared: how can one now compare apples with pears! How can one now compare with a Dutch-speaking area where a Dutch-speaking prosecutor of the King will be, which is obvious and logical, of which one can never think it would be different? How can one compensate that with something unnatural, namely that in a bilingual capital it will forever be a French speaker?

You have given an initial account, but gradually you have also found an additional explanation. You said that we must ensure that parity is confirmed for the coordination committee, which is provided for in Article 150ter of the Judicial Code.

That is a strange reasoning. You say that first, and then you give another statement that might be even less accountable. It is not even stipulated in the law that the paritary committee should be paritary.

It is also a total circular reasoning. You say that we should have a French-speaking prosecutor of the King because the committee must be paritary, and that the reverse is also true. However, you have to admit that you cannot be held accountable. Nevertheless, the State Council had pointed out to you that this is still an essential point, for which you should have held accountable.

In conclusion, I would like to briefly comment on what the Flemish parties consider as positive points of this agreement.

We should be pleased with the fact that the prosecutor’s office is being divided, because then it may be possible to pursue its own criminal policy. Only we will unfortunately not have judges to judge the cases that are being prosecuted by that new prosecutor’s office. Instead of our own criminal policy, we will get impunity again. A measure for nothing.

In addition, the parquet will not be a full-fledged parquet. It will only be an appendix to the large parquet of Brussels. The prosecutor will not even be the head of his own magistrates. After all, for example, disciplinary sanctions for the French-speaking magistrates in Halle-Vilvoorde will be decided only and only in Brussels.

We should welcome the fact that the courts are divided into Dutch-speaking and French-speaking courts. French speakers can still speak right throughout Halle-Vilvoorde. Where is the improvement?

We should be happy that there will finally be a workload measurement. Now, however, it is already clear that the workload measurement will not be objective and will only benefit French speakers and not Flanders.

We should welcome a transitional measure, the 27/80 scheme, but it is already clear that 27 % will not be enough to overcome the downturn. In labour courts, for example, 29 to 40 % of cases are Dutch-speaking.

We should be happy with a Dutch-speaking prosecutor of the King in Halle-Vilvoorde, while that is the logic itself. At the same time, the Attorney of the King will always be French-speaking.

We will therefore submit our amendments again, so that those courts are actually divided, so that an objective measurement of the workload is first developed and only then reformed, so that the Dutch-speaking judges are trusted back in Halle-Vilvoorde and not replaced by French-speaking magistrates, and so that the Brussels prosecutor and the labor auditor in our own capital can also be Dutch-speaking.

In conclusion, this reform will lead to greater impunity. This proves once again how little respect the eight parties show to the Flamings. The wishes of the Flammers are wiped off the table, while the French speakers are overloaded with gifts. We will all be the victims of this; not only the inhabitants of Halle-Vilvoorde but the whole of Flanders. Is that the agreement you are so proud of? Is that what you have achieved for the Flame? Is this your trophy? I am looking forward to your answer to the question of what you have achieved for the Flaming.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, dear colleagues, the reform of the judicial district of Brussels, this is the subject of the debate this afternoon.

The debates that took place in the Constitution Revision Committee and the quality of the report presented to us today lead me to be brief and to deliver to you some important general considerations for the Socialist Party.

There are two components of this reform. The first of a constitutional nature provides the guarantee that the essential elements of the reform can only be amended by a special majority. The second translates the institutional agreement into a bill with a double concern: the rapid entry into force of the reform while ensuring the continuity of the service rendered to the justiciable. For the PS, it was ⁇ important that the new courts could function with sufficient magistrates and staff.

As regards the proposed revision of Article 157bis of the Constitution, beyond the protective dimension of a linguistic minority at the national level, it is the importance that the authors of the bill attribute to this reform aimed at participating in the large institutional balances of the country that justifies the adoption of a constitutional foundation.

The essential elements that can now only be amended by a special majority are truly at the heart of the reform of the judicial district of Brussels. Let me mention a few of them. I think, first of all, of the doubling of the courts into unilingual courts over the whole of the current Brussels district, i.e. the 19 Brussels municipalities and the 35 municipalities of the Hal-Vilvorde district I think, then, of the deployment of French-speaking magistrates from the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office to the new Hal-Vilvorde Prosecutor’s Office for the treatment, by priority, of French-speaking cases. Finally, I think of the rules governing the use of languages in judicial matters which are improved in the case of a voluntary appearance or a request for referral to another court.

This reform goes beyond the considerations of a Community nature and should improve the functioning of justice for the benefit of the justiciable. This dimension is an omnipresent red thread in this bill.

In this context, the PS considers some ⁇ important advances. Thus, thanks to the recruitment of French-speaking magistrates and personnel, a backbone, which has existed for many years on the French-speaking side, will finally be able – in any case, we hope – to be resorbed. The measurement of the workload must result in the definitive establishment of the framework of the Brussels courts, and this before the end of this legislature. This is obviously a major construction work that must be carried out in the interests of all.

The limitation of bilingualism requirements is a logical consequence of the doubling of courts into one-language jurisdictions. Thus, by imposing from now on a functional bilingualism, pragmatism has been favored.

Another important advance is the respect for all existing linguistic rights within the framework of the new judicial organization and their improvement for more facilities and to avoid arbitrary. A right of appeal will be established before a bilingual and parity instance which must ensure the respect of these linguistic rights and guarantee the procedure.

In conclusion, I would like, on behalf of the PS, to welcome the ambition of this balanced reform. Far from positions dictated by pure Community considerations, this reform pursues the objective of adapting the judicial organization within the judicial district of Brussels, adapting this organization to differentiated realities while improving the right of the prosecutors. Once the law has left our homecycle, an important work of monitoring the implementation of the reform will obviously have to be carried out. The PS will, of course, be attentive to ensuring that the set objectives can be met.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, colleagues, I can summarize the feeling I have now in three words: finally, finally, finally! Mr. Weyts, you may leave here any of my 29 colleagues from Halle-Vilvoorde – I do not include the six of the facility communities – and they will say the same with a shock, after we have been angry for 15 to 20 years before the division of the judicial district. Finally, finally, we are finally here!

The essence is that Halle-Vilvoorde is no longer the ugly duck in the big Brussels bite. The irritation over the non-splitting of the electoral district was a stomach cramp, which we had at best every four years. All my colleagues will confirm to you that the non-division of the judicial district was a daily, a monthly non-division. You can continue to talk about it and you can continue to launch slogans about it, but we want to get rid of those painful hours of day and month.

On the ground, it has been clear for years that Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde are facing a completely different security problem. To the extent that was not clear, the whole Belkacem story has once again proved that the challenges in Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde are very different.

Does it mean that we leave Brussels on the left or on the right? No to! Of course, there is interaction between the capital of Europe and the surrounding area. That is in the proposal. Yes, this has been negotiated. I admit that. Now our problem is that from Halle-Vilvoorde we are lost in that big GB, that judicial Brussels. Of course we are welcome there now, because the Dutch speakers do not do so badly there. However, too often, whether or not desired, we are presented with the court menu of the house, while we want justice à la carte.

Now we can help in the kitchen, but Halle-Vilvoorde wants its own court kitchen, just say: its own court parquet. The problem today is just that unclear situation. We walk in the forest of that judicial Uplace. We can no longer see our trees through the forest. We will not leave Brussels. Mr Annemans has repeatedly urged not to let Brussels go. Well, we don’t want to let Brussels go, but we want order in the forest. Therefore, the parcels must be rearranged.

Who brought us so far? From whom do we get those pushes? Police officers and magistrates do not say this so often, because they prefer not to come into the press.

What is the problem now? The problem is a language problem: in the current bilingual structure our police officers are not understood or not well understood, half understood or not well understood, consciously not well understood, regularly underestimated, sometimes ignored. This is no longer the case in Halle-Vilvoorde. So we want that to be done more correctly in accordance – I want to emphasize this again – with the language legislation, which we want to fully preserve, as it currently functions.

What is the second problem? Obviously that is the mastodone content of the judicial description; 1.5 million inhabitants, which is simply uncontrollable. Antwerp, where there are no easy people, as they say to me, has 1 million inhabitants and that is already difficult. We must return to the level of 500 000 to 600 000 inhabitants for a district.

The third and most important problem is, of course, the legal assessment of certain forms of crime. I have given the example of the underestimated sacochcriminality several times. For Halle-Vilvoorde and for the population, it is important that the valley catcher is also assessed in a proportionate manner as a heavy boy or a heavy girl.

Of course, it is important, also for us, that a lik-op-piece policy be further outlined at the federal level. Now from Halle-Vilvoorde will finally be taken seriously also the lighter criminal facts, which now drown in the great delay in work and the metropolitan estimate. In addition, justice will later function on an increasingly wider regional track. Therefore, it is necessary that the prosecution policy in Halle-Vilvoorde can follow its own line.

There was a clear choice in the committee between the VB proposal and the VDBB proposal. The Flemish Importance has again been consistent. It has defended its model of division based on its separatist vision. All other political groups agreed to take the Vandenberghe-Bourgeois proposal as their starting point.

This means that the park is purely divided. For us, the people of the field, this is essential to have our own prosecution policy tailored to Halle-Vilvoorde, to finally get rid of the everyday language problems and to finally see a clear line in the legal policy in Brussels and in Halle-Vilvoorde.

The decoupling of the court ensures that we do not let Brussels go. The Dutch-speaking lawyers indeed ask to remain involved in the Flemish, European and international events. It also ensures that in Brussels we take a step towards the “commonization” of justice. That evolution is inevitable. It also endorses the federalization process with two instead of three.

If one adds – this is not to be underestimated – that the police officers often ask for their own coordination director and a legal director, then this is the opportunity to put two prosecutors and two courts, like in a good football team, in the top of the competition. We do not hope that the Dutch-speaking prosecutor will be a clean one. We hope that he or she will be a good prosecutor. So it will preferably not be Georges Leekens figure, who gives it off at the moment when the big matches arrive. So we really hope that it will become a strong figure, who can extend its own, Dutch-speaking policy. This park should stretch the lines. This can be done in coordination with Brussels.

Colleagues, the relationships will be set in the new frameworks. (without micro) (...) measurement of workload. This was pleasant in the committee: we agreed at the end. What is the problem? We have a subjective “working-time measurement”.

It is very strange and very unfortunate that so far we have only received that. We count, and will continue to do so, on the Minister of Justice, who himself says that she is not a good lawyer but a good manager. We hope to be able to give her the title of Manager of the Year in 2014 – we will be happy to do so – if she can then provide us with that objective workload measurement.

We realize that the work is not finished today. But, colleagues, today we jump a little further in the history of Halle-Vilvoorde. And admittedly, it’s a bit in the style of Frans Van Cauwelaert or Hugo Schiltz, rather one act on the ground than ten in the full airspace.

I therefore call on the colleagues of the N-VA Group to support this constructive proposal. Ladies and gentlemen, finish the work! Finish the work you started constructively! We do not blame you for having made a mistake in the Council of Europe on the so-called abuse of Article 195. Everyone can make mistakes, but you should not make it a habit.

The fact that the Prime Minister-President has clearly stated in the Flemish Parliament, on behalf of the whole Flemish Government, that the Flemish Government will fully cooperate with the drafting of this agreement, testifies to support from that angle. Colleagues of the N-VA, note that you do not bring a different story on the left side of the Hertogstraat than on the right side.

You, by the way, have a good defender of this agreement in the person of Mr. Maingain. Ms. Van Vaerenbergh, you also say that the boundary is not clear. Mr. Maingain says it is not a good agreement, because, I quote, “it’s going too much in the confederate direction.” And he also says: “The border of Brussels is too sharply fixed.”

(without the microphone)

With our lawyer on the back seat. I now notice that Mr. Doomst calls on Mr. Maingain as the lawyer of his case. Everyone chooses their own lawyer.

Mr Jambon, I must admit that I was impressed by his lawyer skills. However, he also said that his personality principle was insufficiently respected in this regard.

So we know. We also admit that this is a big change.

We must not be afraid of change. Change gives strength. I propose that we positively unite our forces to make the upcoming judicial split a beautiful piece of work that can finally give Halle-Vilvoorde and Brussels security tailored.

The House will conclude this week the examination of the bill proposals reforming the judicial district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde. These proposals are, in the eyes of the MR I represent here, one of the keys to the sixth state reform.

This is a case at least as complex as its electoral cousin, but much more famous and much more commented. In the everyday life of the justiciable, it is of the utmost importance. Its rules of operation directly affect the judicial development of disputes in the central region of the country. Therefore, its treatment is not neutral from a linguistic and community point of view.

On the Flemish side, the demand was strong to obtain the division of the Brussels Prosecutor's Office, with one one-language part for the nineteen Brussels municipalities and another also one-language part for the territory of Hal-Vilvorde. It was also asked to split the courts of first instance, trade and labour.

On the French side, the concerns were different, of course. The French-speaking chambers of the Brussels courts were and remain for almost twenty years confronted with a significant judicial backwardness, the causes of which are clearly identified: on the one hand, a framework of French-speaking magistrates – the same remark applies to the greves and the prosecutor’s secretaries – too narrow, not corresponding to the sociological reality of the capital and, on the other hand, demands of bilingualism totally disproportionate, since the law of 15 June 1935 on the use of languages in judicial matters prescribed that two-thirds of the magistrates of each court must justify knowledge of French and Dutch, while – paradoxically – a magistrates can only deal with the cases in the language of their diploma.

Various bills were submitted to try to remedy this endemic problem. One of them was made on our own initiative. Recent attempts in 2005 and 2007 to reach an agreement have failed. The balance was ⁇ difficult to ⁇ . At the time of voting for the reform, I think that it is necessary first and foremost to highlight a certain wisdom that has contributed, on both sides of the linguistic border, to reconcile the points of view.

For the Reform Movement, we claim it clearly: this agreement is a good agreement; an agreement that improves things on the ground for the prosecutors but also for the functioning of the judicial apparatus.

What are the benefits of this reform? First, as regards the courts of first instance, trade, labour and the Brussels Police Court, they are divided into a French-speaking court and a Dutch-speaking court. The important thing for us is that everyone remains competent on the entire territory of the judicial district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde, i.e. the fifty-four municipalities. Then, this doubling is accompanied by an adaptation of the cadres of magistrates and staff in the transplants more respectful of the sociological reality. Complementary magistrates are integrated into the framework for the calculation of this adaptation. As a transitional basis, until the language frameworks can be determined on the basis of the measurement of the workload, the French- and Dutch-speaking frameworks of the police court, the labour court, the court of first instance will correspond to 80 % and 20 % of the existing frameworks, respectively. For the Commercial Court, these frameworks will correspond to 60% and 40% of the existing frameworks.

The requirement for bilingualism is very logically and very fortunately alleviated, which will make it easier to recruit. Corps leaders will always need to have a thorough knowledge of the other language. On the other hand, it will only require one-third of unilingual magistrates instead of two-thirds, the knowledge of the other language being then only of a functional nature and not in-depth.

As for the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office and the Auditory, they are divided into two. From now on, the Prosecutor of the King and the auditor of the work of Brussels will no longer exercise their functions except in the administrative district of Brussels-Capital, that is, in the nineteen municipalities of Brussels. The Procurator of the King and the auditor of the work of Hal-Vilvorde shall be competent for the administrative district of Hal-Vilvorde. A coordination committee, composed of the King’s prosecutors and the aforementioned auditors, shall ensure the coordination between the Prosecutor’s Office and the Brussels Auditorate and those of Hal-Vilvorde. This is essential for us: the current framework of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office will be distributed between the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office and the Hal-Vilvorde Prosecutor’s Office at a rate of 80% for the first and 20% for the second.

The framework of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Brussels Auditory will consist of four-fifths of French-speaking magistrates and one-fifth of Dutch-speaking magistrates. Hal-Vilvorde will be composed entirely of Dutch-speaking magistrates, one third of whom will have to be bilingual but – and this is what is important in our eyes – in order to allow the French-speaking people of the periphery who request it to defend themselves in French, French-speaking substitutes of the King’s prosecutor will be dispatched in Hal-Vilvorde and their number will have to correspond to a fifth of the framework of the Hal-Vilvorde prosecutor’s office. These French-speaking substitutes will depend, on the level of hierarchical authority, on the prosecutor of the King of Brussels.

Beyond the institutional reorganization, the delicate issue of the use of languages remained. For the Reform Movement, the important thing was that the rights of all the justiciables of the judicial district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde were preserved. It was about avoiding the removal of rights. Furthermore, we consider that these rights are strengthened and expanded.

Any request for change of language or referral to a French-speaking court can now, when it is rejected, be the subject of an appeal before the district court. For now, only an appeal in cassation, costly by nature, is possible and therefore discourages the justiciable from challenging the court decision.

In the nineteen municipalities of Brussels-Capital and in the six facilitated municipalities, the application for change of language or referral to the French-speaking court will be better framed in order to limit the judge’s discretion. From now on, the judge will have to act on its own behalf, unless he finds that it is abusive, given the majority of the documents of the file drawn up, or that it is contrary to the language of the employment relationship.

For all 54 municipalities, whether they are addressed to a peace court or to a court, if the parties agree to ask the judge to return their case before a French-speaking judge or to change the language of the procedure before the peace judge, they will be able to do so through a simplified procedure. For now, the presence of the applicant and the defendant is required at the introductory hearing to formally make the application. Tomorrow, this can also be done by sending to the greeting office, even before the hearing, a letter confirming the shared will to make proceed with the removal or the change of language. In this case, the parties will be exempted from appearing at the introductory hearing and their file will be automatically transferred to the French-speaking court, unless the judge makes an order refusing it, within fifteen days of the request.

Another notable novelty: it is now possible for the parties to appear voluntarily and directly before the judge if, despite the dispute that opposes them, they manage to agree on this point. This provision will prevent them, as is currently the case, from having to present their case first before the judge of the other linguistic regime. For example, French-speaking spouses domiciled in Vilvorde, a Flemish municipality without facilities, will now be able to appear before the French-speaking Court of First Instance in Brussels to obtain the divorce and settle their rights with respect to their children.

For the Reform Movement, these achievements of the reform are major advances that allow us to draw a broadly positive balance of the proposed changes. In this sense, it is clear that we will vote positively for this exit given to the case of the judicial BHV.

Our vigilance, however, remains with regard to the concrete entry into force of the reform, which imposes budgetary determination and consequences. The MR will be a loyal but strict partner in this regard. What has been agreed must be implemented. We have full confidence in the ability of the Minister of Justice to translate the laws we vote today into reorganization of the judicial process on the ground.

This reform is, for us, one of the priorities of the end of the legislature in matters of justice. We distinguish two dates of entry into force. The provisions governing the distribution of current cadres, the placement of magistrates and staff in surplus in an extended framework and the recruitment of magistrates shall enter into force on the day of the publication of the law in the Moniteur belge. The rest of the law comes into force as soon as the recruitment of magistrates and staff has allowed to reach 90% of the framework provided for in each court, prosecutor's office, secretariat, secretariat of the prosecutor's office. The King shall then, by a royal decree, find that these conditions are fulfilled, so that the whole law may enter into force on the first day of the second month following the publication of that royal decree.

A monitoring committee will be established to monitor the implementation of the reform. The aim is to successfully implement this reform by 1 January 2014.

Finally, as there is currently no tool for objectively calculating the workload in each court, prosecutor’s office, office or secretariat, it has been chosen, as a transitional basis, for keys for the distribution of the current staff of magistrates and staff of the prosecutor’s office and secretariat.

I would like to conclude by addressing the constitutional aspect of the reform.

Beyond all judicial advances, this point is obviously, politically, a major guard. As we will see in other aspects of the institutional reform, the judicial BHV is finally blocked with a two-thirds majority. What has been the main element of institutional blocking in recent years is the contradiction, sometimes tragic in democracy, between the expectations of a legitimate majority and the fundamental rights expressed by a minority.

This contradiction in our constitutional system is normally framed by the Constitution and by special laws. It is this mechanism that we have been using for decades, both to not overthrow the majority, but also to respect the minority of this country. However, the judicial BHV dealt with essential matters but without the guarantees of strengthened majority. This is a weakness that we are addressing today.

From now on, the essential elements of the reform contained in the legislative texts, with regard to the judicial BHV, as well as the electoral BHV, can no longer be modified but by a two-thirds majority plus a simple majority in each linguistic group.

