Proposition 54K1418

Projet de loi modifiant le droit pénal et la procédure pénale et portant des dispositions diverses en matière de justice.

General information ¶

Submitted by

MR Swedish coalition

Submission date

Oct. 23, 2015

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

search suspension of sentence appeal help for victims criminal procedure criminal law penalty simplification of legislation limitation of legal proceedings alternative sentence carrying out of sentence detention before trial

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR

Voted to reject

Groen Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI PVDA | PTB PP VB

Abstained from voting

Vooruit

Party dissidents ¶

• Kristof Calvo (Groen) voted to adopt.
• Olivier Maingain (MR) voted to reject.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Jan. 28, 2016 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, I will present a very brief report on the work of the Committee on Justice concerning the draft law amending the criminal law and the criminal proceedings and containing various provisions on justice.

The committee discussed the draft law and the attached bills during ten meetings. We also decided in the committee to go to hearings. Ms. Özen will report on the hearings later, but I can say that they have been conducted in a very positive manner in the committee and that the content was found to be very positive.

The Minister submitted his draft law to the committee. He indicates that the bill is the second of the bills he announced in the Justice Plan. The Minister refers to the explanation attached to the first subsidiary law in the Justice Committee, which explains that the difficult budgetary context urgently requires the proposed measures.

While, of course, there cannot be a mere accounting view of justice, the question arises whether we are not always obliged to do more with less and to optimise the available resources, which cannot be raised indefinitely.

Our country is forced to take the proposed measures and should not wait for the comprehensive reform of the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code announced in the government agreement. This draft law aims to improve criminal justice in order to make justice more efficient, faster and cheaper, but without prejudice to the fundamental rights of prosecutors. Furthermore, an efficient and fast judicial process is of the utmost importance in order for the criminal law to remain meaningful; a late judicial process is never what it should be. The proposed measures, according to the Minister, address clear and urgent needs, which the actors of Justice have often expressed.

In the general discussion for the N-VA Mrs. De Wit, for Green Mr. Van Hecke, for the CDH Mr. Brotcorne, for the PS Mrs. Özen, for CD&V Mr. Terwingen, for Ecolo Mr. Cheron, for Open Vld Mrs. Van Cauter and for the MR Mr. Goffin take the word.

In the committee, we decide to work thematically. The topics most frequently discussed are the generalization of the possibility of correctionalization and the court of assises, the aggravating circumstance in the case of permanent inability, the delay, the prescription, the extension of the mini-instruction, the provisional detention, the appeal, the guilty plea and the extended amicable settlement.

We went on a second reading in the committee, after which the draft was approved by ten votes in favour and three against.

The bill was already put on the agenda of the plenary session two weeks ago, after which it was returned to the Council of State.

We have just held our last committee meeting and voted on the last amendment to this bill.

Ms Özen will report on the hearings.

Mr. Speaker, as Ms. Van Vaerenbergh has stated, I will limit the return of my report to the work and numerous hearings organised in the framework of the "pot-pourri II" bill. Given the extent of the work we have done, given the fact that the audited experts have worked hard to accomplish a titanic job, and this in an emergency, I think it is important to be their spokesman. This is also a way to pay tribute to them. You know that, in the context of the “pot-pourri I”, some had expressed their discouragement. It was therefore important to share each other’s views.

In general Mr. Gorlé, a representative of the College of Courts, regretted the lack of a comprehensive, thorough and quantified impact analysis on the effects of the proposed improvements. The College supported the generalization of the correctionalization, which is expected to result in an almost abolition of the sitting procedure. He believes the jury is not adapted to the growing complexity of the cases, ⁇ in matters of terrorism and big banditism. Furthermore, the amendment of the sitting procedure would put an end to the uncomfortable situation in which magistrates are, since the 2009 reform requiring the motivation of verdicts.

When it comes to “claiming guilty,” seat magistrates are more mixed as this seems to them to be in conflict with their judicial culture. Furthermore, a decrease in the workload of the courts may be illusory, given the obligations incumbent on the judge of substance.

On the contrary, mr De Valkeneer, a representative of the College of Public Prosecutors is a supporter of the prior recognition of guilt. He believes that this will improve the acceptance of sanctions by the accused, speed up the proceedings, and decontaminate the correctional courts. He regrets, however, that the draft text only very limitedly permits the use of this mechanism as an appeal. This view is shared by the Attorney General.

As for the new rules on appeals, the College fully adheres to the goal of these changes which is obviously to reduce the number of calls, as is your wish, Mr. Minister. However, there is a question about the need for motivation. Will it be met if we limit ourselves to challenging guilt or innocence? A complaint can be accurate without being motivated.

On the fact of entrusting prosecutor’s lawyers with more competence in the handling of cases, the College fully supports this change.

With regard to the extension of mini-instruction to searches, Mr. Delmulle, Chairman of the same College, is very positive about the proposed legislative amendment. He added that it is not desirable to provide, for access to the file, a possibility of appeal to the Chamber of Accusations.

As regards the Court of Assises, it considers that it involves a very heavy procedure. For example, if a French-speaking case is handed over today to the Court of Brussels, the trial can only be fixed in June 2017.

With regard to this generalization of the correctionalization, the Colleague of the Prosecutors-General will fix in a circular the criteria on the basis of which the Public Prosecutor may request the removal or not before the Court of Assises.

As for the Association of Investigative Judges, it drew the attention of members on the importance of the search. She fears a banalization of the use of search while it is, she recalls, a serious violation of the right to privacy of citizens.

In this regard, the Association recalls that there is no room for lightly made decisions. It highlights the great difference that exists between an investigative judge who is seized of a case from the beginning, and an investigative judge who is suddenly seized of a case already instructed for some time by the prosecutor’s office. When the prosecutor’s office has taken over the entire preliminary phase, the investigating judge will find himself in a ⁇ embarrassing situation. Either he must first familiarize himself with the case and cannot make any immediate decision, or he merely responds in a rather servile manner to every request of the prosecutor.

Generally speaking, the Association of Investigative Judges opposes the continued evidence of the role of Investigative Judges. The latter are concerned about this evolution, which leads to an expansion of mini-instruction.

by Mr. Claise, a judge of instruction, also expressed its concern over this evolving trend. He also wanted to highlight the ⁇ traumatic impact of a search. According to him, this reform of mini-instruction cannot be justified for budgetary reasons, nor dictated by any imperative of efficiency. He, on the other hand, welcomes the introduction of the recognition of guilt and considers that the possibility of negotiations to the public prosecutor should be extended. However, he said he was shocked by the violation of the rights of defence and human rights that constitutes the decision to extend the time limit for appearance in pre-emptive detention to two months. In this regard, he recalls the deplorable state of the detention houses.

As for mr. Hartoch, a counselor near the Brussels Court of Appeal, believes that many of the proposals in this project "pot-pourri II" are extremely worrying. Correctional crimes are already almost systematically returned to the correctional court. With this project, he believes that the intrinsic link between mitigating circumstances and the rate of penalties is lost. Moreover, it deprives not only the accused of his constitutional right to be judged by a popular jury, but also the civil part. According to him, the application of mitigating circumstances without a real reduction of the sentence is not only completely illogical, it will also generate completely unjust situations.

The sentences of imprisonment of more than thirty years are also absolutely unproductive in all cases, both in terms of the protection of society and in terms of the rehabilitation and reintegration of the prisoner. Someday, it will be reintegrated into the human society.

Karin Gérard, President of the Court of Assises and President of the Brussels Court of Appeal, said that the exceptional nature of certain trials would also lead to extremely long debates before a correctional court.

She believes that the large number of jurors, twelve, as well as the three magistrates of the court guarantee a well-thoughtful decision, which is also motivated. She welcomes the proposal to involve the three professional magistrates in the deliberation on the guilt or innocence of the accused. For her, lawyers are no more than others trained to seek the truth. The law, and especially the criminal law, must be understood by everyone. The Court of Assises is the link between the citizen and justice.

On the extension of the sentences, Mr. Gorlé believes that the state of deterioration of our prisons can ⁇ not serve as an argument to justify a reduction in sentences. On the other hand, the magistrates of the seat are uncomfortable with regard to the intention to remove the possibility of acquiring cassation. This possibility was precisely planned to avoid jeopardizing the procedure at the end of the course.

by Mr. De Valkeneer says he is convinced that the transfer of cases to correctional courts will generate savings ranging from 7 to 10 million euros per year. In general, he explains that the criminal system is very strict in Belgium. The length of sentences and the number of convictions continue to increase. However, he recalls that the certainty of being punished for an offence is very low in our country. But it is demonstrated that it is not the severity of the punishment that is deterrent but rather the certainty of being punished.

As regards prosecutors’ lawyers, he considers that their independence is not very different from that of prosecutors’ magistrates. And regarding the reason for the grieving in appeal degree, he reminds that a defence strategy can evolve over time.

by Mr. Delmulle believes that in terms of mini-instruction, the public prosecutor is conducting its investigation both on charge and on discharge. by Mr. Jean-Louis Doyen, president of the Association of Investigative Judges, recalls that it is useful that persons in preventive detention appear every month at the hearing of the Board Chamber because in this way a serene debate can take place with all the persons concerned. The Association is therefore not in favor of a systematic extension of this period to two months for non-correctionalizable crimes. It is true that, in this hypothesis, the investigation judge will effectively be able to decide on a possible release in the interim.

The investigating judge already has this possibility, but only uses it exceptionally, because it is a risk to be taken.

by Mr. Van Linthout, president of the Association of Investigative Judges, acknowledges that the prosecutors are independent, but stresses that there is a hierarchical bond with the minister.

by Mr. Hartoch, a counselor at the Brussels Court of Appeal, believes that the 40-year sentences are ⁇ long and are not justified, as reintegration is no longer possible after this period.

by Mr. Paul Martens, president of the Constitutional Court, said that the state of progress of a society and civilization is measured by the humanity of its criminal system. He recalls that it is the progress that has enabled him to confer a function of reintegrating the offender into society. Prison then appeared as a bad response to crime, as it did not prevent recurrence. Moreover, due to disastrous promiscuity, it would even promote organized crime and, today, radicalization. Prison would be criminal. The number of prisoners is increasing, while the conditions of detention are worsening. by Mr. Martens recalls the numerous convictions of the Belgian state in Strasbourg for inhuman and degrading treatment. He pledges for an individualized approach to punishment, which only the judge – because he hears the perpetrator and the victim – can best appreciate. He is best placed to decide on the most appropriate sentence and to assess on a case-by-case basis whether the alternative measures at his disposal could not avoid the adverse effects of imprisonment.

He added that we are now experiencing a recession. He thus cites the extension of sentences, the restrictions on the granting of alternative measures, in particular, with regard to convicted persons in illegal residence – measures that he deems to be detrimental. He recalls Article 191 of the Constitution and considers that too frequent legislative changes on the same topics pose problems of transitional measures and will give rise to appeals before the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Court.

Ms Levecque, for her part, recalled that judging was a difficult profession, which required training and that the court of assises was the door open to approximations. It is very expensive to assign advisors who do not have the time to prepare the files. She believes that it should be oriented towards a scavenger. It is, in addition, opposed to the fact that it will be asked to justify the appeal and considers that this is a reduction in the rights of some defendants. It also asks who will perform the work of the prosecutor’s lawyers when they will have to perform that of the prosecutor’s magistrates.

by Mr. Moulart believes that there is a too small difference in the penalties applicable in the case of correctionalization of crimes that are punishable from 20 to 30 years. The reduction of punishment is so insensitive that it may be considered discriminatory. The more severely the recidivist crime will be punished, the less the specific penalty for the recidivist will be proportionally heavy.

by Mr. Boyen believes that the time when the outcome of a trial depended only on witnesses and confessions is over. At present, technical findings made by experts contribute much more to the outcome of a trial. After a period of time x, a witness must repeat his testimony. In the meantime, he forgot things and interpreted them differently. He also calculated that the cost of a seating procedure was five times higher than an examination by professional judges. According to him, it is the professional judges that are very expensive and not a popular jury. He added that the system of early release for persons sentenced to sentences of up to three years is in crisis in Belgium and recalls that any detention leads to harmful effects and that it is appropriate, in any case, to always be aware of these perverse effects.

by Mr. Louveaux, a representative of the syndical association of magistrates, says that it is necessary to avoid overpricing in terms of penalties and that it would be necessary, in any case, a more general reflection on the system of penalties.

As far as prosecutor’s lawyers are concerned, it is firmly opposed to allocating the exercise of all the powers of the public prosecutor to prosecutor’s lawyers. He believes that the independence of prosecutors is not guaranteed.

Compared to the extension of mini-instruction to search, the Association syndicale des magistrates considers it illusory to believe that the issues of leading criminal investigations will be solved by shifting responsibilities to the public prosecutor. Thus, it would be unknown the serious difficulties associated with the overload that parquets are facing. The association believes that it is the removal of the investigative judge that profiles, that it is not unconditionally opposed to the removal of the institution of the investigative judge but this could only be conceived in a fundamental and more general reform of the criminal procedure.

As for the court of assises, the Association syndicale des magistrats considers that this is the choice of the half measure. She did not approve of it because, for her, a composition could have been drawn up. Instead, the most serious cases will be judged by ordinary correctional chambers, which is not acceptable.

As for the guilty plea procedure, it is in favor of it, considering that a sentence accepted more surely achieves its objectives than a sentence that is imposed.

More generally, the association considers that the project aims to restrict or in any case eliminate access to certain legal pathways, to which it is formally opposed in the name of the priority to be given to the rights of defence and fair trial in particular with regard to the time limits to conclude and the distance from late conclusions.

It also opposes the restriction of the right to object that would penalize the weakest and warns of the risk of a trial on the merits, that of examining the reasons for the defect.

Regarding the separation of periodic control from preventive detention, it is firmly opposed.

Mr. Speaker, you said it was very difficult to hear what Mr. Speaker said. Paul Martens once said that we are witnessing a downturn in civilization.

However, if people without a residence permit are temporarily released, the minister will be responsible for the consequences. So how should these interests be reconciled in such cases? This is the question that was asked.

The OVB (Orde van Vlaamse Balies) is, on the other hand, in favour of the possibility of correctionalizing all crimes but acknowledges that the hearing of witnesses often makes new elements appear. However, many advocates in favour of ⁇ ining the session procedure are attached to instruction of hearings rather than ⁇ ining a popular jury. He is not opposed to the prosecution of pleading guilty and finds that there is a shift of power in favor of the public prosecutor. He believes that it would be better for this measure to also be made in a much more comprehensive review of the criminal procedure.

Dear colleagues, I know that my presentation is quite technical. I would like to ask for a few minutes of attention.

I would like to share with you what has been said, whether these are arguments that I defend or not. It is important to have an overview of the hearings that took place in the committee.

by Mr. Henry, who represented avocats.be, also regrets that the reform is presented in the urgency without an overview. He regrets that the bill reduces the power to individualize the punishment. For avocats.be, many provisions of the bill will lead to an increase in the duration of sentences. He is of the opinion that the bill disrupts the balance of the criminal trial, by reducing the rights of private parties to the benefit of those of the prosecutor’s office.

It also notes that there are no rules for the choice of crimes that will be correctionalized or correctionalizable and those that will not be. “We will be in the most complete arbitrary,” he said. “The Constitutional Court is likely to quickly address this problem of imbalance.” According to him, a problem lies in the loss of confidence in the judge who will no longer be given the possibility to pronounce certain alternatives to the imprisonment. “These penalties,” he said, “are, however, essential for the future of our criminal law. They are constructive and providers of social reintegration.”

The site avocats.be has in any case firmly insurged against bimestrial and no longer monthly appearance, and believes that the limitation of the right to introduce an appeal in cassation is equivalent to removing an essential gendarme in relation to compliance with the motivation of decisions and in particular with regard to reasonable deadlines or serious indications of guilt. According to avocats.be, there is therefore no longer control of compliance with the law and this has a double perverse effect: the increase and extension of preventive detention and execution of sentences, with the related economic cost.

With regard to the new rules on communication of conclusions, the Supreme Council of Justice calls for the maintenance of a flexible system. He is in favor of measures aimed at limiting the debate in appeal to the complaints raised. He also considers it desirable that the Court of Cassation retains control over the decisions by which the Chamber of Accusations controls the regularity of the proceedings.

by Mr. Dauchot, a member of the Supreme Council of Justice, also insisted on the hearings. For him, this is an added value, which is represented in any case by the jury in a court of assises. For him, this is the best ambassador of criminal justice. He emphasizes that what costs the most in criminal proceedings are DNA expertise and telephone and translation costs. This applies to all procedures and not only the procedures in front of the seats. According to Mr. Dauchot, if we want to give the orality of the debates the time they deserve, the proceedings before the correctional courts will necessarily be extended.

for Mr. Deswaef, president of the Human Rights League, said the project does not seem to be consistent with the intention to reduce the prison population.

Guillain, also a representative of the League of Human Rights, believes that the project contains punctual but significant measures since it contains 226 articles, but without waiting for the conclusions of the reform committees. So, according to her, the pot-pourri II project is hasty and inconsistent. She stresses the needlessness of the impact analysis of the bill and finds that the bill avoids any political debate regarding the reform of the court of assises. However, its removal deserves a thorough democratic debate rather than a quasi-disappearance in catimini that does not say its name, she believes. She explains that the bill tightened the criminal response.

For comparison, Ms. Guillain explains that the maximum sentence of time imprisonment, provided by the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court for crimes under international law, is thirty years. Thus, the significant increase in sentences, coupled with the reduction of the possibility of conditional release and control of preventive detention, to the removal for convicted persons who are not allowed to stay in Belgium from being granted any modality of execution of the sentence, can only promote the overpopulation of prisons that the government, however, intends to judge. She added that several studies had demonstrated the catastrophic effects of long-term detention, ⁇ in terms of social reintegration.

The Human Rights League is concerned about extending mini-instruction to search. A measure as compulsory as an attack on individual freedoms can, according to her, only be registered as part of an instruction. The League deplores the numerous infringements made to the guarantees provided for preventive detention, which must remain an exceptional measure. She adds that there are three ways to reduce overpopulation: at the entrance, during detention and at the exit. However, this bill does not work on any of these points.

for Mr. Frydman, chairman of the Centre for Philosophy of Law at ULB, this project is, in any case, unconstitutional and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. He recalls that the ordinary law executes the provisions of the Constitution and specifies the modalities of its application. It cannot empty the substance. The correctionalization of all crimes necessarily implies the prior revision of the Constitution and, more ⁇ , of Article 150 thereof. for Mr. Frydman, the bill is therefore unconstitutional since it intends to amend the Constitution by law. In other words, he rapes her.

He also regrets that the government does not provide any figures, except an isolated example, of the current cost of the court of seats or the amount of savings that will be achieved. Therefore, the impact assessment is inadequate in this regard.

by Mr. Verbruggen, a professor at the KUL, points out that the system in question can concreetly give rise to heavier penalties, which does not correspond to the spirit of the principle of mitigating circumstances.