The institutional balance that was found in this file between the eight parties is thus permanently stabilized. The Reform Movement is looking forward to participating in this process of community pacification which, in addition, improves the everyday life and the rights of the prosecutors. The MR group will therefore vote on this constitutional revision and, of course, the bill to be considered.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, colleagues, on behalf of the sp.a, I would like to briefly add five points to clarify why we believe that we can approve the texts with a calm mind.

First, I come back to what colleague Van Hecke said in the committee — ⁇ a great truth to this day — to know that what is now ahead is one of the most important judicial reforms of recent years. If you know how many reforms have been made in recent years, you can already estimate that this can be difficult to counter. In all openness, this has always been the position of the sp.a in all negotiations. Any reform of the judiciary will be an improvement of the judiciary. In the light of this, this reform can resist the test.

Second, I think colleague Doomst is 100% right — and he can know it, as mayor — if he says that, in terms of criminal policy, there is an opportunity for improvement here. This applies not only to the Rand, where one now gets a specific local parquet, but also to the capital, where the challenge should be to have a group of prosecutors that can handle the capital problem in the best way. Also on that level we live with the hope that this in fact can and should be an improvement.

Third, unnoticed here, for anyone interested in the functioning of prosecutors and judges, a new fact has been introduced, in particular that for the first time in our history the structure within which the judges work, the court in a narrow sense, differs from the structure of the parquets. It is a good thing that we also in our country, as in other countries, make much more clear that the function of the public prosecutor, the function of the prosecutor, is a different function than that of the judge, and that the organization of the courts must be different from the organization of the prosecutors. Well, for those interested in the reform and modernization of the functioning of judges and prosecutors, a very important step is taken here; here the ice is broken to do as in other states, in Europe and elsewhere in the world, namely by distinguishing between those two functions and organizing them differently.

Fourth, there has been much talk about the potential future competition between the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking courts. Let us hope that they will compete, not to get as many mandates as possible, but to help the people as best as possible in their disputes and in securing the criminal judgments. Let us hope that there will be a healthy competition between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking courts in serving the people.

We are confident that the judicial apparatus, as it exists today, is not able to give figures to the legislator who wishes to take responsibility. We have to deal across the country and specifically in the outskirts of the capital with a judicial organization that is unable to give the figures that should help us make the right decisions. I refer to the words of the former Minister of Justice, Stefaan De Clerck — one would miss him, at times — in the committee: “I have given the figures I have received from the courts and I have determined that it is better for us to reach a political agreement.” I can only help him.

Everyone is curious whether they will still be able to enjoy the results of a workload measurement. It will be a difficult task for the Minister of Justice who, according to the government agreement, must get rid of the workload measurement. If there is something that we have been able to establish beyond party boundaries, it is that judges and prosecutors today are not able to give figures about their functioning. The conclusion is that we better do it in a different way.

I am not in favour of a workload measurement. I am in favour of profit measurement.

I want to know who works well and who works badly in our courts. Maybe the division will give us much better information. In any case, I think it is urgently necessary to find out who as a Dutch speaker and who as a French speaker does their work.

We have at least five reasons to approve the text.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, now, after an hour and a half debate, after the discussions in the committee, after two years of negotiations, it is sometimes still difficult to understand the positions of one and the other. It is especially difficult, very difficult, to understand the position of the N-VA.

To be honest, I must say that in the Flemish Interest it is clear; the Flemish Interest wants to divide everything. The end of the country.

In the N-VA, this is not always as clear. Since the start of the negotiations, two years ago, we have actually seen the N-VA slide forward three models. It is difficult to figure out which model the N-VA really stands behind.

Colleagues of the N-VA, you should read the note of your chairman, Mr De Wever, once again. He even manages to push two models forward in that one note. First he thinks for a piece in the direction of the division logic. In that proposal, justice is transferred to the Communities, except in Brussels, where it remains federal. It is not really divided. This is the model, described on page 26. Ten pages further, on page 36, it says that the Vandenberghe proposal will be supported. However, this is a very different proposal.

Mr. Jambon just asked who is who’s lawyer here.

( ... ) The [...]

No, thankfully not! There is Mr. Louis, who is your lawyer.

Mr. Doomst says there are still lawyers in the game. CD&V takes Mr Maingain as lawyer. I have the impression that the N-VA has chosen Mr Hugo Vandenberghe as lawyer. Now that he has become a staff holder in Brussels, it may be a good lawyer to defend your interests.

Colleagues of the N-VA, you choose the model of Mr Vandenberghe and you submit an amendment in which his 2003 bill is taken over. However, in the discussions, both in the committee and in the plenary session, you say that the present texts do not contain real division, but that you are in favour of a real division.

The Vandenberghe proposal, of course, also seeks not a real split, but a vertical split of the parquet but also a doubling of the seat.

In this way we can discuss further. I would like to go a little deeper into the Vandenberghe proposal.

Mr. Van Hecke, you always tell the same story and you try to create confusion.

For all clarity, the proposal-Vandenberghe is not our ideal. We put this on the table in the form of compromise. It is an acceptable compromise that we ourselves are not wild about, but you blame us that we are not willing to compromise. We are that. That’s why we just put the proposal of CD&V’s colleagues on the table, to be in your favor, to reach a compromise, to reach an agreement. Then the weather is not good.

You should also know clearly that the proposal-Vandenberghe – who am I to defend a proposal from CD&V – is a vertical split for the prosecutor’s office and a horizontal split for the court.

What does that mean now, because you are pretending to be a duplication. Nothing is less true. The court in the Vandenberghe proposal is not duplicated into a French-speaking court in Bruxelles-Halle-Vilvorde and a Dutch-speaking court in Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde as it is now, but in a French-speaking court in Brussels and in a Dutch-speaking court in Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. This is a horizontal division. That is the big difference. I hope you can be clear about this.

Now we still do not know what your ideal is, Mr. Weyts.

I would like to come up with the beautiful alternative that you are pushing forward. Of course, it is very easy to take a text from 2003. It is a 9 year old text that is completely outdated. That is your alternative. You have not taken into account dozens of laws that have made changes to the judicial district after 2003.

What you do in your amendment is suggest articles that have already been abolished, delete articles that have already been deleted, and so on. To say it with the words of Mrs Van Vaerenbergh: it is legal prutswork. That is your alternative.

We will meet Mr. Van Hecke and make a few adjustments. Then he will approve it. Is it what you say?

We have been waiting for your adjustments for two weeks.

Will you approve it?

Then we will see what those adjustments are, and then we will discuss further.

We would like to postpone the debate for two weeks and talk again in two weeks. This is a constructive proposal from Mr. Van Hecke. We want to get into that. He says that if we modify our proposal slightly, with a few technical adjustments, he will approve it.

The [...]

Or not too? What are you doing here?

We held the debate in the committee. You stick to your document, which is still somewhat cuddly. I note that. Your amendment cannot be approved today. You also know this very well. You have made an attempt and submitted something that you thought the Dutch speakers might like to see, but you know very well that your text is fully dated and that your amendment is completely kaduuk.

The [...]

Mr. Speaker, for the clarity of the debate, I have heard that colleague Weyts states that the proposal-Vandenberghe included a vertical split of the seat. This would mean that the Court of First Instance...

No, from the park.

Mr. Weyts, listen for a moment, even though I know you are not so good at it. The Vandenberghe proposal was, in your opinion, about a vertical division.

Collega Van Hecke was right, the amendment submitted by your group is not an updated amendment. In the meantime, the legislation has been amended, and you have not taken this into account. The Bill-Vandenberghe, from 2003, was also the Bill-Bourgeois-Van Parys of approximately the same date. I invite you to read from the explanatory note to Article 23: “The territorial jurisdiction for the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking courts is identical.” You apparently did not read the proposal when you signed and submitted it, not as a compromise, but as a proposal from the N-VA at the time.

Mr. Van Hecke, I would like to recommend that you, before speaking, review the amendment submitted by us. This was not a 2003 amendment, but a 2007 amendment. I would recommend you look at the articles and see how updated it is.

The difference between the ideal and the compromise.

I have understood that the ideal of Mr. Van Hecke is the adjusted proposal of Mr. Vandenberghe. The N-VA has an ideal proposal, but we do not know what it is. They have submitted a compromise, which is then even negotiable, namely the Vandenberghe proposal.

If everybody had ever submitted their ideal as a proposal, as we did with the vertical split, then the debate would probably have been less chaotic than it is now and then we would not have reached the ideal that then became a compromise, namely that which Mr. Van Hecke defends here.

Mr. Speaker, this debate shows that it is primarily a struggle for symbols.

If one sets together the texts and the amendment, which the N-VA submitted in 2003, and apparently now a different version from 2007, one finds that they all appear to go in the same direction. It is a vertical split of the parquet and a decoupling, a horizontal split of the seat.

This is what I wanted to show. For three years, you have failed to put forward a coherent proposal.

The proposal is the result of negotiations between eight parties. Individual, those eight parties may also all have different views. They will not all have sat on the same line, but by sitting around the table, addressing the problems and bringing together the ideas, one has come to this text.

This is a model that did not exist before. It is a unique text that is very close to the previous proposal-Vandenberghe.

Colleagues, the previous speakers have already detailed what the current texts all mean. In my view, there is a very important task for us in the further implementation of these texts, and above all a very heavy responsibility on the Minister of Justice.

The texts adopted today will need to be translated into a concrete implementation. This is a very important task and it will need to work on certain points very quickly. Work on a workload measurement will need to be done very quickly, so that it can be properly weighed on which courts how many staff members – magistrates, prosecutors and office staff – will be made available.

This is a very important task, in which it is in the interest of everyone to do so in a quick and correct way. That is the big challenge. Whatever text is adopted, the objective must be to ensure that the quality of services provided to the citizen is very high, that criminal justice is carried out quickly and that civil proceedings are handled correctly and quickly. That is the essence of this reform.

I give the word to Mrs. Pas. Or does the group leader, Mr Annemans, want to speak first?

Mr. Speaker, I can reassure you, Mrs. Pas will soon discuss the technical nature of this proposal, just as she did in the committee.

I come here briefly to avoid that at the beginning of what is bombastically called “the sixth state reform” by the proposers of the bill – that is, it is at this moment – at the beginning of what they call a “historic moment”, at the beginning of a series of debates that will last at least until about July 21st, it is not for a moment to zoom out on what a state reform is or the construction around a state reform.

We have these proposals here. They are what they are.

There were a number of possibilities within the framework of that state reform and the division of the judicial district. One of those possibilities was the vertical split of the Flemish Interest which has already been highlighted here by various speakers. That is a pure split, both at the level of the seat and at the level of the parquet.

Then there was the proposal-Vandenberghe, which only divided the parquet vertically, but treated the seat in a way that allowed Belgium to continue to exist. The reason was not so much that we should keep Brussels with Flanders, which colleague Doomst has pushed forward here in a “Jesus” way as an argument. The reason was to avoid the emergence of a separatist model, in which we would then subsequently have been able to purely split a bilingual Brussels legal space with a Flemish purely unitary space. In other words, that separatism was filled by CD&V at the time – of course also by the then cartel partner N-VA – for compromising reasons, for Belgicist reasons, so and not so that Brussels would be held by Flanders, which now, by the way, is no longer the case.

Then there was the third concept, the concept of colleague Maingain. This was also very pure, namely le dédoublement, two unitary courts with equal jurisdiction for both Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde. Thus, the uniformity of Halle-Vilvoorde was put on the slope altogether.

What has become now? It has become the last. This is what is present here, with a bilinguality that is being drastically removed in Brussels. Furthermore, there is a doubling of the courts in which the Flamings are harmed in an unthinkable, on no basis responsible way. There is a King’s prosecutor in Brussels who legally must always be a French speaker, a clear and clear discriminatory provision that will have to be brought before the Constitutional Court.

In Halle-Vilvoorde, the criminal justice system is largely frenched. There is a kind of Dutch-speaking minipark. I am no longer the only one who says this. Meanwhile, De Witte, the governor of the Flemish-Brabant province, has already joined me. So there is a kind of mini parquet that will only be able to deal with the small supplementary dossiers. The major crime will be brought before a French-speaking branch of the Brussels prosecutor’s office.

Through civil matters, the French-speaking courts are likely to become four times larger than they are now, while in the best case they only have twice as many tasks.

There is the easing of the language change and the referral that is carried out throughout Flanders. This is a very extreme and even drastic relief.

The requirement of bilingualism is also further reduced, so that we can speak in the context of a thorough, potential collapse of the language legislation. This building is collapsing. We all agree on this. The collapse is only a matter of time.

There are a number of comments from the State Council on the present draft.

The Council of State notes that it is necessary to specify the essential and non-essential elements, which distinguish between what is constitutionally anchored and what will not be anchored. You did not do that. On the contrary, you are completely overlooked by those comments.

The fact that the prosecutor in Brussels must always be a French speaker is a provision that you must answer. This note was more or less fully submitted by you, with a reference, of which I will find traces in the preparatory work, by Mr. Verherstraeten to the parity in his control committee.

The above is in any case interesting material to be able to abolish the present law in the future.

There is also the adjustment of the language frames, which takes place entirely randomly according to a 80/20 key, without giving this distribution key any explanation, neither now nor in the future.

Of course, there is also the way in which the aforementioned language frameworks should be determined, in particular on the basis of a workload measurement. The term “among other things” – as the State Council’s objection read – was included in your negotiated agreement.

Very typical of what actually happened here is that you had negotiated that somewhere in the text the term “among others” should be. Then the State Council asks what “among other things” means. After all, the workload measurement is an objective figure: certain judges make a certain number of judgments in a given time period, which gives an objective figure. Why should there be “among other things”? You then made the mistake in your explanation to write that the workload measurement will be “among other things.”

You have added “sociological elements” to that. This can be about the language on the passports or anything. All those subjective elements you have included in the definition of your workload measurement. I just want to point out that this proposal is an injustice in a high and even extreme degree. It is a concession on the Flemish side that has probably been surprised not only by Mr. Maingain but even by all French-speaking colleagues.

This concession can also only be explained by looking at how the history of this so-called state reform has gone with the young negotiators. Wouter Beke yesterday in the Senate made an attempt to break his bench by knocking on it with his fists, when he explained about the Flemish concessions. I will probably return to this later, because it was actually a beautiful scene.

Those young negotiators ended up rolling themselves on the basis of false, false figures. I think only Stefaan De Clerck says these are the right numbers, but maybe that’s because he eventually brought those wrong numbers out. It is a strange paradox. Those young negotiators, at the end of that calvary journey and just before they would form the government to cope with the financial crisis, have quickly let themselves go into the clothes. All this probably happened to the surprise of the French speakers, who with this proposal were offered something that they could hopelessly hope in their wildest dreams. This duplication, with this discrimination of the Flammers, they had never thought of.

At the beginning of this debate and this state reform, we must ask ourselves for a moment how it is that here so suddenly such heavy concessions – I consider this draft as a concession – were concealed. Additions, by the way, form a concept that, according to the Flemish Belang, was always anchored in all Belgian state reforms. It has been more or less out of use for twenty years, because there has been no real state reform for twenty years. Until then, a concession on the Flemish side was a fixed feature of any state reform.

That began with the first state reform in 1970, which dealt with the cultural powers with the foundation of the Communities and the Regions. For this, however, the Flammers had to make an important concession, namely parity. This is a system in which a Flemish majority was constantly exposed to possible blackmail.

This system dates back to 1970. Then there were state reforms in 1980, with the financial agreements, and in 1988, with the educational powers for both, but with Flemish concessions regarding the jurisprudence of the Council of State, regarding Happart and regarding the formation of the Brussels Region.

I remembered this in the committee. I was sitting somewhere behind, at the third pillar. On the seat under the calendar was André Cools. He will be all behind. When I arrived here and we took the oath, he stood right and took the oath on “la Constitution et le 107quater”. He then had to take back the oath of the president, because it was not the right oath, but with it he emphasized what was important to the French speakers at that time: the formation of the Brussels Region. A few months later, they got it. The Third Region of Brussels was for all the Flammers not only a concession, but also, as we have seen, a jewelly mistake.

There were no more state reforms. There were still the Saint-Michel Agreements, but they were a implementation of the third phase of the 1988 state reform. Remember, colleagues who have still operated in the People’s Union – there are some here, both at the Flemish Belang and at the N-VA –, how the People’s Union completely imploded after the state reform of 1988. Nothing was left of. There was only a bunch of melting ashes.

In 1993, Dehaene was so cynical that he still carried out that third phase, which had cost the People's Union the head, as being his state reform, with the introduction of municipal autonomy and the doubling of the double mandate in the Chamber and the Flemish Parliament. It was then split. This was the state reform of 1993. There was no Flemish price anymore, but it had already been a Flemish price, paid with the Brussels Region, the Council of State and – don’t forget that – the cementing of the facilities. It was also approved by the People’s Union of the time, I mean even by your father, Mrs. Van Vaerenbergh. I have approved him who still sees. He was sitting around the seat where you are sitting now.

In the state reforms there were no concessions afterwards, even though – I repeat it – because Dehaene did not make any state reforms anymore. After 1993 Dehaene said it was enough, that it was done. He went to his CVP and said that one should no longer bother him with all that Flemish brol, because he was busy with Maastricht. I suppose that he was also preparing for his European career.

Dehaene has done quite well. Thro ⁇ the 1990s, he was able to keep the CVP coast. On the bench where colleague Verherstraeten now sits, was then Van den Brande, the then group chairman of the CVP. Even from the fire he could keep costume. He made him Prime Minister of Flanders or Mr. Van den Brande began to call himself Prime Minister of Flanders.

He remained active throughout the 1990s as the Flemish wing of the CVP, but constructive work on a state reform did not happen. This was all moved to 1999. Dehaene was partially right. He said that he should be reassured, that it should be done in 1999, because then we would have to revise the finance law; the French speakers would then sit on their knees, because their French language education would no longer be affordable, and he would then make sure that the state reform was pushed by it, with Flemish money.

In 1999, Flanders prepared for a major state reform. Flanders did so by submitting to the Flemish Parliament committee and subsequently to the Flemish Parliament plenary session the five resolutions of the Flemish Parliament and approving them as the concept for the new state reform, which would be on the table in 1999.

Note, those five resolutions of the Flemish Parliament, that was one and the other. Even the Flemish Interest could have approved it, if it had not been so that we found it only a propaganda manoeuvre and thought that of those five resolutions nothing would ever come into the house, which afterwards also turned out to be true.

These five resolutions have caused a trauma to the French speakers. At that moment, in 1999, they suddenly woke up. They saw that Flanders was swinging and swinging towards autonomy, including in terms of social security and the like. They saw that Flanders, which was in the hub with the rise and growth of the Flemish Bloc, would somehow reach a point where it would no longer reflect back on such far-reaching demands as the five resolutions of the Flemish Parliament.

From that moment on the French-speaking side a light has started to burn. I will come back later to tell you what that light has meant.

Dehaene believed that full until the chickens and the dioxin crisis came and they wiped out Dehaene.

The [...]

Were you there then? You have only been once. And then did you hear that? Now it is for all the other colleagues. Colleague De Clerck, I did not know that you were there then, because you have only been there once, just to say that your numbers were not wrong.

In The Time, however, an anonymous negotiator said: “If we had known that the figures were wrong, then we would have questioned ourselves.” “This is really annoying, we feel caught.” Mr. Secretary of State, my source is The Time, a serious newspaper, which has left an anonymous source to speak about the figures of De Clerck.

Mr. De Clerck, I will not repeat the explanation I made in the committee, about the misery with your numbers and about your cabinet chief and the career of that man afterwards. You may be able to leave now so that I can no longer deal with you about those numbers. Do you still say now that the numbers on which we based the 80/20 ratio were correct, just like the promise that it will be 27?

Did you not say that? It is a pity that this is not stated in the report.

Mr. Annemans, you were present in the committee? You have heard me, right? I said that the figures, as communicated to the negotiators, were correct.

The Secretary of State confirms what De Clerck says. These were the correct numbers.

Fortunately, you rejected the request of the Flemish magistrates to be heard in the committee. They would have contradicted you immediately, unless I can’t read Dutch. If the magistrates had the right to speak, they would have said: the minister and the secretary of state have said that the figures are correct, but they are wrong.

By the way, if the figures were correct, we would not need a workload measurement. However, this debate will not be held here.