He does not in any case have a principle objection against the fact that the legislator provides for a system of correctionalization but says that this cannot have as a consequence that the penalties imposed by the correctional tribunal will be heavier than those that would be imposed by the court of assises in a similar case. He considers that it is primarily up to the legislator to determine which judge is competent for judging certain categories. Regarding mini-instruction, he considers that the investigation judge can seize a file only when the act has been effectively accomplished and not when it has been refused.

Finally, Ms. De Wit believes that although she is positive, the generalized correctionalization however poses a problem in combination with an aggravation of the sentence, since the right to renounce a popular jury presupposes precisely a reduction of the sentence. I thank you for your attention.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, we are discussing today the potpourri II, a term that has since become commonplace within Justice. Next week we will start potpourri III, there will also be a potpourri IV. Who knows, there will also be a potpourri V.

This potpourri is about criminal law and criminal procedure law and is intended to, in anticipation of the promised major reform, already realize some quick wins, make a number of repairs and solve urgent problems. There are small, punctual interventions to modernize the system. There will be better services, lower workloads, lower costs. You see it, colleagues, it is a whole book full of quick wins, more than 225 articles.

In summary, Mr. Minister, you want to do things faster, more efficiently and also cheaper.

The treatment of this potpourri II has gone fairly fast, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be bad, colleagues. Something is moving in justice. In the meantime, you know that our group is quite in favour of an occasionally faster Justice.

It must be said, in fact, potpourri II contains more than some quick interventions. There are also greater beacons resisting and here and there even a decrease in advance of the thorough reform. Some of the reforms and measures we vote on today will profoundly affect the relationship between the various actors in the criminal process. These are not my words, they are the words of the State Council. For example, I think of the mini-instruction and the extended role of the prosecutor’s office.

You know – I have already stated this a few times – that there is also a certain concern in our group because fundamental choices are being made even before the great reform has begun. The direction is indicated, we are already moving a little forward, but there is a risk that the coherence may be found.

Justice is difficult to satisfy. For you as a professor, this may be different, Mr. Minister, but I still think that the law should be as simple and as coherent as possible. I think this also applies to the users and clients of Justice.

It is precisely for this reason, Mr. Minister, that our group has a very clear and very striking request, namely to make a good evaluation of this legislation after some time, and to update it where necessary. We must not be too proud of not wanting to do so. We must have the courage to review and update this law. We must keep the line open with all actors on the ground, because they will have to put this legislation into practice.

Their input will be essential, because they must execute it. They have already received much to be processed, such as the judicial landscape and potpourri I. Poppourri II is here. Open communication will be very important. The people on the ground must indicate where we should adjust the legislation. That is why this evaluation is so important. You said during the debates that you want to do so. We therefore count on that.

We also expect the major reform. Working groups have been formed. I hope the guidelines will follow soon. In this way justice can enter the twenty-first century. I hope that the elected members of the Parliament will be able to actively participate and not just serve as simple voting cattle.

We recently received a brief reading from the hearings. A lot of interesting and meaningful things have been said. A lot of people have taken the time to study legal texts and give their views on them. I would like to thank all involved for this. Thanks to those hearings, some of the comments of these specialists have been included in the preliminary design. For some, that will not be enough. Every step has been taken.

Specifically, ten points are at the heart of our group. We would like to evaluate these elements later.

First, the correction of crimes. This is not a reform of assises. It is primarily the removal of matters in assises through a general correctionalization. Assisen affects people, even though it is only 1% of all affairs. One is for or against. For advocates, it is the most beautiful procedure because of its oral character. This is the added value. The investigation is transferred to the session. It is also one of the few processes in which the citizen can be so closely involved in the judiciary.

Even those who are in favour, however, should realize that assistance jobs require a lot of budget, a lot of manpower, a lot of time and a lot of energy. We think of the jury, the witnesses, the calls and the day-long procedure. The Chairman of the Court of Appeal of Gent made the calculation and found that an assistance case costs five times more than a regular correctional procedure. The fact that something is done to the assistance procedure through the correctionalization is, in itself and in that regard, ⁇ a good thing.

Mr. Minister, I am sure that you will do this later too, but I want to immediately help a misunderstanding from the world. The assistance procedure is not abolished. The procedure continues. There will still be cases going to the courts of Assises.

However, this has some consequences. There must be clear guidelines to ensure that there are no differences between the districts in the type of cases referred to the assistant courts. If the assistance procedure remains in place for specific cases, it is necessary to work on the procedure and to examine whether certain aspects cannot be made more modern and efficient. It is also necessary to examine the means by which any further efficiency gains can be achieved without too striking the essence of the procedure itself. Mr. Minister, a lot of rubbish can still be removed. Our party has submitted a bill for this purpose.

The assistance procedure has many disadvantages, but it has one major added value, which I have just pointed out. That is the thorough trial at the trial, with witness interrogations taking place during the trial. Let it now be just that element that a correctional procedure today does not have. Correctional cases do not have the tradition of calling witnesses. However, the cases that we now want to correctionalize will be transferred to that correctional procedure and will be dealt with before the correctional court.

Mr. Minister, we must therefore have confidence that the correctional courts will organize themselves in such a way that they will address that difference. They must ensure that they deal with the serious facts that now come before their seat, that they take their time for them, and that those matters do not end up between theft cases, but are effectively dealt with in a session that can give attention to the case. I am talking about a sort of criminal correctional room. We must be confident that they would hear a number of relevant witnesses in the investigation.

Mr. Minister, I would like to ask you to really follow this aspect. How will the treatment proceed in practice? Will the correctional court do that thorough treatment effectively? How will she do that? Indeed, if the practice shows that such treatment does not or does not work well enough, which does not allow those specific matters to be given the attention they deserve – for these are very serious facts – then we must intervene legislatively. Therefore, an evaluation will be very important at this point.

Mr. Minister, I have a further concern in this regard, in particular with regard to the immediate entry into force of the regulation in pending matters. You know the question has already been asked whether this could lead to problems. I ask you to confirm that you have checked that and that no problems can arise, so that we do not have to worry about it, nor the people on the ground. That is the concern of the job. That was my first point.

My second point is the adjustment of the time limits and I can briefly comment on this. We do not adapt much, but a little. One of the recommendations unanimously adopted in the special committee on sexual abuse during the previous legislature is now being translated into legislation. Our group had submitted a proposal and I am very pleased that you have included it in your potpourri legislation. This is the limitation period for moral offences in the case of minor victims in the case of unity of intent, for which we de facto introduce an extension. I am ⁇ pleased that this can come into effect now, after the adoption of this legislation.

Now I come to my third point, the mini-instruction. This is being expanded, although it was a point of discussion, and is now also being possible for a home search. This will give the public prosecutor more opportunities. For a piece, there is a decrease in that, because the ratio between the actors is slightly shifting. We are thinking about the role of the investigative judge in the entire criminal process and with this point we are already intervening a bit. That’s not really a quick win, but it’s also not unimportant. It is especially important to us that at this time it has been limited to the search and that the telephone call has not been included in it, precisely because that aspect deserves a very thorough consideration and debate and actually belongs to the wider reform of the judiciary.

During the discussion in the committee, I proposed an exchange of views on the role of the investigative judge, so that we can go much better prepared if we address that aspect. It will ⁇ help us make the right choices. So I repeat my question in that sense.

My fourth point is quite topical. It is about forgetting administrative formalities. Of course, an error happened quickly. With the current legislation, we adjust the nullities in the telephone call, because the nullity expires if an administrative formality has been forgotten. As a lawyer, one may object to this, and I understand that, but as a legislator, a government, a coalition party or a politician, one can no longer be explained that an error in administrative formalities leads to the free movement of all sorts of gangs. I think that the incorporation of that adjustment into this legislation is a very good thing, even though I understand the legal concerns.

Fifth, the preliminary detention. The check on the preliminary detention now takes place after five days and then every month. For serious crimes, this is every three months. You now want to switch to a system of five days, a month, a month and from then on every two months, and without distinction between the different crimes. Thus, it is simpler and offers less chance of mistakes, which is a good thing.

I admit that we were initially concerned about extending the term, because it is ultimately a detention. Therefore, our group is pleased that you have responded to the request, from us and the boards, to postpone this arrangement and its entry into force for a while, so that better preparations on the ground can be undertaken and other aspects can be addressed. This will also be an element that, once it comes into effect, will need to be evaluated and, where necessary, updated.

The sixth is the lawyers. Through this law, prosecutors will now also be able to sit in court. You have also heard that there have been some objections in this regard. They are lawyers, not judges. Before, they were mostly supportive and now they are more prominent in the picture. We are pleased that this today remains limited to those who are statutory appointed because there is a different screening, but we are aware that in the long run an evaluation is pressing. Why do we think an evaluation is needed? Because there will soon be much more work with the order to pay and it may be that so many fewer cases go to the police court. Per ⁇ it would be more interesting to use the lawyers again because they can be more useful there than in a hearing. The last word has not yet been said.

Seventh, the guilty plea Thus, the Anglo-Saxon system enters our legal system. Anyone who pleads guilty can reach an agreement on the sentence. We believe in this because, if there is no controversy, that way a long, unnecessary procedure can be avoided. As previously stated, comments are being made. What if there was harassment or if the person concerned was put under pressure and thus confessed quickly so that he would not get a too severe punishment? I understand those comments, but fortunately the court’s control will still provide a guarantee for the proportionality of the punishment.

As for that right of control, however, there is a minus point when the agreement, or the guilty plea, is not homologated. It must then be returned to the court again. The civil party, the victim, is involved in the whole story and knows about the guilt and the agreement. Even if the file is empty, it cannot be deleted. We will need to see how this will work out in practice.

We will have to make sure that there are still sufficient incentives for an accused to plea guilty and to confess guilt, when he knows that the judge can reject the proposal. Whether or not that point will succeed depends heavily on how the judges will deal with it and how they will approach it. You suggest it, Mr. Minister, we will also need to evaluate this measure later.

Eighth, everybody associates the extended friendly settlement, which is commonly called the law of redemption, always with diamonds buying a verdict, but the extended friendly settlement goes much further and is also applied in many more matters. For our group it has always been problematic – in the previous legislature we have often cited this – that a settlement could be reached until the very last moment in the process. If one could pay a lawyer long enough, then one could really stretch the process and gamble on a limitation, thus eliminating it. If it did not succeed, it could still be arranged until the very last moment, in case of cassation.

This is now being applied to pail and perk. Now a settlement is only possible until the judgment in first instance. This is a very important and good evolution. We are very pleased that this amendment was included in the bill, because it can immediately counter gambling. In this way, one of the arguments against the Act of Purchase, namely that it would be class justice, is also largely refuted. There is a much greater equality between the smaller and the larger criminal.

Ninth, as regards the Committee I, the Sub-Pourri Act II provides for an arrangement for the exchange of information between the CFI, the State Security, the ADIV and the OCAD, in the context of the fight against terrorism, its financing and related money laundering operations. We will still have to examine the extent to which the Committee I’s control can be smooth, but for us it is especially important – I would like to emphasize this today – that Article 225, as it is presented today, concerns only the exchange of information on terrorism, its financing and the money laundering associated with it, and that it does not go beyond that. The ADIV and the State Security have many more tasks and powers, for example in spying or extremism, but information about this is not covered in the regulation on the exchange of information. Article 225 does not apply.

Mr. White, I listen very carefully to this point. It may not surprise you. I share your opinion on the importance of the article you refer to. The only thing I want to point out is that we have submitted an amendment to take a step further. We want international exchange of data not only in connection with the fight against fraud, but also in connection with the financing of terrorist organizations. That is the scope of our amendment.

I would like to urge to rethink its approval. After all, I hear the same plea from the government in response to the terror threat, of which we are all the victims. Our amendment addresses the concern that it can also address the international financial flows of terrorist organizations. This is the scope of Amendment No. and 119. I would find it a missed opportunity if, given the urgent need to address the beast, we do not take advantage of the existing legislation to extend its scope to the approach of financing international terrorist organizations.

Therefore, I interrupt you, Mrs. De Wit, to ask whether it is really impossible to approve the amendment. I know it comes from the opposition, but in these we are essentially on the same line.

Mr Bonte, I understand your comment, which you have also made in the committee. If I am not mistaken – I am not with me – your amendment, however, already wants to change something that was discussed and approved just a week earlier in the Committee on Finance. There is no point in changing something that is dealt with in the Committee on Finance already immediately in the Committee on Justice.

However, it is ⁇ a proposal that can be taken into account in the Committee on Finance so that the whole remains coherent. After all, one must be careful to change lines and commas into systems on different fronts everywhere. It is important that the actors involved in it retain the overview of the larger whole.

Of course, it is the House of Representatives in plenary session that makes the laws, not the Committee on Finance or the Committee on Justice. They do the preparatory work.

We really want to strengthen very recent legislation. That has nothing to do with creating legal uncertainty among those who must enforce the law. The legislation is so recent that it is indeed better to make them completely correct, ⁇ in the light of the struggle against the international financial flows of terrorism.

I don’t see your point, Mrs. White. A few weeks ago we passed the law here. The amendment is simply an adjustment that also meets the wish of the majority and the opposition to be able to use that important instrument as well.

You explained it correctly, it is about enabling the data exchange to be applied in the fight against internationally organised terrorist groups. I do not see your point.

At least your call has been heard, Mr. Bonte.

Mr. Minister, my last point is about the methods of execution. This is also encrypted in potpourri II, with electronic surveillance and more.

I can make the following comment. We held hearings in the Justice Committee on a proposal from Mr. Brotcorne on the appeal against decisions of the Criminal Court. There was actually something very important out of it, namely that more can be done on a scale. You actually already fit it in this potpourri. When there is a revision of punishment enforcement modalities, the punishment enforcement judge now has a much broader range of options. He can choose between electronic surveillance or other measures and decide on various aspects. However, he is still unable to do so today from the beginning of a file. This means that a person who is now detained can apply for an exit permit, while another procedure is underway for his half-freedom or for the application for electronic surveillance. There are different procedures running side by side.

I think it would be much more efficient to do what is now included in potpourri II – that can happen in a next phase, I know you plant another potpourri around the execution of punishment – from the beginning. You can then work much more on a scale from the beginning. Process-economically, one is actually much better at work because a criminal enforcement court has not run four files for one and the same detainee, for whom everything can actually be included in one file. Per ⁇ this can be considered in one session and one can go step by step. I think that we will be able to key to this even further.

I would like to make a final comment on the methods of execution of penalties, which is very important for our group. This is important not only for our group, but also for someone who was heard during the hearings. It is about the fact that there is no penitentiary leave possible and no electronic surveillance for the convicted illegally without right of residence. The latter is of course important. If one would argue that this is discrimination, I would like to refer to the hearing that has been held. This is on page 226. You have not quoted that part. It is more specifically about Judge Pieters, a person with years of experience in the criminal enforcement court, who has said very clearly that when one looks at a penalty enforcement modality – it is about electronic surveillance or penitentiary leave – that always happens in order to reclassify the person concerned. This means work, a fixed address, a residence. That is the very essence of that modality, that is its essence. This is not possible for a person without a right of residence. It cannot be applied to them.

Judge Pieters made this decision ten years ago. During the hearings, he reiterated that it is a good thing today, ⁇ in the field, to create clarity on this subject and to exclude the person without a right of residence from that modality.

Mr. Minister, I come to my decision. Potpourri II stipulates that an illegally convicted person can only be eligible for early release if he returns. In this regard, I would like to present a few figures. We have about 11,500 prisoners. Of these, 5,381 are foreigners, of which 3,361 are illegal in this country. That is quite a lot. You have always worked well with Secretary of State Francken. The number of illegal deportations has more than doubled. In 2015, a total of 1,437 refugees were returned, or an increase of as much as 130 % compared to 2014. It was once different. Under Secretary of State Wathelet, detainees were regulated, now they are repatriated. This is a matter of priorities, but it is also good to counter and limit overpopulation in prisons.

Finally, Mr. Minister, with potpourri II, a significant step has been made. The leap will have to follow now. The fundamental reform is still underway and we will support them. I would like to put those ten points out of the canvas today, because we expect that you will evaluate the quoted points and update them where necessary.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, I do not hide from you that it is with a feeling of disappointment that I communicate to you my fear and that of my group about this poetic project called pot-pourri II.

We know that our criminal system is far from perfect. He needs a lifting. For the PS group too, justice cannot remain a fixed institution. It must dare to question itself, to dare to evolve in order to be in line with the demands of a society that has changed so much and is constantly evolving. My party has also supported a few articles that propose improvements. However, in order to carry out this large-scale project, it is essential to have a comprehensive vision and to have some consistency. This is where the hole hurts. Today we are facing two parallel initiatives. On the one hand, Mr. The Minister has started well since he has mandated a committee of experts to conduct a reflection on the reform and modernization of our criminal system. While we support this willingness to involve legal professionals, on the other hand, you urgently submit the pot-pourri II project, for consideration today.

Mr. Minister, the paradox is that you have preferred to shake your head down, without waiting for the results of the work of this commission that you yourself had set up. However, it is now apparent that some measures of the Pot-Pourri II risk to be in total contradiction with the conclusions of this reform committee. This is called putting the chariot before the bulls. It is therefore regrettable that all these reforms have been dealt with in urgency and precipitation. I believe that a parliamentary work worthy of this name requires a time of reflection and in-depth debate, which has been repeatedly recalled, even by some members the majority. Unfortunately, I see only a faulty reform, without any vision, without any reflection that is consistent in the long term and, moreover, will have an impact on the fundamental rights of our citizens and citizens.

Why this precipitation? Why this blatant reform? In order to implement as quickly as possible the budget cuts decided by this government. The only purpose of this reform, since you have not, Mr. Minister, succeeded in immunizing your budget, the only real goal is to make savings.

Between the beautiful intentions that you had announced to us during the Justice Plan, at the time of the establishment of this government, and those that are taken, especially in this pot-pourri II, you give me the impression of being a accounting minister. You rationalize, or even minimize. And even if it is not critical in itself – I admit that sometimes you have to make savings – it cannot justify everything, and especially not a reduction in the rights of citizens.

Unfortunately, in addition to generating costs, some measures of this pot-pourri II are simply unacceptable in view of the democratic principles that underpin our society.

Dear colleagues, the criminal system of a State is, in some ways, a just but severe reflection of its degree of civilization. Particularly in this dossier, it is noted that progress is neither natural nor obvious, and the approximately 200 articles of this pot-pourri raise many fundamental questions, in particular related to the meaning of punishment and its individualization, the independence of the judiciary, the right to be judged by peers, the fair trial, the presumption of innocence, the rule of law, the equality of citizens before the law, the protection of privacy and even the right to lead a family life.

From the beginning, from the first articles, the project poses a choice as critical as symbolic as the government has decided to virtually abolish the court of assises, this high place of participatory justice, one of the last places where the citizen is directly associated with the exercise of justice; a place where it can control the way justice is rendered and of which it is effectively exercised.

This, of course, helps to strengthen the confidence that citizens can have in the institution. Here, we cut off this link with the judiciary in trouble of recognition and trust.