I only confirm that it was a courageous act of the then CVP to let Dehaene leave. This resulted in the collapse of the party in 1999. I am not talking about Mr. De Clerck. His intervention was not meant to involve him in the history of the transition from Dehaene to Leterme. You thought I would do it, but I don’t. I treat the episode of De Clerck at the head of the then CVP not too extensive. Then it will not be too painful for you.

Dehaene went away. There was no state reform, although we thought it would happen. Verhofstadt had said before the elections: be careful, those five resolutions are but sluggish cock; we, VLD, want the full tax autonomy and the complete splitting of social security.

That colloquium was chaired by Karel De Gucht, who was then the flamingant in the VLD. He was overtaken by almost all other VLDs. VLD profileed itself in 1999 as the party that would not only push through the five resolutions, but that would go much further. Some Flemish Blockers even thought about becoming VLDs. In Flemish circles, in 1999, one wondered why one was not a VLD. Dehaene was wiped away and Stefaan De Clerck, whom I will not name further, was placed at the head of CD&V. Verhofstadt became prime minister, because the VLD won the elections with the Flemish promise. He had indeed said: away with the CVP and Dehaene, I provide you with a major state reform.

The Flamings believed that and voted for Verhofstadt.

However, Verhofstadt was the biggest disappointment of all. He put Mr. Dewael, currently not present, at the head of the Flemish government. Mr. Dewael immediately drove to Namen, where he met his then colleague Elio Di Rupo. In front of the cameras, they both drank a cup of coffee or tea. They would resolve everything through dialogue; not through state reforms, nor through conflicts, but through dialogue. In the photo, one saw Di Rupo almost thinking: that VLD, that goes with. The PS was scared by itself.

Verhofstadt then wiped out all thoughts on a state reform of the table. Any form of aspiration for autonomy, which for more than a decade was not only on the agenda, but was the desire of Flanders, was pushed aside. All that time, even after 2003, when unexpected...

Was it an intervention? I assume of no.

No, no one spoke.

Verhofstadt has held the eight years to suspend the Flemish autonomy struggle, to wipe under the mat, to freeze. He did not do anything about it, and therefore he did not deal with it.

The pressure in Flanders was therefore increasing. I do not want to name the name of Stefaan De Clerck, but at some point his successor at the head of CD&V had understood that. He believed that CD&V would never come if they did not join the Flemish stream of the desire for autonomy. CD&V had to do something. The era-The Clerck—I don’t want to name him—was closed.

Leterme went forward and he addressed the Flemish voters with the words that Verhofstadt was a fraudster, a bagwasser who had promised everything and more and that he had to leave. And he said that CD&V promised a major state reform. The Flaming, naive as they are, believed that and they voted massively for Leterme.

Leterme became the head of the Flemish government after the Flemish elections of 2004. We questioned Leterme in the Flemish Parliament every week about the promised state reform, to which Leterme replied that there was a problem, because that was only in the Flemish government agreement. It is just like the N-VA, which now says that the constitutive autonomy is in the Flemish government agreement, but that the Flemish government can do nothing with it and that this must be realized at the federal level. Leterme has, however, been able to persist for three years to present himself as the great Flemish man who asked to vote for him. However, the state reform from the Flemish government was not discussed, because it had to be done at the federal level. So he has slowly spotted it out, a little like De Wever does now in view of 2014.

In 2007 Leterme goes right. He complains that Verhofstadt is still prime minister and believes that he should now be his turn. The voters could not vote out of Verhofstadt last time. Even if Leterme had been voted for, he had to postpone the state reform for another three years because he was only in the Flemish government. But in 2007, everyone had to vote for him to wipe out Verhofstadt and purple.

The flames believed him. He proved how reliable Flemish he was, because his cartel partner was the N-VA of Bart De Wever. In addition, he promised a major state reform and the split of BHV, because that had become a problem in the meantime. Verhofstadt had faced the decision of the Arbitration Court and had tried to find a solution. But then Mr. Schiltz was still alive, and he then telephoned to his party chairman, Geert Lambert, who was negotiating with Verhofstadt, to ask him to stop the split of BHV because otherwise it would be a complete catastrophe.

The split was thus successfully blocked, but it caused Verhofstadt to appear to the voter in 2007 without the split of BHV. As a result, Leterme could come forward and say that Verhofstadt should leave, and that he would provide for a major state reform and for the split of BHV. From then on, BHV could never disappear from the Flemish collective memory, nor from federal politics, because it would not be split.

Leterme won and became Monsieur 800 000 voix. However, he immediately stuck to the idea that he could realize a major state reform. Even the split of BHV would not get on his feet. So he had to do something dramatic; he had to say to his voters and to his party that, although CD&V had promised not to enter a federal government without a decent state reform and without the split of BHV, they had to do so.

The Flamings had massively voted for Leterme at that time. If it does not help, then it does not harm, and for them Leterme was at least one who in a defective way made to feel that one could no longer be with the Flammers and that they would keep their leg stiff. Suddenly, those Flames noticed that a 180-degree curve was taken. After all, CD&V had to break its promise and, for the socio-economic sake, immediately form a government. However, this party has also broken the backbone of its resurrection after the turn of the century. CD&V again became more or less the CVP of before Stefaan De Clerck, in particular a power party that repeatedly abused the socio-economic time and time to say that the Flemish demands should be postponed, or even set aside, or, as in the eighties, with Flemish concessions should be swaddled.

The Fireworks had another chance in 2010. Then again someone was right to say that Verhofstadt, Dehaene and ⁇ Leterme were pocket washers. He called for him to vote for him, because he would ensure a major state reform and the split of BHV. That was Bart De Wever. The Flamings, naive as they are, believed that and voted massively for Bart De Wever. Flanders will reach this point in 2012.

Yesterday I was in the Senate, coincidentally at the moment Mr. Beke came out of his roof. Ladies and gentlemen, you were there too. Someone from the Flemish Belang, Ceder or Laeremans, was just speaking and Mr. Beke went all out of his roof. He began to scream, almost to tire. It became very emotional. He asked if it is a shame to want to save Belgium, or it is a shame to make a compromise, tapping on the speaker of that moment. He asked if it is a shame to make Flemish concessions, if it can avoid the financial crisis and the socio-economic depth of the country. He asked if that was not legitimate, fair and necessary. He attacked Germany with German debt and so on.

That was, like today, the historical moment at the beginning of the sixth state reform. What I mean by this is that CD&V fully returns to the CVP of the 1980s, to the state reforms of the time, to the socio-economic and compromise culture. She almost uses the compromise fetishism to return to the time when all state reforms contain fundamental Flemish concessions.

Hence, we end up here in a state reform that is endowed with many Flemish concessions, which we will repeatedly note in the coming weeks and which fundamentally illustrate that we have put an end to a small period in which state reforms, if they seemed and insofar as they were already state reforms, in any case no longer contain Flemish prize tickets.

This period is here, as it is today, not symbolically but thoroughly ended. The proposals concerning the division of the judicial district are fully consistent with this.

If one is in a compromise culture and assuming that one can realize something for Flanders only by participating in power, I can understand that one says to be constructive. The list of both CD&V and N-VA is very extensive. Di Rupo as prime minister: no problem, we give it up. Money for Brussels: no problem, that is negotiable. The Flamings in Brussels are no longer eligible. That was not a proposal from the N-VA, but the ultimate result of the split of the electoral district: no problem, we must do it for the good cause.

The French speakers, both in the courts and in the prosecutors, will dominate a large part of Flanders. French speakers will be able to request French-speaking procedures across Flanders in a much smoother, almost automatic way. We will put that in the Constitution: 80-20, no problem. We can swallow that. A metropolitan community, either advisory, or with powers or with future powers.

It is a whole list. The French-speaking prosecutor in Brussels, the appointment of mayors, the withdrawal of the circulation letter-Peeters, everything can be addressed. The strengthening of the Brussels Region and the judicial district and the manner in which it is doubled. These are all elements of a strategy that could be: we must do so in order to form a government. This is the plea, also of Mr. Doomst in the committee. This is also the plea of Wouter Beke: we make concessions, but we had to save the country.

That is all conceivable, but that every time in all your constructions, step by step, a constitutional two-thirds betoning is added to it, does that not make you ring a bell? The facilities in the 1980s or the Brussels Region: everything that is carried out is confirmed by a two-thirds majority.

Even fairly futile matters in this proposal are fixed with a constitutional anchorage. This is what we find in the French-language strategy. If that were not concessions from the Flammers, then in any case it was advantages that the French speakers see in their strategy.

My apologies, colleague De Clerck, for trying to convince the plenary session of this. I want everyone to realize that this state reform with all its features is a historical step in the wrong direction. She is further linking Flanders, also with this proposal.

Mr makes er schaamteloos reclame voor. They pose ten questions to citizens in the form of a question-and-answerspelletje. Een question gaat over de akkoorden die gesloten zijn: “If you live in the 29 municipalities of the BHV district out of facilities: can you continue to use French in the courts?” Like the inhabitants of Brussels and the six municipalities, your linguistic rights on the judicial level will be embedded in the Constitution.”

They use it as a means of advertising: “We have embedded it in the Constitution.” That means that it is Flemish concessions that are fixed here in the Constitution.

We have studied how we can divide not only the electoral district but also the whole country. That attitude always came back. Since the voting of the five resolutions in the Flemish Parliament in 1999 until now, it is seen that the French speakers pursue the same strategy on academic and political levels. They try to stretch the game as long as possible because of the transfers that flow daily. In this context, they mainly keep two things in mind in the event of a split of Belgium: the border and the position of Brussels.

All the strategies and political elements implemented by the French speakers over the last ten years, throughout the entire BHV period, refer to their advantages on those two points. These two points are expressed in two-thirds majorities and constitutional anchors, and thus they are advertising on the ground.

What is that characteristic? That is that they have a much better strategy than the Flames. The Flames are chaotic that entered 10 years. It seemed orderly when the five resolutions were there, but then it became chaotic.

I am sorry, there is the clarity of the Flemish Interest, that the country wants to split in an orderly and peaceful way, which until a few months before the foundation of this government was more or less a plan that everyone had to consider as an alternative. It is only through the emergence of this government, thanks to the compromises that CD&V has been able to carry out, returning to its strategy of the 1980s, that that idea has gone. Otherwise, they were faced with the ultimate consequence. If one wanted to keep what was promised to the electorate, then one could actually do nothing but divide the country. Either one returns – I must say I understand CD&V in it – to the negotiation model and to the possibility of making concessions to the French speakers in exchange for something one wants to get, or one goes to the division of the country.

That fatal possibility to do either one thing or another, the need to do either one thing or another, always leads me to the question whether the French speakers have not gone too far. Don’t they push their luck? Were they not too humiliating with this state reform? Are they not pushing the three traditional parties with which they are now in a government on the edge, with an opposition that is only still Flemish-national and as an alternative applies to them? The answer is no, the French speakers do not think this is the case. They do it anyway. Don’t they blame Flanders because they can’t get away with their desire for autonomy, which they have had to save for fifteen years, except with such dishonorable compromises? No, they don’t care, they take that risk.

Why do they do that? Because the French speakers live entirely in the certainty that this country will one day be split. From that strategy, they now get those things inside that are important to them, the border, on the one hand, and Brussels, on the other. In this proposal, of course, these two are both.

What has noticed me in the border question, in all the investigations I have done on the division of the land or the Kingdom of Belgium, is a provision that even from the beginning was in the “note pédagogique” of the PS. In particular, when negotiating with Flamingen, it is necessary to keep a close eye on ensuring that a corridor issue remains. Therefore, it is not necessary to take so much care that all French speakers in all Halle-Vilvoorde come to their tracks, which today, to their surprise, is still the case. It is especially necessary to ensure that there will always be and may continue to be controversy over the facility communities, more specifically for the French speakers about Saint-Genesius-Rode.

The previous was their strategy and has been their strategy. Therefore, BHV for them did not go over the three MR seats that will be lost in the Rand. These seats are compensated by the loss of the Flemish seats in Brussels. For the following reason, they have persisted, to the edge of the division of the country and for many years through five stacked conflicts of interest, regardless of the fact that such an attitude produced thirty N-VA’s in the Chamber. After the split of Belgium, they find themselves in a bad position. If the language boundary becomes a state boundary, Brussels is in some difficult way a part of Flanders. International law will not give the French speakers a chance to argue that Brussels must somehow join Wallonia.

At the moment, this is the case. They acknowledge this in the academic debates they conduct. They have a disadvantage in this regard, which they have attempted to close down following the case-BHV.

With the present proposal, they have already closed it. I will return later to the division of the electoral district. As long as there is a possibility to demonstrate that in 2012 enough Flemish people – by a two-thirds majority, because there is no Flemish majority – were willing to declare that Flanders is completely Flemish above the language boundary, except in those municipalities with special statutes, as long as they can hold that dispute, they have the guarantee that they can subsequently declare at the international forum that Belgium cannot split along the language boundary. After all, Flanders has itself acknowledged that some of its Flemish municipalities are not as Flemish as the other municipalities.

More shouldn’t be that for the French speakers at the moment, but less shouldn’t be. I repeat that they have therefore, to the edge of the division of the country, held up the question which will then be an excellent remedy.

Tactically, I should not give it, but I try at this moment to make it clear to the Flamings that they must place the issue in that framework, not only the division of the electoral district but also the division of the judicial district. The French speakers can now, though to their surprise, say that Flanders itself acknowledges that for all Halle-Vilvoorde a French-speaking court must remain competent. They may say that it should be a French-speaking court and not a split court, but a double court, which is a French-speaking court with equal jurisdiction throughout Halle-Vilvoorde.

This is a treasure card that they can and will play out in the “boundary” section. This is also a treasure card that they will play in the categories “Brussels”, “minimizing the Flames” and “making the capital French-speaking”. In 2012, the Constitution stipulated that the prosecutor in Brussels must always be a French speaker. That is a treasure card that the French speakers will throw us before the nose after the split of Belgium, if they will say that not the language boundary but something else must represent the split of Belgium.

The image you must have before you to understand this is the image of the RTBF broadcast that was broadcast somewhere during the N-VA negotiations. Philippe Moureaux explains to a French-speaking journalist how the language boundary will evolve after the split of Belgium. Philippe Moureaux – I think Milosevic is in charge of a number of such facts before the International Criminal Court – begins to draw in that report with a pin. He signs Brussels with Wallonia if Belgium will be split. Fortunately, that journalist was not clever enough to ask how it would be with St. Genesius-Rode. He drew it as if he was drawing the caliphate of Molenbeek with a thick foil pen.

In this way he illustrated the mentality. The French speakers have moved to the negotiating tables with a strategy. The French speakers have been vigilant in these negotiations. They used a strategy that focused on the border afterwards and the money in the meantime. We must therefore remove our hat for the French speakers, who have known a few meevallers. Onkelinx will probably have been pleasantly surprised with the figures with which De Clerck came to trigger, happy because apparently no one was more vigilant on the Flemish side. She was probably satisfied that no conditional figure was pushed forward, but immediately an absolute figure. That must have been an amazing issue for them, but at the same time it was also one of the positive benefits of having pushed the negotiations so long. They kept the leg around BHV stiff for so long until the Flamings became completely sick of it and thought that the country should be divided.

Well, that we Flamings, who have been sitting at the wrapper for so long by limiting our autonomy aspirations, which has already caused forty Flemish nationalists to sit in the Chamber, had nothing better to offer at that negotiating table than those who have remained at that table, is an incredibly sad thing, ⁇ when one realizes that people were sitting in front of us with both strategy and with endurance and much better figures than Stefaan De Clerck. That is more or less the image that I want to give you today.

I will give another example. I also read it in the committee; again my apologies, Mr. De Clerck, but it is still important. On 15 September last year, Ms. Delvaux wrote in the main article of Le Soir about what is more or less the French-language strategy: “Gagner du temps sans perdre d’éléments fondamentaux (le lien Wallonie-Bruxelles et le statut de Bruxelles), gagner du temps pour pouvoir préparer la Wallonie et Bruxelles à une prévisible future scission du pays.” Know what you are doing here!

They had brought Jean-Paul Belmondo back here yesterday. He was a little sick, he was a little sick. Sadly, because he is normally quite joyeux. But it seems to be bad to deal with him. The event was organized by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. He was awarded the prize on behalf of Belgium, and thus on behalf of a majority of Flamingen, but there could not be heard that Flanders had anything to do with it. Belmondo has, if he has heard anything else, only heard that Belgium is a French-speaking country.

Those French speakers want that when one enters Brussels – not because there is no Flemish prosecutor, but because they say it is so – one forgets that this once was a Flemish city and someday can be another Flemish city, that one prepares that this will become the northernmost city of France.

It is on this mentality that we must be very jealous, because on the Flemish side there is only a deep division. It is a divide that crosses between majority and opposition, of course. That majority now crawls close to each other and sends Doomst forward, who cries loudly that they are all unanimous, that they can change something and that they are happy, he has called that three times.

That majority, however, is a minority, because they are not a majority, they must bring their green friends with them, with God knows what promises; probably just with the salvation of Belgium as a promise, something that the Greens always find very interesting, even if they do not get a bottle tax in return.

In any case, that majority, which is not a majority, which is a minority, which is a minority government, therefore stands there. The opposition is essentially a majority, but is in fact also deeply divided. We have just had to illustrate this by the difference between the Vandenberghe proposal, which has now become the N-VA proposal, and our proposal, which would have been the purest way to do it.

The colleagues of the N-VA have, by the way, supported this, when we submitted it through amendments. I still hope that they will do the same on Thursday, so that we still have more or less an idea of their opinion, whether it would have been ideal for them to divide the district completely vertically, both at the level of the parquet and at the level of the seat.

That Flemish minority, which does not have a majority, behaves like a majority against an opposition that is the majority. Dear colleagues of the majority, who call themselves the majority but it is not, you must realize that the Flemish land is divided by and by.

That is the image of your state reform, with which you are now trying to say that we have entered the Flanders of the 21st century thanks to the way Belgium will emerge with the state reform, thanks to your votes.

I would like to ask you to think about it.

I would like to ask our colleagues of the N-VA to draw lessons from the events of the last months and years. It was your strategy to say that we would resolve this through negotiations. You wanted to leave behind you the kretology of independent Flanders, because that is Flemish-Blokpraat, which leads nowhere. You would participate in the conversation and thus go further. That is in line with what I just outlined when I called Leterme a bag washer, just like Verhofstadt and Dehaene. Leterme was indeed a pocket washer, who boasted that he would solve the problems, as long as one voted for him.

But that strategy has failed, and in a horrible way, because we are now with a state reform à la Dehaene, à la CVP 20 years ago, a state reform with Flemish concessions.

If that is a consequence of your strategy, then it is regrettable. You are more or less in an artistic blob. You said you would reform the state through negotiations. You are out of those negotiations. You continue to say that it will happen next time with negotiations, but in the meantime you criticize those who say that with negotiations only this is achievable.

Then one can say that what they find feasible is not good, while their own proposals are good and feasible. But what are those proposals then? I see the N-VA evolve daily. It has long since begun with an independent Flanders. Belgium 2.0 is a term used by Bart De Wever. I don’t know what that is, but that’s the model now.

And then there is the multilevel governance, which you seem to stand for, with all that evaporates towards the European Union, to the extent that would still be desired by the population. And now it is official confederalism.

It remains paradoxical, dear friends of the N-VA, that you have achieved that victory by saying that you would reform the state through negotiations, while thus in some way you are the causer of what is happening now, namely a state reform with terrible concessions and with, o irony, a majority that is not a majority, but only a minority that then still relies on the N-VA, to be able to say that she has done so, that she has gone further in it and that she may have gone out of the curve, but that she had more or less the permission to do so.

Why the permission? Yes, because the N-VA did not consider the split of BHV as urgent after the elections. You have in some way opposed it.

You even accused me in the public arena of the VRT, when I asked for the high urgency for the split proposals of BHV, that I had no sense of responsibility. After all, during the negotiations, BHV would be split within three weeks, so I was not allowed to ask that it would happen urgently. The negotiating space should be exhausted by the N-VA. Dear colleagues of the N-VA, you voted against it here in the Chamber.

Thus you have created an atmosphere, not so much by the high urgency itself, for that is only a detail. But after the elections, all the Flemish parties knew one thing very certain: BHV must be split before there is a government, because that lesson had everybody learned, and that division had to happen without price.