On the one hand, the court of assises is destroyed, it is largely empty from its substance, and on the other hand, these heavy powers of sanction are granted, transferred to the correctional courts. All this, again, with one and only argument that comes back into the loop: that of saving. But the argument of a court of assises that would be too expensive does not make unanimous since during the hearings the figures have varied and could never be objectivated, some often affirming the opposite of others.

Then the trials would be too long. However, most sessions have a duration of less than 10 days. The most common durations range from four to eight days. A small number of these trials last longer, ranging from 30 to 40 days. According to Ms. Gérard, these trials would be the exception. She also recalls that some trials take ten times more time in correctional than in sitting. She cites the Aquino case relating to a large drug trafficking in Flanders that would have lasted ten times longer before a correctional court than if it had been pleaded before the seats.

Attention, all these elements do not mean that the PS group, like the rest of the opposition, is closed to a discussion around the modernization of the sitting court. The need for reform is shared by all. Do not throw the baby with the bath water. This precision is of utmost importance because our democratic system requires a large parliamentary majority to agree to the seats. Hence the importance of the institution in the eyes of the legislator.

However, this has all its importance since Article 150 of our Constitution creates a fundamental political right for the citizen. The government and the majority are pretending to forget.

The [...]

They do it very well! I totally agree with you, Mr Cheron. They really have a great talent!

They pretend to forget that in criminal matters the people’s jury is inscribed in our Constitution and that no law whatsoever can “empolish” the article of the Constitution from its scope. Here we come back to a very simple but fundamental legal principle, namely the right of the hierarchy of norms. This principle taught in the first year of law is unfortunately bypassed, violated.

I remember that in the first application, one of the first principles that we were taught was about compliance with the hierarchy of standards. Unfortunately, this principle is not respected. This is no longer a secret for anyone, the generalization of the correctionalization of crimes will, in fact, eliminate the trial court.

The Constitution requires not only that the most serious crimes be submitted to a popular jury, but also that "no one may be distracted, against his will, from the judge assigned to him by law" (Article 13). In other words, the legislator cannot exempt himself from determining the most serious crimes. The right to a fair trial is guaranteed by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The obligation to conduct a broad debate to amend this famous article 150 is therefore not merely an unnecessary administrative formality as the majority tries to make us believe. It is a guardian who protects our fundamental rights.

Unfortunately, the government is prematurely closing the debate on the House of Representatives, probably because it fears it will not gather a two-thirds majority to complete the debate.

On the one hand, to crush the court and empty it from its substance, and, on the other hand, to impose sentences of up to 40 years in prison, that is, ten years more than today. We would move from a popular jury of twelve people and three magistrates to a correctional court imposing sentences ranging from 30 to 40 years, with, sometimes, only one magistrate: thank you, Mr. Brotcorne!

I would like to remind you, dear colleagues, that the maximum sentence of imprisonment, provided by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and genocide, is 30 years. In Belgium, a correctional court can impose sentences that go beyond, and up to 40 years, with, sometimes, a single judge. This increase in the rate of penalties is obviously a serious downturn.

There are no non-truths to be said; I cannot tolerate them.

We do not know where we are going, sir. We did not have the debate. I don’t know if there will be an orality. Collegiality was not a guarantee of the "pot-pourri I".

You didn't read the "pot-pourri I", apparently!

Yes, sir, I read it very well.

But no, not at all!

You can always ask for the word. You have the floor, Madame Owen.

Thank you Mr. President.

This increase in the rate of penalties is obviously a serious downturn. It is based on a repressive and worthy ideology, Mr. Minister, of the nineteenth century, or even of the Old Regime.

You said you wanted to bring our justice into the twenty-first century, through a triple leap. You missed the car. It was a missed opportunity. I am sure: there will be a high rate of sentences up to 40 years. To lock a person for half of his life, or until his death, is to reject him permanently from the community of human beings. Finally, dear colleagues, we will return to the same logic that prevailed for the death penalty or for civil death. In this, one denies a fundamental right, that which each human being has to aspire to live freely, and that to give a meaning to his life.

This criminal packaging simply makes no sense. This is not an angelic discourse or a certain laxism that could be attributed to the Socialist Party. Such a rate does not meet any need, on the contrary! It risks making the management of prisons and post-prisoning far more complicated. No balance with any positive effect can be made, as the prison population is increasing. We increase the violence that will be induced by despair and, at the end of the race, we increase insecurity in our prisons that are already overcrowded.

These are events that happen repeatedly in our prisons: strikes of prison guards, strikes of prison staff. The framework of prison personnel has been reduced, there are tensions, convictions are constantly coming from Strasbourg for inhumane and degrading conditions. When we don’t have the staff to get the inmates out, they remain in a promiscuity that is unacceptable for Belgium: they’re four in ten square meters. This is unacceptable. And all this will still create problems in our prisons.

I am not throwing you a stone. We know that this is a long-standing problem. But, with the measures re-imposed in the "pot-pourri II" law, the prison overpopulation will continue to rise. We will manufacture beings who will be unable to re-integrate and who will be ready to fall back into crime.

For the state, it increases the cost that will have to be borne in the budget, since a prisoner costs 50,000 euros a year. Yesterday we had a debate on prisons in the Justice Committee, an interesting debate that we will have the opportunity to continue as the problem is recurring. We have ⁇ 11,060 detainees in Belgium, which, multiplied by 50,000, gives approximately 553 million euros as a budget.

All studies demonstrate this, all field actors are unanimous: such time periods of imprisonment have no deterrent effect on the commission of a crime. How can one believe that an individual will abandon his ambitions, his criminal intentions because, suddenly, the maximum punishment that can be imposed will be increased?

In the committee, one truth was constantly reaffirmed during the hearings: it is not the level of punishment that discourages the criminal, but rather the certainty of being punished. Nevertheless, Mr. Minister, the majority has remained deaf to these criticisms and all these evidences, in particular to the appeal of the State Council, usually very cautious, which unambiguously suggests to reduce the rate of maximum penalties that can be imposed by correctional courts.

Furthermore, the blind repressive logic of this project is not limited to a mere increase in penalties. It is coupled with a distrust of judges, as this government decides to systematically remove access to alternative penalties for certain offences.

Once again, beyond the negative effect of such a measure on the prison population, the government deshumanizes the punishment a little more. Again, I find myself compelled to recall an obvious thing: from our banks, dear colleagues, it is impossible for us to consider all the particular solutions that may appear before a judge. In other words, there are no two identical human beings, because there are no two human beings who have lived the same life.

Mr. Minister, you want a “effective” justice, this is a term you often use! If one wants our criminal justice to be effective, the sentence must be able to be adapted by the judge to the person of the convicted, to his journey, to the circumstances of life.

Take an example of a flight. There is the person who flies for pleasure, because it provides him with some excitement, an adrenaline discharge, and there is the person who flies for food; obviously, this is not a flight for which a law is systematically applied. It takes into account the personality, the life path of the person to adapt a punishment. In this way, our criminal justice will have a human face and will be even better accepted by the citizens and the person who committed the offence.

The punishment should be individualized as much as possible. This is extremely important. For this, the judge must have a wide range of measures to impose. To take away from him some of them that seem too indulgence belongs as much to the distrust of him as, I told you, to the diversity of human lives and life trajectories. In addition, it is an outdated design of alternative measures. In this, the “pot-pourri II” constitutes a flagrant regression from the evolution we know.

Dear colleagues, I would like to recall the words of Françoise Tulkens, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, which well summarize my thought. Yes, a beautiful woman! It is not me who says this, nor the PS. Talking about alternative measures, Ms. Tulkens says this: “Neither favor, nor privilege, nor advantage, nor indulgence. These so-called alternative penalties are necessary and indispensable measures to prepare the reinsertion of the detainee and to consider the possible possibility of his exit in good conditions.”

Human justice is an individualized justice that transcends the character of a mechanical application of texts.

In this batch of measures without "Reason" with a large "R", the government has wanted to generalize the extension of the prescription deadlines and obviously confirms the non-prescriptibility of certain crimes. However, whatever he imagines, he can still do nothing against the flow of time and should not refuse to take it into account. Indeed, everyone knows that, after a certain period of time, the evidence is weakened and this prevents judges from saying the judicial truth. There is an alteration in the memories of witnesses and, as a result, an increase in the risk of judicial error and a compromise in the rights of defence.

I return to the famous "Pot-Pourri I" I read. If my memory is good, Me Mayence had delivered a written report on the prescription deadlines and he said that at some point, justice must do its job and that one must learn from a failure. After a certain period of reflection, justice had to be done. Either it was done, or it was not done.

These prescription deadlines were increased in the Brabant murder case, but Mayence also recalled that it was sometimes more complicated to explain to the victims that there will be no effective penalties because the case has not been judged within a reasonable time. For victims, it is harder to accept.

This extension conflicts with the right to be tried within a reasonable time, a principle enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. There is, therefore, real reason to fear that in addition to adding a little more to the courts, this provision leads to the absence of effective punishments, which is sometimes very serious for the victims.

There is another physical law with which the government seems angry, that of Lavoisier: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."If the government had remembered this principle, mini-instruction would not have been extended to search. Why Why ? Because the fact of believing that dischargeing investigative judges to charge prosecutors will generate savings is simply science fiction! More seriously, throughout the discussions, the majority again seemed to minimize the trauma of a search. However, there are really few measures of instruction that are experienced as as much as attacks on the privacy and inviolability of the home. It is truly fundamental that such a decision is taken seriously and especially not lightly, especially since it frequently concerns people wholly innocent but relatives, close to a suspect person and who suffer in a collateral way the negative effects.

My proposal is not to affirm that the members of the prosecutor’s office are less cautious than the judges of inquiry but, by allowing the search through mini-instruction, I remind you that the responsibilities are diluted between the one who asks and executes it and the one who authorizes it without having to justify itself.