Mr. Doomst, do you remember it? You have once sat along with Mr. Somers, now Mayor of Mechelen, but then Prime Minister. You signed a manifesto. With tens of thousands we went to Halle to raise those mayors on a large forum as the heroes of the nation. Do you still know?

What was in that manifesto? After all, you speak on behalf of the mayors, but you are already lucky that your colleague De Waele is no longer a mayor. In his recent manifesto of recent days, he has put another photocopy of what you then signed with Bart Somers. What was in that manifesto? “We divide without price.”

There was “without price” because no price could be paid for. It was about the execution of a judgment of the Constitutional Court. Moreover, it was a compensation for an injustice that had been done to us sixty years ago, when establishing the language limit. There could be, there could be, and there would be no price to be paid for.

It was, therefore, a psychological flatter – I call it no more than that – of the N-VA to say that this would be negotiated, even though I know that the N-VA was obliged to say that by the victory. That was a regrettable thing. People like Dewael use that now to say: once one is negotiating, the price is negotiable. Either it is not negotiable, or it is, and then there can be a price. When the negotiations started, the calf had already drowned.

This is the paradox.

The paradox is that when we more than ever had a Flemish-national grip on the rural events in Belgium, Flanders returned to the old habits of the old CVP and of the old PVV, namely: state reforms with Flemish price tickets. I regret that. The strategy on the Flemish side was not only messy, but also showed that participationism on the Flemish-national side is very dangerous. Not only in 2012, but ⁇ also in 2014.

The negotiated solution for BHV, which was in all government agreements and all notes I have seen, has led to the current proposal, with a different price ticket, with a much too heavy price ticket for us.

We from Vlaams Belang are, as you know, not great lovers of compromise. We were born in response to Hugo Schiltz, the former Flemish nationalist who pushed forward the negotiation model. We are born from the criticism of Flemish nationalism on the negotiation strategy and on the participationist strategy. We are not lovers of this compromise.

In a book I wrote about the split of Belgium, I talked more than 5 pages about the compromise. I know what a compromise is, I have studied it scientifically and I am not against it, but it must be used in a well-understood way and at well-understood moments.

We reject the compromise, as used by Wouter Beke, by Servais Verherstraeten, by Michel Doomst and by all those who say that one should sit at the table, that it is not a shame to come to a compromise, especially if it is done to control the financial crisis or to control the monetary issues of the ACW. Is it a shame to make a compromise? It has become a fetishism.

If the government-Di Rupo government as a fundamental argument only states that one must negotiate, that one is obliged to negotiate and that one, once one is engaged in it, can no longer go down – the N-VA has, by the way, proved that it was not so – and if the compromise fetishism is the only argument, then one says nothing more or less than that it is wrong to be principled, that it is wrong to keep the leg stiff and that it was wrong to hold to the promise made to the voter before the elections, namely that there would be no compromise about the judicial district and the electoral district of BHV.

Mr. Verherstraeten, I have seen that the report is quite comprehensive, but I hope that there are sufficient traces of how you have been crawling all that committee work for a long time as a defender, as a coryfee, as an emperor of the compromise. Even when the advice of the State Council came in, you still made pirouettes on your thick toe and turned around on your little toe again proposing another compromise.

It was a strange face, but eventually there was the impression that everything was balanced, while everyone felt that you could not get back. The Flemish negotiators said: the figures are wrong, the way things are formulated is wrong; what the Council of State says is true, but we can no longer go back. The French speakers also let you know that.

So you continue, if necessary, with your head against the concrete wall. That is a bit tragic. There will be a tragedy around CD&V, which, by the way, is already working on the path that is being taken. A tragedy can be called a downward spiral, a moral decline and is entirely due to yourself.

You have completely underestimated how strong the French speakers were in their strategy and in the way they ⁇ ined that strategy throughout the entire period of Verhofstadt and Leterme. You have looked at it. You thought that with Leterme you could make another defective government, but that has not succeeded.

You have now sent him to Paris. I follow his tweets from all over the world. I think he is happy that he is out of it, and that Verherstraeten can do the dirty job.

You can see that you have come completely free from what became the Flemish ground stream in the course of the 1990s. The last time you brought another synthesis was when you put Stefaan De Clerck overboard – he is now gone, so I can say that now – and you sought connection with Flemish nationalism or with the substream in Flanders that wants more autonomy.

I would like to conclude with the words of the poet René De Clercq. I started with De Clerck and I end with De Clercq, if you don’t mind.

“That is of all evils, Flanders, your greatest cross, that all who betray you, are master in your house, that servants of your servants, preside over your dis, and the seed of the unjust does not feel what is unjust.”

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, because I still believe in my country, even redesigned, and in our common future, I will not have the same approach as the speaker who preceded me at this tribune. Contrary to him, I look forward to the fact that on the occasion of this state reform, a will to stabilize our country is demonstrated – this is in any case the bet we make – by drawing a new balanced federalism based on the mutual respect for the rights and expectations of the different Communities and Regions and their population.

These are the reasons why the CDH welcomes the maintenance, through this reform, of a significant federal state whose essential competences are safeguarded. I think of social security, taxation, employment, public security, justice.

With these different projects, we lay the foundations for a cooperative federalism that strengthens collaborative mechanisms and is based on a reinforced and now controlled concept of federal loyalty. Indeed, we have not hesitated to strengthen the role of the Regions, including that of the Brussels Region, which will be confirmed as a full-fledged and refinanced region while ⁇ ining its links with the periphery.

The text that we are dealing with this afternoon is about the rights of the population and, essentially, their administrative and judicial rights. And I am not afraid to say that, within the framework of this political agreement, the administrative and judicial rights, in particular of French-speaking citizens, are safeguarded, but also strengthened and inscribed in the Constitution.

The reorganization of the judicial BHV is, in my opinion, important. As it appears in the development of the bill, it is a reform that touches the heart of the great balances, which works for community peace. This is the reason why, parallel to this text, we will adopt the proposal to insert an article 157bis into the Constitution that provides for chainage and the fact that any new amendment can only be adopted by special majority.

From the judicial BHV, we touch on a fundamental right that we respect, that of understanding and being understood by its judges, that of being judged in its own language. In order to ⁇ balance, the institutional agreement provides for the doubling of the seat on all the 54 municipalities that today make up the Brussels district, the splitting of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office into two prosecutors, one of which is competent on the administrative district of Brussels-Capital and the other on that of Hal-Vilvorde, and we adapt some rules contained in the law on the use of languages in judicial matters.

Taking back the opinion of the State Council and the will of those who wrote the text of the proposal, I can say that it revolves around seven essential elements that, together, create a balance that can only be modified by a law adopted by the special majority. In the course of our discussion, I think it is important to fly over these seven points together.

The first of these points is the set of rules relating to the change of language or referral to one jurisdiction of the other linguistic role. While today the judge has a fully discretionary discretion to accept or refuse a request for language change filed by a defendant domiciled in a peripheral municipality or in the 19 municipalities, now this judge’s discretion is strongly framed by the use of objective criteria, such as the language of the majority of relevant documents in the file or the language of the employment relationship. Generalization of this right to the whole country will even be considered in the Commission for the Modernization of the Judicial Order.

In this context, while today the change of language of mutual agreement can be requested by all justiciables, with the exception, in a totally discriminatory manner, of the only justiciables domiciled in the 19 Brussels communes, the parties domiciled in the whole of the Brussels judicial district, including the 19 Brussels communes, will now have the right to request and obtain, without the judge’s discretion, of mutual agreement, the remission or the change of language before the Dutch or French-speaking courts of the BHV judicial district. This is where it is balanced.

Finally, mutual agreed language changes will in the future be subject to a simplified and accelerated procedure for the whole country.

The second essential element of this proposal is the set of rules relating to the voluntary appearance before the court of the language of its choice. The parties domiciled in the entire judicial district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde, the 54 municipalities, will receive a new additional right, that of appearing voluntarily and therefore to bring the case directly to the French-speaking court without having to turn the way by the Dutch-speaking court, which constitutes a major advance.

Third, it is the deployment of functional bilingual French-speaking magistrates from the Brussels prosecutor’s office to the Hal-Vilvorde prosecutor’s office in order to be able to treat French-speaking cases as a priority. The current BHV Prosecutor’s Office will then be divided into a Brussels Prosecutor’s Office competent for the territory of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region and another, competent for the territory of Hal-Vilvorde.

As we said, this will consist of 20% of the current framework of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde, including the supplementary magistrates. An assessment of this percentage may be carried out within three years of the implementation of the reform at the request of one of the two relevant Prosecutors of the King.

Fourth, and I come to an essential point, the French- and Dutch-speaking district courts together will now have appeals in case of violation of the rights and procedural guarantees protecting the inhabitants of Brussels and those of the Hal-Vilvorde district. While the French-speaking legal entities of the judicial district of BHV currently do not have any means of appeal in case of violation of their judicial rights, the respect of these rights will now be subject to the control of a parity jurisdiction, namely the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking district courts, which can be brought by any legal entity by means of a direct and full jurisdiction appeal.

Fifth, the territorial jurisdiction of the courts of the Brussels judicial district – which comprises 54 municipalities – will be ⁇ ined.

Sixth, the territorial jurisdiction of the two prosecutors of the Brussels judicial district will also be preserved, with a division between a Brussels prosecutor's office, competent for the territory of the 19 municipalities, of the Brussels-Capital Region and another of Hal-Vilvorde, competent for the territory of Hal-Vilvorde. Thus, all French-speaking prosecutors in Hal-Vilvorde will deal immediately, that is, from the choice of the French language by a suspect, with functional bilingual French-speaking magistrates detained from the Brussels prosecutor’s office, who will deal with French-speaking affairs as a priority. They will then be able to bring the case to the Brussels Court. It was a necessary condition for the dissolution of the Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde prosecutor’s office.

Mr. Brotcorne, I apologize for interrupting you, but this is not an advance; it is already the case.

The advance, Mr. Maingain, and don’t try to make me say anything other than what I say...

You explain that what has been achieved for a long time now would be a progress.

The advance is that it will be consolidated by a special majority and that it cannot be changed otherwise than by this means.

Not at all, you know nothing! When I asked you in the committee to know what the essential elements of the constitutional reform were, nobody could ever answer me!

by Mr. Maingain will still have the opportunity to intervene later.

Mr. Maingain, if you listen to what I say! I am reviewing the seven essential elements that are the subject of this law which requires a special majority.

The last point concerns the creation of a coordination committee, with rules provided to ensure the consultation between the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office and the Hal-Vilvorde Prosecutor’s Office.

These are important, essential elements, which I wanted to remind this tribune on behalf of my group.

The text that will be voted tomorrow is the result of a complex but balanced agreement. This is the subject of a political agreement. This agreement must enable our country and its various components to function with maximum harmony, respecting the rights and duties of each.

Our country has repeatedly had the opportunity to see the difficulties posed by the non-solution of the various files related to Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde, whether on the electoral or judicial level. I hope that the agreements reached within the framework of this great reform of the State, which we are starting to discuss, will be an opportunity for a new, more assured start, where political leaders will be able to focus on elements as essential as the seven I just cited for the lives of our fellow citizens. I think that we will need to be able to turn the page, assume what we do and go to the essential to preserve the life and harmony of the different Communities of our country and of each of its citizens, whose daily life and socio-economic issues are what interests them in the first place.

Mr. Speaker, the interest of passing after other speakers is that this allows not to enter into the technical description of the texts we are analyzing but rather to resubmit them within the framework of this sixth state reform. That is why we are now working on the division of the judicial district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde.

It is interesting to resume this sixth state reform in view of the objectives pursued by the environmentalists. Ecolo and Groen have worked side by side and our concerns have always been to maintain a federal state that respects the rights and mechanisms of solidarity between all inhabitants of this country.

We want to preserve a federal state concerned with the competences of the Regions and Communities, attentive to their concerns in terms of financing. But at the same time we want to preserve the necessary resources for our federal state for its essential tasks: the tasks of justice, security, access to care, assistance to the most disadvantaged, tax regulation but also of banking bodies or even in matters of corporate governance. It is in this context that we have participated in the long and arduous reforms that result in the split of this judicial BHV.

With regard to the proposal that is on the table, we consider that all the work and all the negotiations that have resulted in the doubling of the headquarters of the Brussels district, to the split of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office, respect the rights of the prosecutors, whether they are French or Dutch-speaking, of Brussels, of Hal or of Vilvorde.

This proposal also aims to guarantee quality access to justice in the language of the convicted. In addition, it incorporates concerns about the judicial capacity to be able to respond to requests. This is why a system has been established, in order to be able to measure the workload of the different magistrates. This was necessary and expected for a very long time since, on the French-speaking side, the processing of business is now experiencing significant delays. Through this reform, a calculation, a measurement of the workload and a re-adaptation of the frameworks will also be necessary on the Dutch-speaking side.

We also incorporated a constraint, namely that changes in the implementation of the reform can only be realised when 90% of the expected staff – the new cadres – have been reached. We believe that the precautions have been taken so that this reform can proceed properly.

Language requirements have been adapted through what is called functional bilingualism. It is a practical measure and better adapted to the needs of the prosecutors than that of requiring bilingualism skills that, ultimately, exceed the level necessary to properly judge, hear and understand a prosecutors.

We believe that also in this regard, the mechanisms that will be put in place should allow respect for the language of the citizen and the return, if he wishes to do so or if necessary, before a magistrat who speaks his language.

Finally – in this regard, I link to the other proposal relating to Article 157bis of the Constitution – the mechanisms that are on the table, the proposed reform provide that any subsequent change of the essential elements will have to collect a special majority. It is a way of compelling responsible women and politicians, to negotiate again together, to reach compromises gathering very broad majorities in both Communities and for the whole country, if one wants to touch on the fundamental rights of the justiciable to be judged equitably in his language.

Mr. Speaker, it has been chosen to be in the Chamber, regarding the state reform, as well as to begin with the arrangement around this judicial district. It is immediately also the most extensive, ⁇ even the most insane part of this whole state reform. The proposed reform of the Brussels court is catastrophic. The Flemish concessions are so extensive and excessive that one can actually speak of a straightforward French-speaking triumphal journey. In addition, the concessions are shockingly unfair and completely irrational so that one really needs to take all the resources out of the closet to stop this catastrophe.

The most important and most extensive concession remains for us the extension of the jurisdiction of the French-speaking courts, which from now on will have equal jurisdiction over all 54 municipalities of the district. Instead of a splitting according to the model-Vandenberghe or the model-Laeremans, we get a doubling according to the model-Maingain. As a result, people from Halle-Vilvoorde, including Dutch speakers, can now turn directly to the French-speaking court, for example because it works faster due to a higher number of magistrates. This will cause a substantial legal disruption in Flemish-Brabant, and in the long run it may even lead to the displacement of countless French-speaking lawyers over Flemish-Brabant, which has not been permitted until now.

Very dangerous is also the extensive simplification of the procedure for language change, which means that anywhere in Flanders with a minimum formality a language change, a sending to a neighboring non-language district, can be forced. This immediately prevents a Flemish justice to come again. Justice is blocked at the Belgian level.

Absurd and completely contrary to the Dutch-speaking character of Halle-Vilvoorde is the deployment of French-speaking magistrates from Brussels to Flemish-Brabant. However, they remain under the hierarchy of the Brussels prosecutor. This will lead to a preferential treatment of non-speaking offenders and a justice with two sizes and two weights. This is also a step backwards from the current situation. Currently, it is bilingual Dutch speakers who handle such files.

It is completely unacceptable to accept the provision that the prosecutor of Brussels must always be a French speaker and his deputy a Dutch speaker. This is a discriminatory arrangement contrary to the bilingual character of Brussels, where Dutch-speaking and French-speaking people should still stand on equal footing. This is another proof that the French-speaking politicians want to completely refrain Brussels and the Dutch-speaking people want to definitively reduce to a subordinate position. The same goes for the electoral district, for which it has been decided that all fifteen Brussels Chamber members will now be French-speaking.

The most striking remains the shameful and completely absurd 20/80 language ratio for the frameworks of magistrates and secretaries of the new courts. That ratio is not based on the volume of work, but merely on randomness, after the negotiators have received incorrect figures or not. It will in any way lead to the unlawful expansion of French-speaking frameworks with at least 25 magistrates and approximately 160 graffiti officials. As a mirror image of this, just as many Flemish functions will be exhausted. This is shockingly unfair, because it will immediately lead to a great backwardness on the Flemish side, of which all Dutch-speaking residents of Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde will be the dupe. This is the opposite of what is so-called the purpose of this bill, in particular the removal of the judicial lag.

That these will be the consequences has already been abundantly demonstrated by many Dutch-speaking lawyers and magistrates, but unfortunately the opportunity majority parties remain deaf to the very legitimate and irrefutable arguments of lawyers and magistrates. Also the arguments of the State Council, which explicitly asked to answer the ratio 20/80 objectively, and even those of the High Council for Justice, are simply wiped away. They try to hide those absurdities behind the story of workload measurement, but that is eye blindness. It is not at all certain that that workload measurement will come out and lead to useful results in time. After all, the French speakers have every interest in boycotting it; if it does not arrive on time, the relationships are ultimately blocked on the 20/80.

The working relations between Dutch-speaking and French-speaking cases are now perfectly known to all courts on the basis of the number of incoming cases. These relations justify the maintenance of the current legal system, where at least one-third of the magistrates must be Dutch-speaking.

In addition, this bill significantly reduces bilingualism in Brussels. Consider the number of bilingual judges. Currently, this is two-thirds in the Brussels Parliament, but with this proposal their number is reduced to only one-third. In addition, they should not even have a thorough but only a functional knowledge of the other country steel. Or think of the Prosecutor of the King or the auditor, until now alternating a Dutch-speaking or a French-speaking, who from now on will always be French-speaking.

Mr. Speaker, do not worry. I will not exaggerate the extensive explanation from the committee. However, I would like to give some further explanation to each of the fundamental criticisms I have just cited.

I will start with the positive news, unfortunately immediately the only positive point of the whole reform. Unlike the courts, the prosecutor’s office is divided into a prosecutor’s office for Brussels and a prosecutor’s office for Halle-Vilvoorde. This is the good news, because in practice this division is almost as much as overturned by all sorts of simultaneous measures. Thus, the division is immediately undermined by the appointment of French-speaking magistrates in the Halle-Vilvoorde prosecutor’s office. They should not even listen to the Flemish prosecutor of Halle-Vilvoorde, but to the always French-speaking prosecutor of Brussels. They have the task of channelling all those who are non-speaking to the French-speaking court, even though they have nothing to do with Brussels in the distance.

Instead of being able to carry out a coherent security policy in Halle-Vilvoorde, which is the second goal that pushes the majority forward, we will, on the contrary, get a justice of two sizes and two weights. Rapid release and loose decisions for foreign speakers and a harsher approach to Dutch-speaking offenders will be the result. Discrimination has been addressed from the beginning. The measure will also lead to a frenzy of the police work in Halle-Vilvoorde.

A similar arrangement is also made for the auditory: a separate Dutch-speaking auditory for Halle-Vilvoorde with a French-speaking watch dog and a Brussels auditor who will always be French-speaking.

The French-speaking prosecutors who are dispatched are given the explicit task of channelling the files of non-speaking persons to the French-speaking courts. This is completely unacceptable for several reasons. Even the language system for the Brussels prosecutor’s office, which from now on will be headed by a French-speaking prosecutor, can really not be overwhelmed for us.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Halle-Vilvoorde will consist of 20 % of the current framework of the Prosecutor’s Office of the current Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, including the added magistrates. The Prosecutor’s Office is composed of Dutch-speaking magistrates, one-third of whom are bilingual. In order to prioritise the French-speaking matters, functionally bilingual French-speaking magistrates, corresponding to one fifth of the number of Dutch-speaking magistrates of Halle-Vilvoorde, will be dispatched from the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office. They are under the authority of the Prosecutor of the King of Halle-Vilvoorde for the implementation of the criminal law policy, but under the hierarchical authority of the Prosecutor of the King in Brussels. This means that in practice we get a French-speaking department within the Dutch-speaking parquet of Halle-Vilvoorde. This French-speaking department will then again be directly managed and sent from Brussels. The result is that we get a different prosecution policy in Halle-Vilvoorde depending on whether one is Dutch-speaking or French-speaking. French-speaking matters should be treated as a priority. To the question of what this priority then is based, we unfortunately did not receive a response in the committee.