We all know it, the more responsible there are, the less one feels responsible. The investigation judge offers additional guarantees as he instructs on charge and on discharge and is aware of the case. It has the power to opt for other means of investigation that will be less intrusive rather than to limit itself to the binary option of mini-instruction, which also offers less rights to the persons concerned.

Perquisition through mini-instruction is not the only measure of this pot-pourri II that brings a serious blow to the privacy of the justifiable citizen. Such a reform should have been understood within the framework of a comprehensive reform of the criminal procedure, because, we must not be fooled, we know that what is happening is the disappearance of the judge of instruction with a corollary to an increase in power of the prosecutor's office at the stage of the investigation. Just like the reform or virtual removal of the seat court, this evolution would also have deserved much deeper discussions.

Regarding telephone interceptions, rightly judged very intrusive by the legislature in 1994, they had been framed by guarantees sanctioned with barely nullity, nullity that the majority now question. I also wonder about this evolution. Why would a telephone conversation be less intimate than it was 20 years ago? When it is known that in this period of time, the number of telephone interceptions has not ceased to increase, that the appearance of the Antigone jurisprudence has been allowed, the disappearance of these guarantees is worrying.

Sometimes you can hear that “If you have nothing to blame, you have nothing to fear...” No! There are rights and there are procedures to guarantee them. Ending this means no longer protecting our fundamental rights, in particular that of our privacy.

In an entirely different registry, I will not delay on the restrictions that have been made to the default opposition. I will even go so far as to admit, Mr. Minister, that in this case the majority has demonstrated wisdom by admitting the causes of legitimate apology. However, since the aim was to avoid dilatory manoeuvres, I think we should not limit ourselves to interrupting the prescription of public action.

Since I am on my positive launch – take advantage of it, as it unfortunately doesn’t happen often; in any case, it won’t last – I also acknowledge that the majority has heard the main criticism that has been issued towards the binding schedule for the exchange of conclusions.

However, the same does not apply to the restrictions that were made to the appeal. We have long discussed this issue in the committee. According to the numerous experts who have brought their light on this issue, these provisions will affect the most vulnerable prosecutors, who are lacking a lawyer.

The question remains, Mr. Minister. If the complaint submitted by an individual who is not assisted by a lawyer does not mention procedural complaints – it is known that this is a prominently technical aspect – will the scope of the complaint be automatically reduced to the only other complaints that will appear in the complaint? Can a person who is not specialized in criminal law criticize a procedure? Anyone who has not studied law or who has no legal notion will be able to express complaints? I strongly doubt this.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, Mr. Minister, I now return to one of the measures that brought together almost all the experts against her, and that is, unfortunately, her only virtue, I want to speak of the removal of the appeal in cassation in the context of preventive detention and the settlement of the procedure and the particular methods of investigation. It is understood the objective that is pursued: to ease the workload of the Court of Cassation. In other words, the Minister’s justification is primarily statistical. You say, Mr. Minister, that there are a lot of lawsuits but that too few arrests make it right. If it is not done rightly, the right must be abolished. In doing so, the government is making a double mistake.

First of all, this government considers the law in a fixed way. For my part, I am obviously a supporter of a dynamic concept of law. We need to look at what the situation creates as well as what it allows to avoid. In this case, the sole fact that judges know that their decisions can be controlled can positively influence the quality of their work. But if, tomorrow, this appeal is removed, why would a judge continue to diligently motivate the maintenance of a preventive detention if he knows, in the end, that he will not be censored? Why would it analyze in relation to the reasonable timeframe, in relation to serious indications of guilt? There is a risk of decreasing the quality of work. The abrogation of this appeal in cassation also forgets that it helps to avoid the cancellation of a trial after long years of proceedings. This would also make the courts easier and make the procedure more efficient, as you say, Mr. Minister.

Obviously, beyond a dynamic analysis, it is again and above all principles that are challenged. Again, I would like to repeat Ms. Tulkens’ words as they are as clear as they are clear. She said: “I regret the proposal to remove the possibility of appealing in cassation on preventive detention. Contrary to what is stated in the statement of reasons, this is indeed a control that belongs to the Court of Cassation. As the European Court of Human Rights recalled in its judgment Civet v France of the Grand Chamber of 28 September 1999.

This unjustified and disturbing questioning of the presumption of innocence does not end there. I find, of course, equally condemned the end of the monthly control of this same preventive detention. From now on, from the third decision of the Board Chamber, the control will be carried out only every two months. This is a step backwards that disregards the exceptional aspect that preventive detention must have, since, I recall, dear colleagues, the person is at this stage still presumed innocent.

To this is added the impact on the pace of the instruction, since the obligation for the judge of instruction to deposit his file at the register allows him to be, every three weeks, recalled to the order in the evolution of his instruction. A bimestrial control will only have one effect, which will be to slow the instruction and slow the investigation. Instead of submitting his file to the transplant center every three weeks, he will submit it every six or even seven weeks. The investigation will therefore be a little longer for those people who are still considered innocent, in preventive detention.

Yesterday, we had a debate on prisons in Belgium. I recall that 60% of the prison population is in preventive detention and is presumed innocent. If we want to disengage our prisons, we should not touch this measure, and especially not extend the appearance to two months after the third appearance.

In this "pot-pourri II", the prior recognition of guilt, Ms. De Wit spoke of, represents ⁇ the only unprecedented measure that is not drawn up at the expense of the rights of the prosecutors. It’s a part where I’m positive, take advantage of it, be attentive! If in a perfect judicial system, such a procedure should obviously not exist, it must be observed that with sufficient security guards, it offers undeniable advantages both for the actors of the judicial world, we have heard at the hearings, and for the justiciable.

The obligation to be accompanied by a lawyer or the inability to propose this measure during an investigation and during a preventive detention are obviously part of these necessary guarantees, but they are not sufficient since the project is still far from being perfect. Even if it is on the right track, we would have desired, at least initially, that this procedure be limited to the slightest offences.

I am thus arriving at another more critical reform, namely the reform aimed at granting appointed prosecutor’s lawyers certain powers of the public prosecutor.

From a budgetary point of view, we return once again to the theory of Lavoisier, Mr. the Minister, which was very well summarized by Mrs. Levecque, during the hearings. I quote it: “If prosecutor’s lawyers do the work of magistrates, then who will do the work of prosecutor’s lawyers?”

More fundamentally, this measure raises the question of the independence of the prosecutor’s lawyers who remain, of course, under the disciplinary authority of the administration and therefore of the executive power. In this regard, there may be doubts as to the relevance of the distinction, which was mentioned in a committee, between appointed prosecutor’s lawyers and contractual lawyers.

In doing so, how can a specific process of appointment to magistrates be justified? And if it appears, on the occasion of the hearings at the hearing, that it is appropriate to request, for example, the abandonment of the prosecution, on the basis of what norm, will the prosecutor’s lawyer have the freedom to request the abandonment of the prosecution? The answer to this question remains pending.

Mr. Minister, the independence of the prosecutor’s office is not a vain concept, especially in our judicial system. Indeed, if the role of prosecutor legal practitioners can evolve, this evolution must be thought of globally with special attention to the separation of powers. However, the reform proposed today, in the absence of a few articles, reflects above all a very poorly achieved or, in any case, unfinished position.

Before concluding, I would like to pause on the chapter of the “pot-pourri” which has been the subject of the most acute criticism from some of our country’s most prominent legalists. This is, of course, the fate reserved for illegal foreigners in prisons. There are a number of ways to execute their sentences.

These arrangements, in addition to the fact that they prepare for the reinsertion of the detainee, allow the latter to enjoy its fundamental rights, inherent in every human being, be it Belgian or foreign, free or imprisoned. The right to live a family life and to have access to health care. This generalization of measures towards a group of people is obviously blind to the multiple realities of those who are imprisoned. We were widely reminded of this during the hearings: some have no connection in their country of origin, or are able to regulate their situation in Belgium, or can not be subject to a removal measure. These are, therefore, measures as stigmatizing as unnecessary, as the State Council has well demonstrated. He recalled that the case-by-case assessment helps to prevent the risks associated with the granting of implementation arrangements. In other words, all elements of discrimination in violation of Articles 10 and 11 of the Constitution are gathered together in these more specific provisions of this "pot-pourri II".

Waiting for a cancellation promised by the State Council as well as by former Supreme Court judges, these measures, like many other measures of the "pot-pourri II", will only serve to feed already overcrowded prisons.

It is far away, Mr. Minister, the time when you had allowed us to mirror, in your Plan Justice, a reduction in prison overpopulation and the cost of justice. From now on, it is preferable to increase the rate of penalties, end the monthly control of preventive detention, restrict alternative penalties or remove the appeals in cassation during instruction.

You have understood, Mr. Minister, you have produced exactly the opposite of what you had promised us in your Justice Plan.

Let us now come to the underlying logic of this reform, namely economies, economies, economies. We can still legitimately wonder how this project will enable us to ⁇ these famous economies. It is neither by increasing the number of incarcerations nor by increasing the length of prison stay that the state will make savings. A prisoner has a short, medium and long-term cost to our society. These provisions of the “Pot-pourri II” law will therefore be counterproductive.

And what about the principles of good governance that are stumbled upon and the legal uncertainty created by this project? These measures are promised to be censored by the Constitutional Court. Isn’t it your job to improve justice? Isn’t it your duty to protect the rights of citizens? It is really time to recover. This does not enhance the rights of citizens. On the contrary! We are witnessing a systematic reduction of the rights of the prosecutors, going even to the limit of what is acceptable.

Let us not forget that, as members of Parliament, our role is to ensure that citizens’ rights are respected. And that’s why my group obviously can’t support this project, as it is contrary to the fundamental rights of Belgian citizens. This “pot-pourri II” refers to another era, that of dehumanized justice, far from the citizen and serving those who are supposed to serve it. This is a typical case of civilization decline. I thank you.

First of all, I will illustrate with a personal example.

Two of my children are law students and when they saw me go with the "pot-pourri II" under the arm, they said to me, "We're still going to study something for nothing, because all this will be changed." Yes, that is part of the law. Law is constantly evolving. The law must try to stick as often as possible to the evolution of society. We try to do it well. We do not always succeed. In any case, we must have the modesty to take these changes with the necessary step backwards.

As chairman of the European Parliament, I think we have worked very well with the majority and the opposition. I would like to point out this in the preamble. Projects have been put on the table. We have held hearings. Parliamentarians, the majority and the opposition, participated positively in the debates. It was less heavy, Mrs. Özlem, than it is today, not heavy in expression, but your charges were less negative in commission than today. I felt that your group’s approach was more positive. But that’s just a personal appreciation.

I think that the “Plan 2” is not that bad in many respects. I will briefly give the floor to Mr. Brotcorne, with whom we already had a first debate on the radio just recently and with some minor difficulties in terms of using words, which seemed to me also heavy and negative. The term “abstinence” seemed exaggerated.

The world of justice is hard to reform, because it is not a binary world. It is a world involving several stakeholders, with different sensitivities according to the point of view from which they are placed and according to the responsibility that is theirs. A judge is a judge. The attorney has another role. A lawyer has another role. A citizen must already understand how justice works, whether he is the alleged perpetrator or victim, and the whole society, which is tracking the facts in the criminal field, which is regularly pinched in the press.

So it is really with a lot of delicacy that we need to change the criminal law, because as much as it does not target many people – we are not all criminals and criminals – so the impression that it can cause in the public is probably overdimensional compared to the reality of people facing criminal justice in our country.

As liberals, we want a fast and effective justice, a justice that accepts to question itself, a justice that can ask the right questions when the time comes because procedures may seem obsolete or unnecessarily long.

Mr. Minister, your job was to think about these procedures. You said you wanted a closed envelope with which you had to make justice work. As I know, justice continues to work even though, sometimes, it is necessary to shake the elbows, it is necessary to make special efforts, it is necessary to make sure that the proposed measures are understood. Sometimes it is necessary to give time to these measures to take their flight. Let us have the modesty, as we asked in the committee, to recognize that a measure may not be quite adequate, that a measure requires some adjustments and adjustments.

I will not repeat the whole discussion that took place in the committee. There was even a second reading, dear Mr. by Van Hecke. Second readings are of great interest in terms of correcting texts or bringing them into coherence with other texts.

The court of assises will always exist, contrary to what one wants to make us believe. This is not the first time it is reformed. In 2009, it was allowed to see certain crimes being correctionalized, so this is not a novelty, and it was taken into account some judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that it was useful that magistrates intervene more in the deliberative process.

If the procedure of the Court of Appeals is modernized, why has it not been provided for a degree of appeal, since this is a reproach that is regularly made to us by the European authorities and the European Court of Human Rights?

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In the framework of this committee, the appeal was suggested. But the appeal comes through correctionalization as the decisions of the correctional court can be appealed, and you know!

You support mordicus, because it is the motto, that the court of assises is not removed, while, de facto, it is removed! You tell us that the fact of passing through the correctional court will allow to have a second degree of jurisdiction for those crimes that would not have known it if they had remained in sitting. It was enough to predict the degree of appeal in the court of assises and the case was settled! You then had great credibility in your affirmed concern for the maintenance of the court of assises.

One does not stop the other at this stage. I did not say that I was against the possibility that there is an appeal in court of assises. This is another debate. I am talking about what is happening today.

Let us be honest to acknowledge that you have heard as many opinions for as many opinions against. It is very difficult to take a position on this. It can also be acknowledged that some court trials are ⁇ expensive while in some cases it is not necessarily useful.

It was heard, in particular in the victim chief, that a trial of seats allowed to make mourning and better understand the decisions made. Hence our request, also formulated by other groups, to ensure that what will be correctionalized and dealt with before the correctional court will be subject to more orality in the context of the discussions. The Code of Criminal Instruction already allows this, but it is unfortunately not implemented. Per ⁇ a small change of culture is needed but, Mr. Brotcorne, you have already manifested it, it is difficult to have a firm opinion and in some cases it is true that the court of assises represents a significant cost and it does not systematically justify itself.

This development seems to us to be going in the right direction. There is an additional act of trust. It was already the plot of my intervention on the pot-pourri I, to say that there is a reinforced confidence in the judicial apparatus since it is the Prosecution Chamber that will have the last word in relation to this.

I will not repeat the arguments for or against, we have heard them. As a person and on behalf of my group, yes, the maintenance of the court of assises is an important element. If there can be interventions later, why not. We have been many to emphasize the potential interest of scavenging. It may also be part of a useful evolution because if you have a jury of assises constituted for a single trial, it represents a lot of investment; it might be interesting to have people in the framework of a scavenging, with a slightly longer period for, on the one hand, to grasp the basic legal concepts and, on the other hand, to ensure that the work does not have to be repeated every time for the minimum explanation of judicial mechanisms.

With regard to mini-instruction, I feel like we are discovering something that already exists. On the one hand, it already exists, on the other hand, the guarantees are precise. The investigation judge will continue to intervene first to agree on a request for a search. This means that the prosecutor will not be able to work alone. This was clearly stated in the committee. This is not always in the public opinion.

This mini-instruction and the resulting search must be carried out by the investigation judge himself or a criminal police officer. This is a second guarantee. The judge of instruction may refuse the mini-instruction.

This is an intrusive method. A search constitutes a heavy act in terms of privacy, but the shutters that already exist are ⁇ ined and seem sufficient in the state. This will, in any case, speed up the work.

If my figures are correct, 700,000 cases are submitted annually to information from the prosecutor’s office, with 70% ending with a non-sequential ranking. In some cases, launching the entire judicial machine may prove useless. One can also rely on common sense and the concrete approach of a file emanating from the prosecutor’s office to say that the use of mini-instruction does not necessarily require to put in touch the entire judicial apparatus to stop very quickly at the end of a search, whether it is positive or negative in terms of outcome. It was important to signal it.

With regard to preventive detention, Mr. Minister, we experienced some difficulties at the beginning. Then we were reassured about two or three aspects. Moving to two months represents a kind of uniformization of the three months and the one that is applied. At least, the arrangement will be clear. It is also understood that the first two months of preventive detention will be ⁇ ined. A Chamber of the Council will be called to renew it or not. Only after a third detention will it have to be confirmed every two months. Generally, it extends over a period of six months. Both of these criteria gave us guarantees. The measure is likely to be part of a more general reflection on the role of the investigative judge and on the possible creation of an investigative judge.

Failure and opposition participate in rationalization and accountability within the criminal procedure. I will not come back. Others have talked about it.

The same goes for the appeal on the grief, which has been requested by many. This provision also allows for greater accountability of the actors of justice in the context of a trial. Clarity is essential. This system will make it easier. The willingness to act in order to ensure the proper course of a trial will thus be satisfied.

The guilty plea is a good measure, which is unanimously appreciated. This is one of our demands, which dates back a few years. We have entered a process of conciliation justice, not only in criminal law, but also in civil law. The aim is to strengthen mediation mechanisms. This measure is part of it. We are thus given the opportunity to flood into this pot-pourri II a widespread practice, namely that lawyers and the attacked party can rely on the wisdom of the court.

Here, there is a negotiation that can take place between the prosecutor's office and the alleged perpetrator. The victim is not forgotten in this process, which is also very important for us. This ends with a homologation by the judge who obviously keeps all his role and all his importance in relation to this.

It was also time to be able to change the criminal transaction slightly for several reasons. It was not normal for some to make some kind of estimate game, betting by saying to themselves, "I will wait as long as possible to see if the decision will be favorable to me or not, if I have an interest or not to resort to the criminal transaction." The idea was to let yourself be driven by a decision that was about to fall and, depending on it, suddenly try to provoke the criminal transaction. Now things are clarified. This is a good decision. A criminal transaction can only take place if there is no decision made on the substance. This again accountabilizes the interventions, choices and decisions of each other. Second especially important element in this regard: from now on, a mention in the criminal record will be made of this transaction. It was not normal that because eventually one had the means to offer a transaction, this allows the purchase of a virginity. It was just as important as it appeared. Contrary to what has often been heard in the public, criminal transactions do not only concern big business. They are much more frequent than we think. The advancement of this extensive criminal transaction will allow, I hope here too, to disengage the courts, to ensure that, since the courts are disengaged, we will have a faster justice. Remember, the goal you announced when you took office was to make sure that a trial could take place within the year of its introduction. Let us hope that with these measures – there will be others coming in the pot-pourri III and pot-pourri IV and in more intense reflections on more specifically targeted institutions – this goal will be achieved.

As I said in the preamble, reform is not easy. In this parliament, no one has the miracle recipe. Everyone has the will to make sure that our justice moves forward, that it moves faster. There are obviously different sensitivities but, having had the opportunity to hear the expressions of one and the other, I still cannot be convinced – on the contrary – that our prosecutors would be punished, that the rights of defence would be deforced and that our justice would be weakened after this pot-pourri II.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, my presentation will be much less quantitative than that of Mrs. Özen, although I hope it will be of the same quality level.