The fact is that here a policy of two sizes and two weights is installed. The French-speaking investigative and criminal judges in Brussels are traditionally much louder than their Dutch-speaking colleagues. French-speaking suspects and foreigners will therefore systematically choose that French-speaking procedure, even if they speak Dutch smoothly, they live in Halle-Vilvoorde and the victims are Dutch-speaking. The consequences will soon be noticeable. If a suspect is arrested and chooses the French-speaking procedure, the chances are much greater that he is immediately back on the street and can continue his criminal activities. The milder approach on the French-speaking side will therefore be a useful means of persuasion to withdraw as many cases from Halle-Vilvoorde as possible from the Dutch-speaking judges. Therefore, it is very uncertain that much will change for the better on the ground in Halle-Vilvoorde.

I wonder, by the way, why those French-speaking criminals who commit a crime in Halle-Vilvoorde and often also live in Halle-Vilvoorde should be prosecuted so necessarily by French-speaking prosecutors, who are also still under the hierarchy of the French-speaking prosecutor of Brussels. What is wrong with Dutch-speaking parquet magistrates who have passed a bilinguality test and today already do this work in Halle-Vilvoorde? Why so much mistrust and disrespect for those Dutch-speaking magistrates? I have not received a response in the committee.

I have also not received an answer to the question of why those French-speaking magistrates should only be functionally bilingual and there is no longer a need for thorough bilinguality, while they still come to work in a homogeneous Dutch-speaking area. If, then, it is necessary to dispatch French-speaking parquet magistrates, why can they not be under the hierarchy of the prosecutor of Halle-Vilvoorde? By building up two hierarchies, one primarily creates anarchy and that is just opposite to the need for a uniform security policy in Halle-Vilvoorde.

Nowhere else in this country is it possible that one prosecutor can just sabotage the other. Nowhere else is it possible that one prosecutor is disciplinary competent over magistrates of another prosecutor. Moreover, this whole arrangement is contrary to the principle of territoriality. It lacks the Dutch-speaking character of Halle-Vilvoorde entirely. Even in facility municipalities today no French-speaking staff is appointed, but only people with a Dutch-speaking diploma. In some cases, they must indeed provide proof of knowledge of French. Given the facilities problem, this is not even illogical and it has never been a problem for the Flemish magistrates who know French. This, however, does not correspond to the appointment – which will be approved tomorrow – of French-speaking magistrates in the Dutch-speaking area.

The arrangement will also ensure that the entire investigation, in cases involving an offender in another language, from the outset reaches a French-speaking investigation judge and thus will be conducted largely in French, despite its many other elements in Dutch-speaking. That arrangement will undoubtedly contribute to the freezing of Halle-Vilvoorde, as the Dutch-speaking police will also be encouraged in this way to carry out as many investigative acts as possible in French.

Not only do we deliver that criticism, but also the Order of Flemish Balies has since the beginning strongly protested against the deployment of 5 French-speaking parquet magistrates. In addition to the arguments I just gave, the Order has given a very rightly supplementary argument. The Brussels bilingual prosecutor’s office is already struggling with a shortage of magistrates. Bilingual French speakers are apparently not so easy to find. They are very much needed in the Brussels parket. By sending them again to a Dutch-speaking area, one will surely not solve the backdrop at the Brussels parliament.

The meaning of reducing the bilinguality obligations at the Prosecutor’s Office from two-thirds to one-third, we have not been explained during the committee discussions. “Deep knowledge” of the other country steel is drastically reduced to “functional knowledge”. It merely undermines the bilinguality of the prosecutor’s office and of the Brussels Auditorium. I may be mistaken, but I think Brussels is still a bilingual city. In my opinion, the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office should therefore work with both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking courts and with both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking police officers. Therefore, there is still a need for a general bilinguality obligation for Brussels prosecutors.

As the rule that a third must be bilingual applies in globo and not per language group, there is hardly any incentive left for French speakers to take a bilinguality exam. A mandatory passive knowledge of the other national language for all prosecutor judges should be a minimum minimum minimum, so that they are at least able to understand documents and judgments in other languages. It will also be clear that one-third in globo will be delivered by the Flammers.

Per ⁇ nobody finds it necessary for the Prime Minister, but we find it absolutely necessary that the prosecutors in Brussels have a thorough bilinguality.

If possible, it is even worse that the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office in the future will always be led by a French-speaking prosecutor assisted by a Dutch-speaking deputy. That arrangement is discriminatory, almost racist, because it comes down to the fact that a Dutch-speaking person, no matter how skilled he is, can never grow into the office of Procurator of the King in his own capital. The country’s largest and most important parquet, with jurisdiction over the international institutions, will never again be led by someone who speaks the language of the majority of this country.

That is the unacceptable arrangement for which we have not received a proper accountability, a accountability that was nevertheless also requested by the Council of State.

That arrangement is another illustration that Brussels is sliding from a bilingual city to a dominant French-speaking city, where the Dutch-speaking people are degraded to second-class citizens. The explicit provision that the prosecutor of the King of Brussels belongs to the French language role and his adjunct to the Dutch-speaking language role is not just a break with the tradition. To this day, the Attorney General and the Attorney General of the King of Brussels always belong to a different language system, and the different language speakers exchange each other. Much worse is that the Flamings are thus definitively pushed into a subordinate role at the judicial level.

Anyone with a Dutch language diploma can never climb up to that highest position again. That is an appeal to the highest degree of the bilingual character of Brussels and the equivalence of Dutch-speaking and French-speaking people in our capital. It is a novum, congratulations! The intention of the French speakers is quite clear, namely to proclaim Brussels to be a French-speaking city.

This arrangement ensures that Brussels is sliding from a bilingual city to a dominant French-speaking city. The Flammers are reduced to a dogged minority, they are degraded to second-class citizens.

In fact, the rights of those Dutch speakers in Brussels are perplexely linked to the rights of the French speakers in Halle-Vilvoorde.

As I have just cited, the Council of State has a sharp criticism of this, and has demanded due accountability and an answer to the question of why only a French-speaking prosecutor of the King can become in Brussels. However, we have not received any real responsibility. We got two flawed nepargums.

In the first instance, the Secretary of State argued that the prosecutor of Halle-Vilvoorde is always a Dutch speaker and thus that of Brussels is always a French speaker. That is, of course, a false argument, because one cannot really compare the two situations and impossible to link them together. Brussels is the bilingual capital of the country, where Dutch-speaking and French-speaking should stand on an equal footing.

Today, the language roles of the Attorney General and the Attorney of the King of Brussels are linked, they can never be of the same language role. In addition, a Dutch speaker must always be followed by a French speaker and vice versa. In the future, however, it will be possible that both the Attorney General of the King and the Attorney General of Brussels are French-speaking, so that the Flemish will have much less control over the security policy in their capital.

I come to a second argument. In the middle of the discussion, we suddenly got another, even more mistaken and all but logical response. The Secretary of State assumed the parity of the coordination committee to be established as the responsibility to reserve the position of King’s Attorney to a French speaker. Of course, the delegated top magistrates in the Dutch-speaking area, in this case Halle-Vilvoorde, are Dutch-speaking. If one then imposes that in a committee there must be as many French speakers as Dutch speakers, it can be in the circular reasoning of the Secretary of State only that the Brussels delegation belongs to the French language role. Originally found, but a real responsibility cannot be called.

Since the discrimination of Dutch-speaking parquet magistrates cannot be objectively answered, this Chamber actually remains only one possibility: to remove the humiliating arbitrariness and to restore the old, more objective provision, so that successive prosecutors of the King must belong to a different language system.

Not only the State Council has expressed sharp criticism. Even the Order of Flemish Balies does not see from practice how one can always rime a French-speaking prosecutor with the bilinguality of the Brussels arrondissement. They have also already announced that they will go to the Constitutional Court for discrimination against Dutch speakers, who are excluded from a top position.

In the committee, the Secretary of State responded shoulder-lifting to that message. I think the answer was something in the nature of: we live in a rule of law and every citizen can go to the Constitutional Court, one does it. That was about down there. The Order of Flemish Balies, which represents all Flemish lawyers, is not simply a citizen in this dossier, Mr. Verherstraeten. They are the specialists in the matter. Unfortunately, you refuse to take into account the fundamental criticism from the field.

In addition to the criticism of the Council of State and of the Order of Flemish Balies, since the discussions in the committee have been completed, fundamental criticism has also been expressed by the Flemish parket staff in Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. They are also not satisfied with the reform, and they have good reasons for it. The first reason is that the park will be too small. It would count 25 substitutes: 20 Dutch-speaking and 5 French-speaking people who are dispatched from the Brussels prosecutor’s office. The province governor’s study shows that at least 35 are needed.

Secondly, they indicate that it will bring with it a huge amount of useless back and forth. If a French-speaking criminal is arrested in Halle-Vilvoorde, he must first be brought to the Flemish prosecutor’s office. Where that new Flemish parquet will be located is still unclear, Mr. Secretary of State. During the discussion in the committee, I asked you if you already know the location, but I did not receive a response either. Most observers gamble on Ace.

No matter where it comes, the French-speaking criminal arrested in Halle-Vilvoorde will always have to be brought to the Flemish prosecutor’s office. If the prosecutor decides that an investigative judge should be prosecuted, he must be transferred to Brussels. The investigative judge resides in Brussels. All this must be done within 24 hours. The office will also remain in Brussels, so the lawyers will have to drive a lot back and forth for a person arrested in Halle-Vilvoorde.

A third argument they argue is that there will be too few Dutch-speaking investigative judges in Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, because the Flemish have only 20% of the judges. That means maybe only two, instead of five, as it is now. The five French-speaking magistrates who are dispatched by the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office to deal with the French-speaking crime in Halle-Vilvoorde will soon become overworked, according to the Flemish prosecutor’s staff.

In 2011, in Halle-Vilvoorde, 3,185 perpetrators chose the French language, out of 10,625 known perpetrators in 14,162 files. Currently, the French-speaking crime in Halle-Vilvoorde is handled by bilingual Dutch-speaking magistrates. There were never complaints about it. The deployment of the five French-speaking magistrates from Brussels is therefore, in their view, completely superfluous. It will ⁇ not promote the proper functioning of the court.

Finally, they argue that even perpetrators who do not live in Halle-Vilvoorde, even if they make a Flemish victim, can still choose the French language. Currently, half of the 10,625 known perpetrators come from Halle-Vilvoorde itself. Seventeen percent come from the Brussels municipalities. A third comes from somewhere else. On the parket, one cannot see why the latter group, part of which comes from Flanders, could still choose the French language. The latter becomes more interesting for the perpetrators, as I have just cited, when one knows that the French-speaking investigative judges in Brussels, among whom they will then fall, deliver an arrest warrant much less quickly than their Dutch-speaking colleagues.

In the explanation of the bill, we can read that, pending the establishment of the frameworks according to the workload measurement, the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office will from now on be composed of one-fifth of Dutch speakers and four-fifth of French speakers. In total, a third of the judges will be bilingual. The text originally stated: “among other things, the workload measurement”. This “amendment” was removed by the majority amendments. At the same time, the term “workload measurement” was redefined in the explanation so that in fact all kinds of factors are charged except the workload itself. It has become completely arbitrary. When discussing the language relationships at the seat, I come back to the workload measurement and the crazy 20/80 ratio.

Twenty percent of Dutch speakers is an absolute minimum for the Brussels Parliament. If one falls under that, then the Dutch-speaking parquet magistrates in Brussels threaten to be completely marginalized. However, there is a real chance that the number of Dutch-speaking prosecutors in Brussels will decrease in three years, if it turns out that there are relatively not enough Dutch-speaking criminal cases in Brussels. For the proper functioning of the Brussels parliament, that 20% of Dutch speakers for us is an absolute bottom limit.

The biggest winners of the story about the parquet are the French speakers, of course. Their framework is expanded from 81 to 83. In reality, their number will rise from 63 to 83, meaning a real progress of more than 30 %.

None of the newly appointed should be bilingual. Also in the future the number of bilingual French speakers will not need to be expanded. After all, they can be assured that the Flamingos, even if they are only 20%, will provide the majority of bilingual people.

To summarize very briefly our criticism of the imminent division of the parquet and the labor audit, we can conclude that Halle-Vilvoorde is given a separate parquet, but that it is a poisoned gift. It is equipped with five French-speaking parquet magistrates, which contradicts the territoriality principle and the Dutch-speaking character of Halle-Vilvoorde. The involvement of French-speaking magistrates, although bilingual – that should still be missing – testifies to a tremendous amount of mistrust towards the Dutch-speaking parket magistrates of Halle-Vilvoorde. They are doing their job perfectly today. The dispatched are then sent again directly from Brussels, while Halle-Vilvoorde deserves its own parquet and its own labor auditorium, which must work independently of the Brussels Parquet and the Brussels Labor Auditorium, without infection by French-speaking dispatched parquet magistrates.

As far as the courts are concerned, the French-speaking parties of course also get a blow home.

As stated by previous speakers, there is no split between Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde at all, but rather the de-doublement proposed by Maingain, the de-doubling in single-party courts, which are equally competent for the entire BHV.

The French-speaking courts are equally competent as the Dutch-speaking courts for all 35 municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde. This is literally the proposal of Maingain.

Therefore, the present proposal does not provide for an integral split of the Brussels justice system. It does not provide for a vertical division of both the prosecutor’s office and the courts. It is limited to the division of the current judicial district into two administrative districts. Unfortunately, there is no division.

In the event of a real split, one would expect a bilingual court for Brussels-19 intra muros and a Dutch-speaking court extra muros. Instead, we get a doubling of single-party courts, which have equal jurisdiction across the whole of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde.

In practice, therefore, we are going from three bilingual courts with single-party chambers to six single-party courts which all six are competent for both the 19 Brussels municipalities and for all 35 municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde. This is a catastrophic scenario for the flames. It is a straightforward breach in favour of the French speakers.

Today Halle-Vilvoorde is considered a single Dutch-speaking area. Procedures are conducted in Dutch. The calling of the inhabitants of Halle-Vilvoorde is always in Dutch. If two residents of Halle-Vilvoorde decide to go to court together, this must also be done before the Dutch-speaking Chamber of the Brussels Court. The exceptions that exist today are limited.

With this bill this changes drastically. The French-speaking courts are equally competent as the Dutch-speaking courts for the 35 Dutch-speaking municipalities of Halle-Vilvoorde.

The difference remains that summaries in Halle-Vilvoorde must still take place in Dutch and that proceedings through summaries must therefore always be initiated by the Dutch-speaking court.

However, the new scheme is accompanied by numerous additional French language facilities. Two residents of Halle-Vilvoorde will now be able to appear directly and voluntarily before a French-speaking court, without being French-speaking.

A summons procedure makes a joint request for language change much easier. A simple request to the office will suffice. Finally, if the defendant is a resident of a facility municipality, it will be much easier for the defendant to demand the language change and, consequently, the transmission to a French-speaking court. The consequences of this arrangement are clear. While a French-speaking court today has only exceptional jurisdiction for persons in Halle-Vilvoorde, the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking courts will be almost entirely equalized in the future. This means that Halle-Vilvoorde legally slides from a single Dutch-speaking territory to a bilingual territory. The legal refraction of the entire Halle-Vilvoorde is initiated with this.

If, under these circumstances, the French-speaking courts are also given additional resources compared to the Dutch-speaking courts — think about the language relations with additional judges, extra judges and the like — then this will lead to a heavy competitive advantage which will cause the French-speaking courts to compete away with the Dutch-speaking courts even in Halle-Vilvoorde.

To date, it is not legally permitted for members of the French Bar Association to settle in Halle-Vilvoorde. There is a high probability that this will disappear within the foreseeable time. The agreement says nothing about this, but it is a logical consequence because both courts have almost equal jurisdiction over the Halle-Vilvoorde area. Then one would like to roll out the red bar for a massive influx of French-speaking lawyers in Halle-Vilvoorde, because they will be perfectly able to file a complaint with the Constitutional Court for so-called discrimination in a bilingual court area created by you.

Like the cherry on the cake, there is the rearrangement of the language relationships among the magistrates. Currently, the legal language relationships with the magistrates, a third Dutch, two-thirds French, correspond to the work volume in Halle-Vilvoorde. However, these legal relationships have been bypassed for several years with the addition of magistrates, so that today only 28 % of the magistrates at the court of first instance are Dutch-speaking. At the largest court in Brussels, the Dutch speakers are therefore already 5 % too few. They are already being discriminated. However, much is not enough for the French speakers.

They have succeeded in imposing that completely insane language relationship on the negotiating table of only 20 % of Dutch speakers and 80 % of French speakers at the court of first instance, as well as at the labour court and the police court. Before the Commercial Court, they enforced the ratio of 40 % Dutch speakers and 60 % French speakers.

That arrangement means an extreme decline in the number of Dutch-speaking magistrates and, much worse, of the officers. The saddest part of all this is that there is no serious, objective reason for it. The proportions are not in line with the work volume or the population situation in Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde. A ratio of 20/80 could at most be accepted for Brussels-19, but ⁇ not for the whole Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. It is completely incomprehensible and extremely shameful that the Flemish negotiators have agreed to this.

Concretely, it means that 25 Flemish magistrates and as many as 160 officers will be replaced by French speakers and that the French-speaking courts in the future will no longer be twice as large as the Dutch-speaking courts, which would correspond to the workload, but four times as large. This is a real disaster for all Flemish citizens, who in the future will have to wait much longer for their trial than the French speakers. As a result, Dutch speakers from Halle-Vilvoorde will go to French-speaking judges in the future because progress is much faster there. In this way, justice becomes again a machinery, as it was many decades ago.

We heard in the committee that everybody is so winning for the workload measurement and that it should come as soon as possible. It is therefore completely incomprehensible that, in anticipation of this, the 20/80 ratio is already introduced. I compared it during the committee discussions to a surgeon who amputates a leg and only much later makes a possible diagnosis to see if that amputation was necessary.

This is how we came to workload measurement. I still have a number of concerns that were not given any clarity in the committee. First and foremost, where is the balance, if one expressly stipulates in this bill that if the workload measurement is not on time, the frame of the Dutch speakers is reduced to 20%, while for the French-speaking magistrates there is no link to any consequence?

On the contrary, for the French-language appointments, which are already starting to reach 80 %, it is clearly stimulated that they remain acquired.

For the creation of the workload measurement, however, the Dutch speakers are assigned to the French speakers, but they no longer have any interest in it. We have been waiting for it for fifteen years and there is no guarantee that it will come right now. The Dutch-speaking judges have been a petitioning party for fifteen years.

There has been confusion around the concept of “workload measurement”. In the original texts it was stated "that the frameworks would be definitively fixed by, among other things, the workload measurement". The term “among other things” was all but clear and was therefore deleted by majority amendments. At the same time, however, the explanatory note redefines the term “workload measurement” in such a way that everything, except the workload, is taken into account. Thus, the complete arbitration is installed. However, the definition of “workload measurement” is and remains the ratio of the type and number of dossiers to the number of judges and their time spent, nothing more and nothing less. Such objective results should be taken into account.

The consequences of the introduction of the 20/80 distribution are gigantic, as evidenced by all the numbers available. Both in the committee and in this plenary session, much has already been said about the figures in question, which, as they say, are not available or would not be correct. I just heard the reporter, Mr Landuyt, stating that all parties agree that there are currently no correct, useful figures. However, I think the reporter did not listen properly during the committee discussions. All members of the committee agreed that a workload measurement should be made as soon as possible, in order to record the most correct figures. Today, however, there are really flawed figures available, which demonstrate that the 20/80 distribution is absolutely based on nothing.

Mr. Landuyt, I listened very well. When you talked about the workload measurement and about the fact that Minister Turtelboom would have a lot of work on it, I noticed that you were always speaking in the conditional way. You have clearly stipulated that you hope that the workload measurement will come there and that you hope that the judicial lag will be eliminated.

With this bill, I mean that this hope should probably be seen under the motto: “Al ⁇ one sees his grave already open, one must still continue to hope.”

Unfortunately, we have not been able to conduct a substantial debate on the figures. No one who criticized the accuracy of the figures – the State Council, the High Council for Justice or the magistrates themselves, who provided statistics to Minister Turtelboom – could be heard. We were not allowed to have any debate in Parliament. This was pursued by the Parliament. We noticed this in the course of the committee meetings. I have heard more speakers speaking today than at all committee meetings combined. The proposers of the eight parties usually remained silent in the committee.

Mr. Verherstraeten, of course, was speaking as Secretary of State, but without answering most questions and always with the murderer that the applicants did not contradict him. This meant, according to him, that he was right, and that the State Council and the High Council for Justice were wrong.

What I found especially striking is the way a substantial debate was made impossible and the lies told around the content. I will give you a few examples. We have not received any accountability on the 20/80 ratio, but this is simply not to be answered. The Secretary of State also did not have the honesty to say that it was simply a political agreement. Mr. Secretary of State, you indicated that the number of Dutch-speaking magistrates will be 27% instead of 20%. However, there is no guarantee for those 27%. We add Article 57 of your bill, and you will find that 27% is only a short one-year transitional measure. If that workload measurement is not delivered in time, everything is irrevocably fixed on that 20 %.

Unfortunately, Mr. Doomst has already left. He is probably already going to celebrate out of joy. I have heard him in Terzake very pathetically proclaim that from now on in Halle-Vilvoorde the “sacochendive” will finally be able to punish. I must, however, disappoint Mr. Doomst and make his joy a bit crazy. If one does not reverse the 20/80 ratio, then in the future there will probably no longer even be a correctional judge to punish that “sacchekeeper.”

Mrs. Becq, I did not hear you speak so often in the committee. Your argument on the 20/80 ratio and the whether or not correct figures of former Minister of Justice De Clerck, however, has remained my memory. You took a sentence from the opinion of the High Council for Justice: they could not have collected all the data and the data was not complete.

This applies only to the Court of First Instance. Everyone knows that the French-speaking president is not the most neutral figure. He is pursuing a French-language political agenda. He also refused to submit figures to the Supreme Council for Justice.

It is typical that in your single argument you take a sentence out of context and distort it, as if the figures of the High Council for Justice were not useful or correct. For the Commercial Court, the Labour Court and the Police Court, these figures are almost entirely useful and show that the 20/80 ratio is completely disproportionate to the workload.

I can even tell you that the figure for entered cases in the Labour Court was roughly the same as the figures passed during the negotiations. I don’t have them with me, but I want to find them for you and deliver them to you later.

I will immediately quote the Chairman of the Labour Court. He put the numbers and the 20/80 scheme side by side, but he comes to a different conclusion than you.

The figures of Mr. De Clerck that colleague Verherstraeten gave and the pathetic explanation of Mr. Doomst, that we must now jump a hole in the air, are either a lack of document knowledge or a sign of evil will to present everything more colorful than it is. We ⁇ want to accuse this attitude. You can expect a pamphlet in the bus in your respective municipalities. The figures of the Labour Court are also included, Mrs. Becq. Then everyone can see what you are doing with these bills.

It is a fact that the correct numbers are available.

During the discussion in the committee, I gave the correct figures for each court. Those figures per court clearly showed that there was no objective reason for reducing the rate to 20 %.

Since colleague Becq has already referred to the Labour Court, I will today only remove the Labour Court. I will not repeat these numbers. Colleague Van Vaerenbergh has also cited a number of them in her presentation. I am removing the Labour Court. It is also the only one that has received a little media attention, thanks to the courageous defense of the chairman of the Brussels Labour Court, Gaby Van den Bossche. She spotted the whole situation in a free tribune in De Standaard, as soon as it became known.

She pointed out, first and foremost, that she was not consulted at any time during the negotiations. However, it seems to me an extremely important issue. She warned that the 20/80 scheme will cause irreparable damage. If the new Dutch-speaking court, with a capacity of 20 % of the magistrates, is to deal with a work volume of at least 30 %, this implies that each year one-third of the cases initiated will not be able to be dealt with and that, in other words, there will be a lag, while it was precisely the intention to remove the lag with this bill.

According to the Chairman of the Labour Court, this would create a one-year delay every two years, while there already exists a two-year delay in disputes over employment contracts, which, by the way, were not included in the figures – coming from his cabinet head – that De Clerck had laid on the negotiating table.

Ms. Van den Bossche added that the work volume of the most labor-intensive dossiers, the employment contracts and the debt arrangements, on the Dutch-speaking side is more than 40 %. In The Time, we could read the mail traffic between Gaby Van den Bossche and the cabinet chief. He acknowledged that these figures were not charged.

Finally, Ms. Van den Bossche opposed the agreement to measure the workload only three years after the new system was launched. She says that the workload measurement has been promised for years, with no result. This is not the fault of the Dutch-speaking Brussels magistrates. They have been asking for it for fifteen years.

Even before the Commercial Court, where another relationship is enforced, namely 40/60, the relationship stores nowhere. So it is not only the 20/80 ratio for the labour court, the police court and the court of first instance that has been completely taken out of the air. If one tracks the work volume of the courts of commerce, one finds a current work volume of more than 45 % for Dutch speakers. Therefore, there is no reason to fix the staff framework for the time being to 40 % of Dutch speakers and thus reduce the Dutch-speaking framework.

Globally, for all these courts, the total number of Dutch-speaking magistrates will be reduced by 25 compared to the current number. Therefore, I do not take into account the lack of 7 Dutch-speaking magistrates at the Court of First Instance with regard to the legal minimum standard. In fact, we can say that Flanders is down from 32 magistrates.

At the griffies there is a global Dutch-speaking decline with as many as one hundred and sixty employees. This means that the total number of Dutch-speaking officials is simply halved. If one would take into account a correct ratio, with the work volume of a third, 33 and 66%, instead of that crazy 20/80 ratio, then 67 Dutch-speaking police officers would have to die less. Of course, on the French-language side it is a mirror image of these figures. They go ahead with 25 – actually 32 – magistrates and a hundred and sixty graffiti servants.

We have not only had the comments of the Council of State and the Order of Flemish Balies, but also the magistrates themselves have demonstrated with all sorts of statistics that they have already provided to the Minister of Justice months ago, the gigantic consequences that redistribution entails. The Dutch-speaking departments that now do not have a backdrop will become completely inactive according to the magistrates, who still have a view on the ground.

The dupe of all that dramatic history is, of course, first and foremost the Flemish citizen in Brussels and in Halle-Vilvoorde. In the future, it will have to wait much longer than today for a court ruling.

Furthermore, the excessively unlawful advantage of French speakers increases the pressure on French speakers. The French-speaking courts will be able to be much more competitive and function much faster than the Dutch-speaking courts, thus increasing the number of people – including Flemish – will be inclined to step into a French-speaking court, which will compete away from the Flemish courts not only in Brussels but also in Halle-Vilvoorde.

It is crazy what is happening here. Only fourteen years ago, Vic Anciaux in Brussels was forced to resign as Secretary of State by the then People’s Union, when the French-speaking people were able to obtain that the number of Dutch-speaking firefighters in Brussels dropped from 32% to 29%. Now we still hold only 20 % of Dutch-speaking magistrates and greffiers, not only in Brussels but throughout Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. I see no reason, Mr. Doomst, to be happy about it.

You have been talking for over an hour.

I will conclude my speech, Mr. Speaker.

The normal speech time is half an hour per design.

It is a combination of two drafts relating to Article 157a.

Two times a half hour is an hour. This is like a second reading of the Commission report.

No, absolutely not.

I was constantly present. I know what I have heard.

Ms. Pas has announced that she will explain her amendments much more concisely than in the committee.

Okay, but I’ll still ask you to finish, because it’s 1 hour, 16 minutes and 45 seconds that you’re talking.

The only thing I want to lose from all that workload measurement and that 20/80 ratio, because it was a fundamental element in this whole bill, is that it testifies to an unimaginable pride and arrogance that the Octopus parties have still not revised the relations, that they simply blow all the criticism of the High Council for Justice, the Council of State, the magistrates themselves and the Order of Flemish Balies, and even prevent them from being heard in the Chamber.

Finally, I can’t stop saying anything about the essential elements of this nefaste reform. Through the anchoring in a special law, the Flemish democratic majority is bound by a minority in this country. We also had the discussion of the other proposal that provides for the introduction of Article 157bis into the Constitution, which aims to shape the institutional agreement. It stipulates, inter alia, that the essential elements of the judicial district reform can only be amended by a special majority.

In the general explanation during the discussion of this proposal in the committee, Mr Raf Terwingen said that certain elements of this reform were considered to be so essential that they could only be adjusted in the future by a special majority.

What these essential elements are or are correct, we still have not been able to hear, not even during the discussion in the committee. However, in addition to the criticism of the increasingly French-speaking prosecutor and the criticism of the 20/80 ratio, this was the third fundamental criticism of the State Council, to clarify those essential elements.

However, this question of the State Council was also not addressed. We have only received a little-significant statement from the Secretary of State, who actually came to the conclusion that “essential” is what will later be defined as such by a political majority. It is therefore on this basis that the technique of a special or ordinary law will be used. Such an explanation does not create much legal certainty, as the State Council has requested.

Colleagues, the present proposal on the reform of the judicial district of Brussels is a catastrophe for the Flamings. The remedy is worse than the disease, because both in Brussels and in Halle-Vilvoorde the situation is getting much worse than it is today. This revision of the judicial district Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde is therefore a fiasco across the whole line.

I have heard Mrs. Van Vaerenbergh say that the Flemish interests were sold. I think it is much worse. They were not sold, because when a sale you get at least something back. This was just a free departure.

Of course, we do not want to anchor this constitutionally and concrete it. In addition, this constitutional anchoring of that unitary judicial district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde makes it impossible again that Flanders will ever obtain a full autonomy in the field of justice. Approximately the entire justice policy is therefore bound up at the Belgian level.

It was the Antwerp ships Marc Van Peel who already years ago shouted that the division of Justice was actually much more urgent than that of Halle-Vilvoorde.

Well, by preserving the unitary district of Brussels and its constitutional anchoring, the division of justice is further away than ever. As a result of a constitutional emphasis on those so-called judicial rights of French speakers in Flanders, it will be de facto impossible, in the Belgian context, to bring about a real division of the Judiciary, unless Halle-Vilvoorde in its entirety is cut off from Flanders, of course.

This is the main consequence of the strike agreement for the whole of Flanders. Flemish justice is impossible. Justice is established at the Belgian level. That alone is a thorough and sufficient reason to reject this proposal with all force.

I will try to be a little more concise.

I look at the agreement and think that one must do it anyway; the Flemish parties go to the negotiation table with the demand for the splitting of the judicial district BHV and come back with the opposite: the concentration of the judicial district BHV in the Constitution. This is the opposite of what they left. We actually know in advance that BHV will de facto never be split again. The Flamingos asked the division to make the French speakers in Halle-Vilvoorde a diet that they live in Halle-Vilvoorde, in Flanders and not in Brussels. The Flemish negotiators come home with just the opposite: all measures and additional privileges that ensure that the French speakers with us in Halle-Vilvoorde will be deceived even more than today in Brussels. They will think even more that they are not in Flanders, but in bilingual Brussels area. They have privileges.

They will now have their own court with their own French-speaking judges. their own people. They will now have a parquet in Halle-Vilvoorde, where they can go to their own French-speaking magistrates. their own people. No Flemish magistrates who also know French, no: their own people. The French speakers in Halle-Vilvoorde can go to their own French-speaking magistrates. Some people like to come to live in our countryside, but when it comes to judgment, the French speakers apparently do not trust us. Then they trust only their own people and therefore there will be a private court for French speakers in Halle-Vilvoorde with their own French speaking magistrates. In the near future, residents of the facility municipalities will no longer have to consult with the purely Dutch-speaking Chamber of the Council of State, but they can go to their own people, to French-speaking judges.

Mr. Doomst, is that why you are so happy today? Are you so happy with even more burning of Halle-Vilvoorde?

Speaking of “Our Own”, we are working out your own proposal here! It is what you started with and behind which we happyly put an end to today. It is your own proposal.

Mr. Doomst, the truth has some of its rights. In no proposal of the N-VA there are French-speaking judges in Halle-Vilvoorde, there is a French-speaking court for the French-speaking. You won’t find that in any proposal, so I recommend you read it again quickly.

Soon, French speakers will always be able to reach out to their own people. We ask migrants to integrate in Flanders. Can we not even ask the French speakers, instead of having separate courts and separate magistrates, their own people?

Are we, as Flamingos, not enough maybe, or are we soon going to provide our own courts and magistrates for migrants too? There are enough demanding parties nowadays.

But apparently it is not yet enough. Not only will you come back with just the opposite of what you previously demanded. On top of that, there are some truly incomprehensible humiliations for the Flammers. These are humiliations with a great precedent value, because with the present agreement, paths are wrapped and roads are crashed so that there is no way back. Choices are being made, which will be nefaste for all further Community negotiations.

I will return for a moment to the French-speaking magistrates at the prosecutor’s office in Halle-Vilvoorde. Mr. Doomst may still remember the quotes at the beginning of the CD&V party administration, with journalists with their microphones. They asked him what he thought of French-speaking magistrates in Halle-Vilvoorde. His answer was: those zotternies, away with them, no talk of, about our bodies. And Mr. Carl Decaluwe emphasized that there are no Dutch-speaking judges in China, which in itself is a much narrower statement, but unfortunately a wrong logic. Apparently it says here: not with all the Chinese, but with these! After all, there are French-speaking magistrates in Halle-Vilvoorde and they are even beaten through a turn in the Constitution. In this way, the personality principle is actually inscribed in the Constitution.

The French speakers, from wherever they may come, even from outside Brussels and outside the facility municipalities, can seize rights in Flanders, because they are French speakers. In doing so, we abandon – this is essential – also the so renowned and firmly anchored territoriality principle on which our entire federal system is based. Here specifically applies the personality principle: French speakers have rights because they are French speakers.

For those who are still in doubt, these rights apply only to French speakers. There will be its own French-speaking court and its own French-speaking magistrates. The tens of thousands of Flemish people living in Waals-Brabant, however, should not think that they could soon be sent to their own Dutch-speaking court in Waals-Brabant. The Dutch-speaking people should not think that they could be prosecuted at their own prosecutor’s office with Flemish magistrates in for example Nijvel. This arrangement is very unilateral.

Mr. Doomst, I wonder if that is why you are so happy. Finally French-speaking judges in Flemish-Brabant, is that why are you so happy today?

Mr. Weyts, are you really so frustrated that you think that a Dutch-speaking prosecutor in Halle-Vilvoorde will not succeed in shaping its own prosecution policy? Is it so deep?

What does this have to do with now?

Is that frustration and that fear of change so deep within you?

God save us and all the Flames from the change that you are forthcoming!

Through this agreement, the Chairman of the French-speaking Court can now also veto decisions of the Chairman of the Dutch-speaking Court. And also here this is not the opposite, because only the French speaker has something to say about the Dutch speaker.

There is also a professional ban for flamingos in our capital. Without a French-language diploma, a Flaming cannot become a Procurator of the King or a labor auditor. This is also a very great novelty that you will undoubtedly be very pleased with today.

Are we the only ones who find this crapuleous? You know the prohibition of occupation, but more recently in history, this principle is also found in the law of 1956. This is about the Employment Law. This law was issued by Hendrik Verwoerd. This South African law stipulates that certain important jobs are reserved for whites. That logic will be applied here. Some important jobs are reserved for French speakers. The South African “slegs vir blanks” is now “uniquement pour les francophones” in Brussels. Apartheid to the Zenne!

Are you so happy, Mr. Doomst? Does that make you so happy and cheerful today?

When we ask the reason, they say that we must accept that the French speakers in Brussels are in the majority and that there are more French speaking files. The top officials and the toplui must therefore also be French speakers.

However, when we ask for reasoning, there is a problem. When we use the majority logic, it must also be applied to the whole of Belgium. If in Belgium the Flamings are in the majority, then in that case all top jobs at the federal government must be for Flamings and thus all top officials must be Flamings. The majority logic cannot be applied only if it is in the benefit of the French speakers.

We have thus also immediately realized an additional, empty promise of Hendrik Bogaert. You know that you had promised us a long time ago to make top officials compulsory bilingual, a promise that was forgotten? Well, it’s simple; if all top officials are Flaming, you can assume sufficiently that they are bilingual. The problem of bilinguality has been resolved.

You will get more good news in this regard. After all, I read today that CD&V has other priorities, such as political appointments, top jobs at Belgocontrol and the presidency at Belgacom. Such priorities are very important nowadays. You want to get them in. With the current system, all this is possible. You will get your sense. If all top jobs go to the Flamings, the chances are quite high that we also immediately have bilingual top officials and that CD&V can get a number of political appointments.

You are served twice.

Unfortunately, we now know that it does not work that way. The majority logic only applies when the French speakers are in the majority and therefore not when the Flemish are in the majority. If the Flammers are in the majority, there are different rules of parity and there are protective mechanisms, grinders and all sorts of security systems.

If one reflects more deeply, one comes to the conclusion that the measure regarding the reservation of top jobs for French speakers leads us not only back to the twentieth century and to the apartheid system, but even to the nineteenth century. Anyone who, as a law student, still has some ambition and wants to go to Brussels for the highest position, will only be able to do so if he or she has a French-language diploma. Those who have some ambition and want their children to study law should send them to the French language education. After all, if they have ambition and want to get somewhere in life, they must have a French language diploma, just like in the nineteenth century. That was also the case then. Those who wanted to go somewhere in this country at the time had to have a French language diploma. That beautiful time, at least for the French speakers, is coming back.

The same logic applies to bilingualism. From now on, only one-third of the magistrates in Brussels must be bilingual, instead of two-thirds. When you are going to speak on land, you should try to explain such a logic. Even in Bachten de Kupe one understands that in the capital of six million Flemish countries, only one-third of the magistrates must know Dutch and be bilingual.

Every self-respecting store in Brussels has bilingual staff at the box office, but judges, people who decide about life and death, apparently do not need to know Dutch. Only ordinary people should know Dutch in Brussels; for important people this is not necessary. Again, the same reasoning is based on this, in particular that the majority of the files in Brussels are French-speaking.

I make a side jump. It is strange, however, that one always assumes the language choice of the perpetrator of a crime, i.e. of the defendant. No one asks the victim anything. The choice of language of the perpetrator always determines the language of the trial, and therefore of the court. In fact, it is even stronger. Crime pays off, and we know who wins. After all, the more French-speaking offenders there are in Halle-Vilvoorde, the more sent French-speaking judges there come to the prosecutor’s office in Halle-Vilvoorde, and the more work there is for French-speaking lawyers in Flemish-Brabant, and also in Brussels by the way. The more French-speaking offenders, the more French-speaking jobs.

It is a problem for the employment in the judicial sector in the French-speaking world. On the last pages of the report on the assessment of Salduz, it was examined which language a person uses when consulting a lawyer. The figures are interesting: 20% of the suspects use a non-current main language, so no Dutch, French, English or German, 52% use French and only 26% use Dutch. Now we are talking about the whole country. In terms of employment in the judicial sector, it looks good for French speakers. French is a major cultural language, apparently also in certain subcultures.

Coincidence means I recently read the story of the Munich Convention. Now follow a little history. In October 1938, Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich, where he had negotiated with the Germans, the French and the Italians about Czechoslovakia. You may remember that. After those long negotiations, France and the United Kingdom accepted the annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany. It was thought to be able to calm the German territory hunger. Instead of satisfying this area’s hunger, it has been stimulated.

Chamberlain went to the negotiations with a promise, with a guarantee of peace, but returned with a guarantee of war. You left to the negotiations with the demand for division and comes home with the opposite, with the guarantee that it will never be split. On the contrary, it is embedded in the Constitution.

And then there are similarities. Chamberlain was an amateur negotiator. He improvised constantly and used the wrong numbers. Investigations also revealed that the British public opinion found its own politicians incompetent, that they understood nothing of the whole Czechoslovak issue and that, above all, there should be no major crisis. This is also recognizable.

So the British went on. They went for an agreement at all costs, an agreement for the agreement. Chamberlain went over and worked out a proposal that Germany would meet far and withdrew to his cabinet. It was a complete capitulation.

He then moved to his cabinet, which was completely on his head. Great crisis, there was called and tainted. There were very punitive statements made, such as on the party management of CD&V for not having French-speaking judges in Flanders. Chamberlain also had a crisis in his cabinet.

Yet another similarity. On the eve of the Munich Peace Conference, the small Czech ally was dropped. Chamberlain returned with an agreement, pretended it was a major victory and was celebrated. He left for a guarantee of peace and returned with a guarantee of war.

Fortunately, despite the great triumph, there were still some critical voices, from their own ranks or yet. Churchill was a party member of Chamberlain. That, however, did not prevent him from opposing the prime minister in the House of Commons in a magnificent speech politely, but radically.

I can give you a few quotes. “They should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. They should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history."And he concludes:"And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the calculation. This is only the first snack, the first foretaste of a bitter cup.

With the motion submitted for voting, the government majority in the House of Representatives wanted to seek the approval of that Munich Convention.

Churchill voted against, against his own party. Why Why ? What prejudice was shameful and extremely detrimental to his people. When will a Churchill stand up at CD&V and Open Vld? At Open Vld, there have been many rising up, but not to play Churchill. I have already heard a few presentations here, also from you, Mr. Doomst, in which one tries to defend the indefensible. Open Vld does not even make that attempt and has decided not to speak today out of honest shame.

Any agreement is better than this agreement, and above all, no agreement is better than this agreement. We win a Flemish parquet, we know it with French-speaking judges. We are losing the language boundary, which is becoming more porous than ever. More than ever, the French speakers in Halle-Vilvoorde are going to wander in Brussels. They have extensive additional privileges. We lose the principle of parity, of the equivalence of French speakers and Flamings in Brussels. We lose that too. Top jobs are only for French speakers. We get apartheid on the Zenne. We also lose the legal bilinguality of our capital. We are losing our capital.

The next EU negotiations will focus on reserving more jobs, more positions for French speakers in Brussels and even less bilingualism in Brussels. You will go on paths, where there is no way back possible for the entire Flemish community. For this, the Flammers must pay again, not only politically but also literally. According to a study by a green professor, the bill amounts to almost 3 billion euros, if one adds the extra money for Brussels. It is simple: here our cents, when our rights?

Some in Parliament will enter the next elections with the slogan “Everyone Included”. If I analyze these agreements thoroughly, I can ⁇ conclude with regard to Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde: everyone included, ⁇ and definitely also the French-speaking criminals, everyone included except the Flamings.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary of State, it is true that we begin the debate in the plenary session of the House with bills that, in the end, could not be debated very correctly in committee sessions, so it is true that their authors were very unable to answer most of the somewhat technical questions that we formulated to them. I’ll go back because it was very sad.

I have been present in this parliamentary assembly for about twenty years, I have already done some work of revision of the Constitution and reform of the State: this is ⁇ the first time that I feel not bitterness, since it has little effect in politics, but dissatisfaction with the weakness of the debate in a parliamentary committee.

Obviously – it is enough to see the number of amendments submitted at the last minute by the institutional majority to try to correct multiple inconsistencies in the texts, some of which remain and we will find them in use – this institutional majority works blindly and is absolutely not sure of what it proposes.

Obviously, I will not be able to begin my explanation on the scope of the new article 157bis and the proposals of laws that grant it a legal execution without expressing my reflections on the actual scope of this reform of the State.

Some will tell us that they have stabilized the country for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. At least that was what they said the day after the institutional negotiation. As time passes, it is discussed at best two years. Per ⁇ we will be sure for two years that we have saved the country the time of the life of a government, until the next federal legislative election. And for cause.

Indeed, the prime minister-president of the Flemish government, the all-powerful man of the CD&V, the one who really matters, the one who holds the real power, has already announced that he is eager to move towards the seventh reform of the state. These are his words. Mr. Landuyt, this is your government too, since you are of this majority. Therefore, I understand that we are pressing the step to vote for this one: the seventh must already be prepared!

Those who claim to win the speed race against separatism, say what I have heard for so many years, saying, “This is the last reform, you know! This time, we will not go beyond!” they already know that, in two years, they will go to negotiate with the same ones they claim to keep away from the country’s institutional evolution. They are simply playing the game of Flemish nationalism and reinforcing it; it is now seen in polls that it is stronger than ever. Some in the south of the country have not yet taken the full measure, preferring to hold the speech of the blind of Bruegel who advance one behind the other, cahin-caha, standing on their shoulders but going collectively towards the precipice. This is what the eight parties associated with this state reform are doing.

In short, this state reform means the end of federalism in Belgium. Federalism is the only way of peaceful coexistence between communities in this country. I am a convinced federalist. I am in Belgium, on the European level as well as for the Federation Wallonia-Bruxelles. But federalism is being killed by those who believe that by always accepting an endless process of dislocation of the Belgian state, they will secure the future of this country. Nothing like this will happen! All we need to do is take back – I will do this exercise with pleasure when other proposals for institutional reforms are discussed – the list drafted in the summer of 2007 by the French-speaking parties that had already been associated with a first attempt to institutional negotiation. This list, which I had established in mid-August 2007 with Francis Delpérée, had been approved at the time by the presidents of the MR and the CDH. Under no circumstances could we accept this list of the institutional claims of the Flemish parties!

In particular, I think of transferring skills in the field of social security. I must note today that social security, so much praised for many years by the French-speaking parties as being the indispensable foundation for the very existence of the federal state, will gradually begin to collapse and substantially collapse since there are transfers of competences concerning important branches of social security, whether in health care or in family benefits.

I could thus continue to demonstrate that this country, without, of course, that the public opinion is aware of it because it is never good to tell it certain truths, vogue towards what some call the north of the country, in an improper manner – but in their jargon they know very well what this means – confederalism, which I will qualify, for my part, as institutional façadism of Belgium, that is, how to maintain an appearance of a Belgian state, an empty shell, as they kindly say.

Behind this façade, behind this confederalism, what could still have been the substance of a State has been empty of any meaning. Furthermore, Flemish Prime Minister-President Kris Peeters stated, in response to a journalist who asked him what would be the future competencies of the Belgian state, that he saw three: the high-voltage electricity lines – I don’t know why –, monetary policy – it largely escapes the Belgian state – and, finally, defence policy – it is known that it is no longer a force line of Belgian politics, this for other less honorable political reasons too.

With this sixth state reform, we have thus engaged in a process of deep dislocation of the Belgian state, but also in a process that will undoubtedly lead this country to still experience, in the coming years, many times of institutional uncertainty. And as we could see during the summer of 2011, we will again see, tomorrow, presidents of French-speaking parties meet, with great satisfaction, Mr. Bart De Wever to find out how to take into account the requirements of the latter. I remember a party president who unfolded the blue carpet in front of his party headquarters to receive Mr. Bart De Wever I also remember others still who didn’t know how to get comfortable whenever they could meet the latter face-to-face.

Those themselves who say, today, with the heart on the hand that they have kept away the monster, the N-VA, will be the first, tomorrow, to run behind this party which they call a monster. You will see! They have already given the preliminary signs!

It is true that, in this perspective, the reform of the judicial district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde deserves a few considerations to take the real measure of what is proposed to us.

I will not say at first that this is the most terrifying text of all that is proposed to us. When we are brought to decide on the pure and simple division of the electoral district of Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde, we will demonstrate how the French-speaking parties have undoubtedly totally abandoned their primary demands regarding this electoral district.

But we are very far away, with this text, from the major advances that the French-speaking parties had let hear, in favor of the rights of the justiciables, especially French-speaking, in the periphery and not only in the six facilitated communes.

We are very far from what some had announced saying that in the Constitution would be inscribed the right of every justiciable to be judged in his own language. By the way, once and for all, I am strongly attached to the principle of linguistic freedom. This principle, I do not claim it only for the French-speaking justiciables, I recognize it very willingly and equally in favor of the Dutch-speaking justiciables.

Philosophically, I have a totally liberal view of this issue. I am against the principle of territoriality of languages. I am against this nationalist principle that goes against all the otherwise democratic evolution of the European Union. You will see that it is ultimately the European Union that will force you, sooner or later, to recognize the right of every justiciable to be judged in its own language. But we are very far from what is offered. We are far away from legal certainty.

The authors of the proposal to insert an article 157bis into the Constitution did not dare to write explicitly the principle of being judged in its own language in a constitutional provision. They did not dare to assert this essential democratic principle. They adopted a technique, the limits of which were discovered on the occasion of what was called, during the institutional reform of 1988, “the concrete embellishment of facilities in the Constitution”. At the time, it was Philippe Moureaux who cared a lot of this concrete in the Constitution. I said to him, “You have not done anything at all! It’s at best lean concrete and it’s rather plaster that’s going to break quickly.”

It is known, it has been discovered by practice, the allegedly constitutional protection of the facilities regime was annihilated by the circulars of the Flemish government, interpretative in a totally abusive manner, of the facilities regime and never, ever, the parliament had the courage and the boldness, because it was ⁇ politically made impossible, to re-see, by an interpretative law, what was the actual scope of the facilities regime in the six peripheral communes!

So those who tell us that today, in the Constitution, the protection of the rights of the justiciable is inscribed, lie. There is no protection of the rights of the justiciable in the Constitution! There is only one legislative technique that is inscribed in it and the actual scope of which is not even known.

This was all the pleasure of commission work, if only at a certain point, this pleasure became all relative by lack of response from the authors of the bill. They were unable to say, in a strict and strict manner, legal provision by legal provision, which were those that would be protected by a special majority in Parliament.

I have recently referred to the exercise, Mr. Speaker, when the articles are examined, I will again ask which provisions are aimed at the protection of the special majority.

The authors of the proposal are unable to say it because they are unable to agree on the subject!

They are unable to tell us, for example, whether the proportions, in future linguistic frameworks, will be protected by a special majority or not.

There is a flagrant deception with regard to public opinion: you sell something knowing very well that the content does not even correspond to what is advertised on the label. It is a deceit! It’s an eye trick but there’s a lot of eye trick when it comes to the legal certainty of what is announced as being so favourable in terms of protecting the rights of the prosecutors. That is why, together with my fellow parliamentary FDF colleagues, we have filed an amendment to Article 157a of the Constitution, to truly inscribe in the Constitution the principle of the right of the prosecutors to be judged in their own language.

I will let you know. This is constitutional content. I read our amendment: “The languages used for the proceedings before civil courts are German, French or Dutch. The applicant” – we are in the proceedings before civil courts – “has the right to use the language of his choice for the initiative act of instance”. throughout the country! From Ostende to Arlon, language freedom for the applicant! A Flemish resides in Arlon; he wants to introduce his procedure in Dutch, no problem in our eyes. A French speaker lives in Ostende and wants to introduce his procedure in French, no problem! Equality of treatment!

That is not all. “The defendant has the right, in cases determined by law, to request that the proceedings be continued in one of the languages used.” Change of language can be achieved in some cases. Always throughout the country! Total linguistic freedom throughout the country.

The applicant and the defendant have the right to choose, by mutual agreement, one of the languages used for the proceedings. There are principles in the Constitution. This is the law that really protects the justifiable!

“They have the right, if necessary, to be assisted by an interpreter.” This is an evolution that can be seen in terms of international conventions.

“In law enforcement matters” – after the civil courts, the criminal courts – “every person in charge of whom information or instruction is opened or who is returned to an inquiry court or a court of judgment has the right to speak or defend himself in the language of his choice.” Without language limitation. This is in accordance with international conventions.

You are not even obliged to defend yourself in one of the national languages, you have the right to defend yourself in the language of your choice. This is recognized by international conventions. On the other hand, the languages used for procedural acts before the courts of instruction and courts of repression are German, French or Dutch. Any person referred to one of these courts has the right to choose the language of the proceedings. She has the right, if necessary, to be assisted free of charge by an interpreter. That is the constitutional content, when we really want to insert in the Constitution the rights of the justiciable! We are very far away, we have a appearance, an appearance of constitutional protection, which is not actually one.

This reform will take place in the budget fog. We are very far from knowing what the workload assessment will be, of which we have talked a lot, while we have talked about it in Parliament for at least ten years! I bet, despite the fact that the texts tell us that this work should have ended on June 1, 2014, that the controversy on the workload will be such in the coming months that I wish good luck to the one who believes for a single moment that by that date there will be definitive, serious, some, translated into approved frameworks, in accordance with the law, to determine the distribution of magistrates both to the prosecutors and to the seats. We know very well that the assessment of the burden of magistrates will be the true node of law enforcement. Regardless of the evolution of the cadres, in no case may this lead to a decrease in the number of magistrates according to the date of entry into force of the provisions referred to in Articles 57 and following. In other words, the precaution has already been taken to keep all the staff of magistrates in their current balance.

In a Belga mail, I read this morning the difficulty experienced by Ms. Milquet, after an extraordinary media beat, in obtaining budget commitments for the adaptation of police personnel both at the federal level and at the level of the Brussels police zones while I heard, on television platforms, last weekend, all representatives of parties say all cessing affairs "there must be going, we can no longer tergivers, it is an absolute budgetary priority". “A positive exception,” said one, “we’ll have them right away,” another overcharged!

I recall that today, the security in the Brussels metro was ensured because 19 Brussels mayors had the intelligence, with their corps heads, to remove the equivalent of 70 ETPs from the police zones to allocate them to the federal brigade of the metro police. I say this to those who argue that the federal police is preferable to the area police in Brussels.

Fortunately, in Brussels, the mayors and the heads of bodies of the zone police ensure the safety in the Brussels subway. We will wait a long time before we see the first federal reinforcements in the metro corridors. The Brussels mayors saved Ms. Milquet’s stake in terms of security.

I promise you that before the recruitment of the first magistrates in Brussels to take into account the application of the law, we will talk about it long and on the budgetary and political level. However, there should be an immediate commitment of the magistrates to deal with the rise of various crimes in Brussels. But this is another debate.

If I say so, it is that I have heard, when leaving a working group, one or the other negotiator projecting the recruitment in the coming months of more than 200 people for the magistracy, the office office and the auxiliary services of justice in Brussels. More than 200! I thought it was wonderful, exceptional, unexpected.

I look forward to seeing when the first of these 200 announced commitments will be effective. The first one. Of course they will tell us, as they will tell us what special arrangements are.

You can recruit them today. If you had the political will, the recruitment could be decided in the limited ministerial committee this morning.

The situation indicates a state of mind. You create the parquet of Hal-Vilvorde. It should not be created by dispatching judges from the Brussels prosecutor’s office. Everyone already knows that today, the frameworks of the Brussels prosecutor’s office are completely insufficient: they date back to 1997; at the time, they were already considered insufficient.

Fifteen years later, between 1999 and 2010, the population of Brussels grew by almost 17%. A growing population simultaneously generates a growing need for personnel in the judiciary. To meet this requirement, it was enough to insert one element in your law: not to touch the staff of the Brussels prosecutor’s office, but to create the Hal-Vilvorde prosecutor’s office either by taking magistrates from other judicial districts, or by recruiting new magistrates. We have the budget will to do this.

But that is what you obviously do not do. This is, of course, the great unknown of this reform and this threat to the proper functioning of Justice. As long as no additional recruitment of magistrates has taken place, both at the Brussels Public Prosecutor’s Office and at the headquarters, no sufficient, satisfactory and proofful answer will be given to the problem of judicial retardation in Brussels and therefore to the fact that all the mayors denounce.

The fact that the police work is performed in the most efficient way is of no use, since there is no possible follow-up by justice in the current state of the human forces and material means that are granted to the Brussels justice. There is no political will to resolve this issue. And, on the contrary, by reading the text well, it is clear that there is rather a willingness to keep things in the state, without any personal reinforcement at a very short term – that is, before the summer. There is no need for reinforcements in two years. It is now that we need additional magistrates if we want to put an end to the problem of judicial delay in Brussels.

The unity of the judicial district is still undermined. Yes, with pleasure, Mr Wathelet. One of the two dupond/t of institutional reforms must be able to speak out.

I would say more...

Is the entry into force of the double and the split of the prosecutor’s office conditioned in the text by the commitment of the staff?

Read your own article.

Answer my question.

First, I am not here to pass your examination that you have not been able to present, you, in commission when I was asking questions to know what the provisions would be...

Mr. Maingain, I was in the Senate. by Mr. Verherstraeten has answered all your questions.

of nothing! No, Mr. Wathelet, you will not be able to defend yourself by the wooden tongue that is yours. That’s why I was talking about Dupond/t: when one speaks, the other says the same thing then, but you still don’t know more.

Our consistency annoys you!

Mr. Wathelet, I simply ask you, since you like the questions, to tell me if judges will be hired in Brussels before the summer.

You mean now?

and yes. Before the holidays.

There are procedures.

There are reservations! Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted to know. This is the real challenge of justice in Brussels! You could have engaged all these procedures since the entry into office of the government, but you did not have the political will to do so.

It is a matter of law, even for you.

And then you could start the procedures. Tell me how many procedures have been opened to recruit judges. How much ?

You know, like me, that there is a recruitment reserve within the Supreme Council of Justice.

But then, since there is a reserve, go!

But then vote quickly for this text, because it conditionates – with 90% commitment at the level of magistrates, greves, prosecutors, etc. – the entry into force of the division at the level of the prosecutor’s office and the doubling at the level of the seat. And, Mr. Maingain, this is the best guarantee that these commitments will be made. These commitments will take place. For this reason, we need to vote on this text. This is a positive part of the text.

And, Mr. Maingain, I do not accept what you say about the workload. You say we won’t get it. And because we have not managed, for ten years, to measure the workload, must we say to ourselves that it is a lost pain, that we stop, that we do not do it?

When one fails to ⁇ a goal, is the correct answer to say: no matter what, I, I stop, I no longer do it?

On the contrary, Mr Wathelet!

This is the choice that has not been made. We have a commitment guarantee. This is the guarantee of having, then, the entry into force. by Mr. Bacquelaine has very well recalled just before that there would be two entries into force: first, that of the law and then, that of the split and the split, conditioned by the mechanisms of commitment. We have gone a long way; you have seen all the amendments. They are extremely detailed, going to indicate where and how to engage. And the workload – finally! We have the means to measure it.

I know that you are bothered to make such commitments. Stop saying things contrary to the truth.

Mr. Wathelet, if you wanted to tell the truth, you could tell me today how many magistrates will be hired in the coming weeks. You are incapable of that.

The [...]

In what specific timeframe?

In compliance with the procedures, Mr Maingain.

Thirty three, you say.

And what does it mean: in compliance with the deadlines of the procedures?

You do not want me to tell you the day and time. and stop! You know how judges are recruited.

I know what the procedures are. But these could have been engaged for a long time, regardless of this.

Mr Maingain, I invite you to continue.

The commitment of judges does not depend on the vote of this text. You could already hire magistrates for Brussels, regardless of the judicial district reform.

The [...]

How many supplementary judges have you hired?

Mr. Wathelet, I feel very well that you are embarrassed when you are put before your responsibilities!

If you want to continue, Captain Haddock.

I have all my time, Mr. President.

I too, and listen to the dupond/t!

Mr Maingain, I have always respected you as a lawyer and as a colleague, but now I am surprised by your presentation.

The proposals presented herein and the entry into force of the law contain clear exceptional provisions for the hiring of additional personnel, in particular French-speaking magistrates and French-speaking personnel, but also Dutch-speaking magistrates for the prosecutor’s office and the auditorium. The text clearly states that the recruitment will take effect immediately. In this way, there is also a legal basis for vacating those places by the Minister of Justice. They can then be completed in compliance with the Judicial Code. Now, if you say that “you can appoint judges anyway,” that is not correct. You are well aware that the current framework of additional magistrates, as provided for in Article 68bis, is limited and that those limits are almost reached.

Wait for the procedures. Once the law has been approved by both Chambers and it has been published, they are engaged. Have respect for the law. Your statements were not legally correct.

Mr. Verherstraeten, you obviously do not know the situation of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office. If you met the first magistrate of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office, he would tell you that in view of the current framework, which is already insufficient, he lacks twenty magistrates and auxiliaries of the Prosecutor’s Office. The King’s Attorney said this recently on television platforms.

So within the current framework, without waiting for an adaptation, you already had the opportunity to recruit magistrates to deal with the problem of judicial backwardness, but that political will does not exist! This is what I denounce. And you no longer have the political will to finally meet the security needs in Brussels by making sure that there are finally reinforcements in the police areas. This is Arles! We will continue to talk about it for months and we will be sprinkled with a few small means, as we have been doing for so many years, without really having the effectiveness requested. Contrary to what you claim, there is room for recruitment in the current framework, even insufficient. Mr. Secretary of State, you do not know your case!

The unity of the judicial district is undermined even if it is safeguarded, which is not an advance in itself. This judicial district has existed since Belgium exists. I note that the labor auditorship is territorial divided, which was not envisaged in any agreement. We have never spoken of the division of the labor auditorate, and I am always looking for the reason of being of its division! When I questioned the authors of the proposal, no one was able to answer me. We have often been told that the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office should be split under the pretext – and Mr. Doomst was unable to provide any statistics – that it would neglect criminal cases in the administrative part of Hal-Vilvorde. So we could never prove it.

Let’s assume that this is true and that would justify the split of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office. Can one then explain to me the reason for the division of the labor auditory?

I am also surprised that parties deeply committed to ⁇ ining the federal competence at the level of labour or social security accept this underlying idea of the linguistic division of the labor auditorate in the Brussels judicial district. What is the reason to be? Mr. Wathelet, since you have a knowledge of all the files as remarkable as the one you just proved to me, can you explain to me, in the absence of an author of the bill, to what necessity of operation corresponds the division of the auditorate of work? To none of them! To none of them! This has no relation.

Was there a delay in the operation of the Labour Auditory for matters possibly located in one of the municipalities of the administrative district of Hal-Vilvorde? Strictly nothing! The Labour Auditorate is rather reputed as not facing an immense problem of judicial delay, whatever it may be. In reality, it is an ideological and political choice that does not add value to the functioning of the labor auditory.

The territorial division of the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office also extends to matters that do not strictly fall within the criminal policy. We also did not consider this in previous agreements, especially when in 2005 I was associated with the negotiations on the future of the judicial district. Therefore, it is not clear at all why this division of the prosecutor’s office should be extended to all these competences, even in civil matters. However, it is well known that these competences are important sometimes in civil matters, in particular in the context of opinion proceedings before courts. All this has no reason to be and does not add value to the functioning of Justice.

I also mentioned in La Libre Belgique of 13 June 2012 – but Mr. Wathelet will tell me again that they are magistrates who don’t know what they’re talking about – the remarks of magistrates who express themselves, saying, “The French-speaking judges would not find their account there. The distribution keys provided in the agreement reforming the judicial district would be misleading,” said the work auditor, Henri Funck. You may be mistaken, Mr. Wathelet! He does not know what he is talking about! He is the auditor of the work of Brussels. It’s probably someone who doesn’t know at all how their auditory works! You know it better than he and you will probably explain to him that he will be the winner in the division of the labor auditory. It expresses more than reservations. He is also a man of experience and field, but you will tell me that Mr. Funck doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The advantage is that, thanks to him, we will finally be able to measure the workload. It could be in effect before 2014! He knows exactly, on the basis of the figures, what the workload in Brussels can be. One of your two arguments is not valid.

In any case, if you already know what the workload at the work auditory is, I advise you to fill the frames very quickly! Since you are ready to do it quickly, do it!

The [...]

Mr. Wathelet, in order to complete the framework of the magistracy, we must not reform the judicial district!

Tomorrow, to complete the frameworks in Charleroi or Antwerp, should we also vote this type of law? What an argument! How does the reform of a judicial district determine the fact that magistrate cadres are supplemented in a prosecutor’s office or in a seat of any district?

Are the current frameworks sufficient for you?

Mr. Wathelet, I say they are not filled. You are not even listening!

You have not heard! They are not even filled. I ask you to fill them. Ok to OK? This can be done continuously soon!

The [...]

I will be happy to answer your arguments as often as you wish, Mr. Wathelet. The problem is your lack of consistency.

Je suis et train de vous dire que le cadre à l'auditorat du travail est rempli! It is total!

This is not what Mr. and Funck!

From the documents we have from the Justice, the framework to the work audit is filled!

This is not what mr. Funck in relation to its operating needs!

Maybe Mr. Funck says more is needed. In doing so, the vote on this text will help us. He advises you to vote on the text. Follow him !

No, that’s not what he says! Read his article in La Libre Belgique! He does not say that the text will help him. This is not exactly what he suggests! You should re-read the articles rather than interpret the words held by some!

As I said, the territorial division of the prosecutor’s office extends to matters that do not strictly fall within criminal policy.

Without this being justified, we accepted – you accepted – what had never been accepted until now, namely the division of the organs of the federal police. It was also an old request made repeatedly by the Flemish parties. I remember the courage of Antoine Duquesne – but it was another time in the liberal family – who, when he was Minister of the Interior and that he did the reform in execution of the Octopus agreements, categorically refused to duplicate the decentralized or decentralized organs of the federal police in the judicial district of Brussels.

This doubling, this territorial division, more precisely, will have consequences on the proper functioning of the police services, in Brussels as well as in the periphery, for an obvious reason: when you split the resources given to the police services, you weaken the ability to gather forces if necessary.

Tomorrow, when the coordinating administrative director of Brussels, faced with unprecedented events such as some have been in the last few weeks or months, will want to call for reinforcements of the peripheral police zones, he will have to obtain the consent of his alter ego of Hal-Vilvorde. Until now, it has not faced these requirements. He could decide on his own. He could mobilize all the forces of the police zones of the entire district. It is a weakness to lead it to no longer have this same capacity of mobilization of workers, because it divides and limits its territorial space. This is an error! Antoine Duquesne had understood, at the time, how damaging this would be to the proper functioning of the police services in Brussels.

I realize that today we are on the wrong path. It should not be surprising, in the event of new incidents of any nature or any scale in Brussels, to see an insufficiency of the law enforcement forces to deal with it, since the administrative coordinating director will no longer have the same mobilisation capacity after the splitting of its capacities.

The linguistic rights of French-speaking legal entities are less extensive and less protective than those granted to Dutch-speaking legal entities in the judicial district. The ⁇ serious new fact, which I cannot understand on the part of the parties which say they are close to the working environment, is that if the language of the labour relationship is determined in accordance with, in particular, the September decree, which imposes the Dutch and the exclusive use of the Dutch, the change of language will be impossible before the courts, before the labour courts in particular. This is an indisputable downturn for the protection of legal workers.

This means, for example, that tomorrow a worker who is fired, who wants to defend himself in court and who wants to obtain the language change, because he is domiciled in the periphery, will not get satisfaction. Indeed, the September decree, which has no equivalent on the French-speaking side – fortunately, French speakers do not demonstrate this linguistic intolerance – imposes that his employment contract be written in Dutch because he works in a company whose headquarters is in the Dutch unilingual language region. In doing so, all proceedings resulting from any labour conflict brought before labour courts will be conducted in the Dutch language only, which is not the case at present. This is, therefore, a very sharp retreat, and I cannot understand how parties that say they are concerned with the protection of workers have, in the end, accepted a logic imposed by the Flemish employer world, which seeks to impose the exclusive use of the Dutch not only in peripheral labour relations, but also in any litigation involving the execution of labour relations before the courts. This is undoubtedly a very clear retreat of which I do not know the reason for being. I don’t know who wins in this case. Per ⁇ it would be necessary that, in this sector as in other, the world-representative, trade unions mobilize to make known that the protection of workers in justice deserves at least the recognition of their right to be treated in the language of their choice.

The bill also does not alter the regime of language use before the peace courts of the cantons without facilities of Hal-Vilvoorde. I am speaking here well of the peace courts on which I have submitted amendments. This is not an advance in terms of legal protection, nor in terms of the right to use the language of its choice before the peace courts.

Without doubling the police courts in the periphery – however, this is the case in Brussels – the completely abusive jurisprudence of some magistrates of the police courts of Hal-Vilvorde risks being confirmed. Indeed, the law has not been sufficiently strengthened to deprive them of any discretion in respect of the request for a change of language made by the defendant. We have therefore submitted amendments aimed at preserving the complete freedom of choice of the language of the procedure before the peacekeepers of the cantons of the communes without a special linguistic regime of the Brussels periphery.

This is a set of shortcomings that I wanted to address. Unquestionably, they will diminish the actual scope of these bills. By the way, the judiciary world begins to be moved by this, the judiciary begins to take the measure of these insufficiencies and to worry about what will be the real scope of these bills.

Contrary to the assurances of the two Secretaries of State on Institutional Reforms, I am convinced that amendment bill proposals will come before this Parliament, and sooner than one thinks, when some will have discovered the impossibility of implementing what increasingly resembles a random, dangerous and ⁇ heavy institutional adventure of violations of fundamental rights.

I would like to thank my colleagues for their remarks. I am especially grateful to the eight political groups who have had the courage and perseverance to reach an agreement also on this difficult matter.

In that agreement, fundamental principles are the starting point. There is its own prosecution policy in Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde. It has its own security policy. There is the reform of the judicial structures in Brussels, with the aim of course a more efficient management and that in respect of the strengths of the philosophy of our language legislation.

The present proposals meet the demands of many in the workplace, the 29 mayors. The Governor was mentioned here today. He also asked for it. The governor is also in favor of the division of the parket.

Since the Octopush reform regarding the police, one has been a requesting party to split the management of the federal judicial police, to split the director of the coordination, in order to be able to align judicial and administrative policies and to agree on the matter with the local zones.

This has been asked for years and this is being completed here.

A lot has already been said about the numbers, especially by those who were not sitting at the table.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was not sitting at the table with you at that moment. I didn’t sit at the table on September 30. So I, like some others, asked the party chairman what was concerned. What concerned the eight negotiators were the population figures of the judicial district, the distribution of the frameworks between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking courts and the figures of the activity reports, as approved by the general assembly of the courts and courts.

The full annual reports are delivered to the technicians of the eight parties. For the good order, as far as the Labour Court is concerned, it was the figures of the annual reports and of the Labour Auditory and of the Labour Court, of both and not of one. You also have these numbers, colleagues. You received them in May, when they were sent by letter to the committee.

I had the difficulty of comparing these figures. Take the example of the Labour Court. In the 2010 annual report, communicated to the eight negotiators, it is stated that in 2009 there were 5 329 Dutch-speaking cases, representing 26,02 %. In 2010 there were 5,648, which is 26.83%. What figures are on May 10 to you, to this commission, delivered by the governing group judicial arrondissement BHV? In 2009 there were 5,329 cases and in 2010 5,648. The same figures are provided to you, members of the committee, and to the eight negotiators, ⁇ with regard to the Labour Court. There are very small differences as regards the Court of First Instance in Brussels. Behind the comma there is a small difference in the percentages: 28,5 % versus 28,99 %.

Colleagues, the negotiators do not hide behind these numbers. There has been much discussion here and also in the media about very preliminary figures, while less has been said about what the final figures will be later.

The eight groups agreed on the following. Every court, every prosecutor’s office in our country, so also in Brussels and also in Halle-Vilvoorde, has the right to the number of magistrates and the staff members it needs. They will also receive them after the workload measurement.

I notice how many different interpretations are given to the exact same numbers, however, every time. I too have heard the many criticisms of the Dutch-speaking magistrature, which states that the figures would not be correct and that the Dutch-speaking magistrature would be injured. A paper in La Libre Belgique, in which a French-speaking labor auditor at the Brussels Labour Court says the figures are very bad for French-speaking people. So one says that these are very bad figures for the Dutch speakers and the other says that they are very bad figures for the French speakers. The High Court argues that the figures in the annual reports for the various courts are not uniformly compiled and that there is therefore a need and a need for uniformity.

Ladies and gentlemen, this teaches us one thing. We have a very urgent need for an objective workload measurement in order to then establish final frameworks as soon as possible, not provisional frameworks. That’s what the eight party leaders wanted, that’s what the eight groups that submitted these proposals want. This is stated in the present proposals.

Indeed, the State Council has made comments. We have responded to these comments at the committee meetings. I refer to the reports.

For example, there is a continuous 20%. In doing so, those speakers — some call it a lie, but they say what they want — ignore that I refer to Article 57 of the proposal that is now out. There has been silence in all languages about the 27 % rule contained in the proposal, which we respond to the observations on the ground.

It is true that modalities apply, but we have also agreed timings, a timing of entry into force, a timing for the workload measurement. We will ⁇ that and it must then be perfectly possible for the transitional measure, the rule of 27%, and the start of the workload measurement to flow perfectly together.

It is not permissible here, like some, to pour sand in the eyes of the public, as if tomorrow, with immediate extinction, one would go to 20%. That is not the reality. This is against the Constitution, rightly! One can and one will, of course, be able to stay.

I have done the exercise once and repeat it before the plenary session. The conditions of the 27 % standard in Article 57 may be applied to any court. We will have to keep an eye on it and the Minister of Justice will keep an eye on it before the court of first instance. For the rest, we are far above that. If later the law comes into force after 90 % of the completion of the frameworks, then we go to the court of first instance from 39 to 38 magistrates and in the labour court from 9 to 8.

I admire the qualities and intelligence of the Chamber, Mr. Speaker of the Chamber, but it has made me much more and pleasantly surprised how some can look here in a glass ball. If we apply the twenty-seven percent rule, suddenly, in this court, the downtime will double, in any court, triple. For example, on 38 first-instance magistrates, there will be one more magistrates who can conduct the correctional sessions, and one more investigative judge. They know all that. They all know who will be the chairman of the Dutch-speaking court of first instance and how he will assemble his chambers: there will be 1 investigative judge and 1 judge on the 38th of the correctional court.

Congratulations to. I am not able to do so much confession.

Through the monitoring committee, led by the Minister of Justice and the eight political groups, we will follow the stand perfectly. In this regard, I refer to the statements of the Prime Minister here in the speech. The eight want a well-functioning justice system, in Brussels and also in Halle-Vilvoorde. We will follow it. We will act where there would be problems and where the reforms would lead to a judicial downturn. We have a legal basis for it. We have the Judicial Code. We may appoint additional magistrates and additional substitutes. The expansion of the frameworks in Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde could also increase the number of additional magistrates. Article 68bis of the Judicial Code has not been amended.

Then we talked about recruitment. Of course, we will start with those recruitments once the law has been approved in the Chamber and Senate, and it has been published in the Belgian Staatsblad. During the debates in the committee and in the plenary session, I heard a French-speaking colleague say that the adoption of the text means the end of federalism and that it opens the door for separatism. Some Dutch speakers then said again that it wasn’t going far enough. If one says it’s not going far enough and the other says it’s separatist, then I think we’ve found a good balance.

We may have our own prosecution policies and security policies in the respective regions. The Governor stated this very explicitly in his note. The speakers spoke mainly about his question whether he will have enough staff available in his new parquet Halle-Vilvoorde. This morning I told him that he would get six additional substitutes. In other words, it is not about twenty, but about 24 parquet magistrates and 5 detained and about 4 auditors and 1 detained.

It also includes 81 staff members for the Prosecutor’s Office and 11 staff members for the Auditory. We will monitor the situation through the monitoring committee.

However, the governor was also and above all happy, because there is indeed a split between the management function of the federal judicial police and the direction of the coordination. This is absolutely necessary.

Afterwards, it was claimed that the rights of the victims were compromised. In terms of language legislation, however, there is no change in the rights of victims. There will be changes in the rights of the victims.

I read the Governor’s note. What is he writing here on the ground? He writes that, for example for the victims, for example for Brussels and for example for the Dutch speakers, there is especially attention to Brussels and not to Halle-Vilvoorde. When the district is subsequently divided and a district victim care is created, a victim policy can also be carried out in the region.

Colleagues, the adjectives that I have heard here today and in the committee, torture all imagination. I will not extend the Munich Convention. The agreement is sealed that it is unconstitutional and crapuleous. It would also cause a professional ban and a disaster for Flanders. It would also mean capitulation. I no longer understand everything.

I look at the Flemish Government Agreement and the Octopus Note, which is contained therein: “The division of the electoral and judicial district Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde is in this regard an important Flemish demand.”

I also quote from the debate of 12 October 2011 in the Flemish Parliament: “The Flemish government” – thus the three political formations – “establishes that the present agreement is not in conflict with the Flemish government agreement.”

What did the Prime Minister say on behalf of his entire government? “Solutions were developed for the division of the electoral and judicial district of BHV, as requested in the Octopusnota.”

At the end of the discussion, he concluded the following. I quote: “This has been confirmed again during the various speeches, especially those of the majority parties. According to the entire Flemish government, there is no contradiction of this agreement with the Flemish government agreement.”

Good friends, one talks about "crapuleus", unconstitutional and about capitulation, but it turns out to be in accordance with the Flemish government agreement. be consistent ! Stop the schizophrenia! Speak the same language in the Flemish Parliament and in this Parliament! They should know the truth. The truth is that the N-VA has two truths, namely one in Flanders and one in Belgium.

I also learned something from this debate. We talked a lot about the judiciary and rightly. The judiciary is crucial for the separation of powers and for the proper functioning of the judiciary. We will continue to follow things, as I said earlier. For me and the eight political parties, however, all employees, the office staff and the parquet staff are also important. I have heard the institutional opposition say nothing about all these people. The ordinary people who work at the griffies and parquets in Brussels and in Halle-Vilvoorde are important for those eight political parties, but for the other apparently less.

Colleagues, we cannot deny that there are problems with justice in Brussels. However, I believe that these proposals are a response to the current difficulties in recruitment, to the problem of backwardness and, finally, to the measurement of the workload that we have been waiting for years. If this agreement also allows us to implement workload measurement across the country, this creates added value. It also allows, as some have already said, a tailor-made security policy.

Colleagues, I am convinced that the current proposals represent a balanced approach. I would like to thank the eight political parties for their support in this matter.

Thank you, Mr Secretary of State.

Who wants to react?

Mr. Secretary of State, it is just sad. You say that this agreement answers the questions from the workplace. Why is it that almost everyone in the workplace is against this agreement?

You have cited a number of figures. You talked about 5,800 cases before the Labour Court. You said you already have those numbers. If you do the calculation, you get 30%, and that is even worse. So you already knew it was about 30%, and yet you wanted to include the 20/80 scheme in the agreement!

Finally, when it comes to victim policy, I have a much simpler solution: let the work be done by the bilingual Dutch-speaking magistrates. The victims will not remain in the cold.

Mr. Speaker, I pointed out with interest that it was the State Secretary for Institutional Reforms, the Dutch-speaking side, who defended the government’s point of view. He has done a lot to convince the validity of this agreement, to try to demonstrate – and I believe he is not wrong – that this agreement is in line with the expectations of the Flemish government.

Vincent de Coorebyter also once stated to the daily Le Soir that 80% of the aspects of institutional reform corresponded to the requirements of the Flemish parliament and government, that it was the execution of the institutional program, on the one hand, already voted in the Flemish parliament in 1989, if I have a good memory.

I think mr. Verherstraeten has shown a lot of sincerity. Indeed, it demonstrates well what is the real inspiration of these institutional agreements.

Mr Maingain, the fact that Mr. Verherstraeten shows sincerity is normal. It is always so with him. That is the advantage! But for me, it changes a little. I confess it.

It’s not because it matches Flemish demands that it’s necessarily bad! This is what you should change a little in your way of thinking. If something is good, whether it is Flemish or Francophone, as long as this allows to have additional commitments, at the level of both Flemish and Francophone magistrates and staff both Flemish and Francophone, and to better advance Justice in Brussels but also at the prosecutor’s office of Hal-Vilvorde, so much better! It is not because it meets a number of requests at the Flemish level that it is, by essence, bad! In that sense, I am not at all with you.

In this regard, Mr. President, what Mr. Wathelet is very revealing. I have no doubt that it is also very sincere: for once, they are in unison.

This is why you did not listen to what I said. When I propose that a justiciable, whatever his language, may defend himself in court, throughout the country, before any jurisdiction, in the language of his choice, as I have proposed to give a true content to Article 157a, it is to the advantage of both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking justiciables.

If you would like to listen to what should guide you, i.e. the equal treatment of all justifiable, you could then make right to the proposals I make. But you do not do it! This is the weak point, unfortunately. The program of the Flemish government is more executed, while the latter is in the inability to transcend the principle of territoriality of languages. This is seen in many matters: the Flemish government imposes the knowledge of the language of the Region to buy a house in certain municipalities of the periphery, to have access to certain social housing, to access certain services. This is all that I denounce. I would never imagine, in Wallonia as in Brussels, having the demands of the Flemish government.

That is why I am not a nationalist like the Flemish government is. I am for the absolute principle of freedom of languages throughout the national territory.