I would like to highlight some of the criticisms of the opposition. I have heard Mrs. Özen say that this minister is primarily a accountant who tries to work as cheaply as possible. If you are not strong, you have to be smart. If you have limited resources, you have to try to be smarter and more efficient. I think the word efficiency, which Ms Özen has also emphasized several times, is very important in this reform. That it is about cost savings speaks for itself, but it is about cost savings that bring efficiency gains at the same time. I think this is perfectly defensive.

Mr. Speaker, I find it a little weird that the opposition says there is no vision. I think the extent of Mrs Özen’s explanation already proves that there is a lot of vision in the story. Otherwise, we will not take all measures point by point. Furthermore, if at the end of the exposition the big words are not swung to refer to problems with civilization and the like to try to get its equal, then I think there is more than vision in the text, apparently more than desired by the opposition.

I also feel that there is a lack of debate. I have listened to the chairman of the committee and I think that this is the last thing that can be blamed for in the treatment of potpourri II. I have not been in Parliament for so long, since 2007, since Ms. Onkelinx was Minister of Justice, and I have seen a number of ministers pass in the meantime. However, if you look at the way we have given time to the treatment of potpourri II, then the intellectually honest opposition that exists, like Mr. Van Hecke and his French-speaking colleague from Ecolo, will have to admit it too. I think we have given the debate more than enough opportunities. The opposition parties that were interested in it were given plenty of opportunities to do so, and they did so fairly. I must also emphasize that.

This is also important, because in this reform there are indeed some visionary ideas. There is indeed a vision. There are also important political choices made, such as the guilty plea. It is a reform that can count, just like the limitation of the ability to step to assises. These are essential choices, and hearings should be held.

Mr. Speaker, you will not blame me for defending my Minister. All the questions asked in this legislature have been answered, and I have never seen that before in the Justice Committee. Whether one agreed with it or not, the minister always gave a rationally substantiated and, of course, also intellectually honest answer, as we expect from our minister. I think that criticism is not in place.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I could overcome the many elements of the visionary reform that is on the table here, as Ms. Özen has done. I will not do that. I could refer to the reduced likelihood of procedural errors as the provisional detention system has become simpler. I could also talk about the accountability of the parties and their lawyers by formalizing the conclusion deadlines. I will not do that.

However, I would like to quickly highlight two points that I find it important to emphasize, also on behalf of my group.

First, assises are, of course, the symbolic file of this whole reform. It is therefore not the most important, but it is an important aspect of it. Indeed, we try to artificially avoid the expensive and time-consuming procedure for assises wherever possible, not only for cost savings but also for efficiency gains.

I have been able to advocate in a number of assisting processes in the past, and for me the added value of assisting is mainly in the oral debates. I have to speak to Mrs. De Wit in this regard: the test will have to be done, it will have to be examined how the now correctionalized crimes can give rise to oral debates in the correctional courts. In this type of hard file, this is necessary. I must say that this verbal aspect in assisting processes sometimes ran out of the spouts, but well, the appellate judges will have to show how they deal with those verbal debates, because they can indeed have an added value in heavy files.

As a personal fact, I would like to note that a reference to the Aquino affair, which correctionally lasts ten times longer than any other assistance affair, really compares apples with pearls, thereby inflicting injustice on some citizens of my municipality, in particular the Aquino family, which is involved in the case. This is a very specific procedure. So the comparison is not at all. I wanted to put the points on the i.

Mr. Speaker, during the entire reading of the draft draft, the complaint that the present potpourri II testifies to a debilitating confidence in the judges was raised. This was also stated during the discussion. I would like to come back to that. If there is exactly one case that does not happen, it is that we give less trust to the judges. The present reforms are just based on the fact that we and the current minister rely heavily on the strength, the workforce and the knowledge of our judiciary. We ⁇ do not doubt this. We give even more powers, even if it is only by extending, for example, the correctionalization and thus allowing the correctional court to intervene also in such difficult procedures.

Finally, Mr. Minister, colleagues, I would like to point out that some very beautiful bills are at the basis of amendments to the potpourri II, such as the extension of the mini-instruction to house search or the re-formulation of the aggravating circumstances in case of strokes and injuries. I cannot emphasize enough the quality of the bills included in the bill. This is one of the many points that persuade our group to approve this visionary reform of the criminal law with great conviction.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, it has been said repeatedly, even by the opposition: Justice can be more efficient, more modern, faster and better. They are all right. When it comes to justice and justice, only the best is good enough. This is also why a very important part of the Government Agreement is devoted to the reform and modernisation of the judiciary, including through the reform of the criminal law and the criminal procedure law. It can and should be clearer, more concrete and more efficient. My group is also convinced that a large process is a conditio sine qua non for a modern rule of law.

In the committee it was agreed that the tricks in the criminal procedure are frequent. Mr. Minister, you are presenting today a draft of 260 articles and that is only the beginning. The tricks are frequent, but fortunately they are also known.

This means that together we can find solutions.

With regard to the criminal proceedings, we think of the different limitation periods, the excess of default proceedings and the time-consuming, low-value-added system of the judiciary for the accusation chamber. I could do this for an hour, but that’s not the intention. The solution of all these difficulties requires an integral and thorough practice, to which our group is happy to cooperate.

Mr. Minister, today we are discussing and later we will vote on your potpourri II draft which already addresses some obvious reforms. This is happening today because further postponement cannot and should not be discussed if we are doing the best with Justice, and both your and my group are doing the best with Justice. Some of the reforms currently underway do not tolerate further delay and we have therefore fully supported them. We will also approve the whole.

By the way, I find the argument of the opposition actually a little weird. During the discussion in the committee, I felt that there was some consensus on many of the proposed measures. This includes even the measures on the conclusion deadlines. Is it not better, and are the rights of defence not better served if the arguments of the prosecutor’s office are known in advance and if the person concerned is notified in a written statement, so that the person concerned can prepare himself well and extensively in advance? Well, I felt that there was some consensus on this, even with colleague Özen. In the texts, there are also some contraindications. The Order of the Bales also agreed on those measures. So I am actually a little surprised to hear the critical sounds today, not only about the arrangement regarding the deadlines for conclusion, but also about the procedure subject to prior recognition of guilt.

Let’s be honest, even today behaved accused very often to the wisdom of the court. In other words, they claim guilty before the judge who will punish them. Now, if one says that this is the big, fundamental reform that affects the rights of the defence, then one is wrong in its assessment. The only thing you take care of today is that the judges do not need to write out a justification unnecessarily, if the person who comes before the court confesses guilt.

As regards the grounds for the appeal, Mr Özen asks how a person who has not eaten cheese of the law and is not subject to it can file a reasoned appeal against a judgment with which he disagrees. The committee clearly explained that a model form would be available. As today the office prepares the appeal declaration and places its signature, in the future one will be able to fill out the model form and, if one doubts, maybe fill out a cross too much. However, the possibility of appeal will remain fully enforceable. Only one can limit his profession, if he so wishes. If only an appeal is made against, for example, the declaration of imprisonment, then there is no risk that there will be a follow-up appeal from the prosecutor, which in the end can only serve the rights of the defence.

There are a number of things I can say to you, Mr. Speaker, but we have already done so. I will not do that again today. I have only found that even the most critical actors in the field, provided the adjustments you have accepted admit that the rights of the defence are not infringed. As an example, I will take the appeal period, which is extended to 30 days. Today, there are fifteen days to reflect and to examine the case, even if a person has been sentenced to a severe prison sentence, and to decide whether or not to appeal. In the future, that will be 30 days. One will be able to read very carefully the motives of the first judge, to consult with his lawyer and very consciously note the appeal or rely on the first judgment.

I think that with the proposals on the table today, the rights of defence have been strengthened rather than weakened.

You know that we would rather have seen that some points in the draft would be addressed in the integral reform of the Criminal Procedure Law, as announced and for which experts are already preparing.

The reason for this is double. First, on some of those issues, such as the reform of assises and the interim detention, we were of the opinion that it would be better to submit a comprehensive revision than a partial revision, as is the case today.

Secondly, one cuts in a number of procedures, such as the extension of the mini-instruction, by which one gives more power to the parquets, without reinforcing the continuum of that lack of external supervision or the contradiction that comes at some point in the procedure, and the rights of the civil parties and the defence. There has also not been a thorough debate on this. We would have liked to see it integrally, but from friction comes light and even on the difficult points we have found each other.

As for the reform of assises, it has been chosen to preserve the jury jury and the preservation of assises. It has been assumed that the procedure, as it is today, is plumbing heavy and absorbs a huge amount of capacity. I think no one of us will deny that. It is right that you want to remedy that. For this you have our full support. That was important to us.

We have found each other in the choice for the preservation of the people’s jury with regard to the question of debt, without that in the assessment of the question of debt the professional magistrate will be able to validate his vote. Therefore, the people’s jury is not competent by professional judges. She will be supported by professional judges, but will ultimately only decide on the debt question. This is very important for us.

We found each other because we realize – and all actors agree – that the great added value of the Court of Assises actually lies primarily in the fact that the main witnesses and experts are heard during the execution. Very often, in this way, useful and important decision-making elements are brought forward.

However, we also know, Mr. Minister, that in 90 % of the crimes after correctionalization it is already today the correctional court that decides on very serious crimes. From the consultation – a number of colleagues have expressed the same opinion – it has clearly emerged that it is also your firm will to provide the necessary time and space for the correctional sessions in the future and to ensure that sufficient personnel and resources are available so that the serious crimes also receive the necessary attention, even when they are handled by the court of assises.

Of course, we will have to rely on the magistrates for this, but that is right, because otherwise it becomes an impossible task to manage Justice.

Mr. Minister, even in terms of the extension of the mini-instruction, we have found each other. We have limited it to home search, which is a good thing. We listened to the arguments. In cases in which it was initially considered that it was necessary to carry out a home search in order to discover certain elements in the context of the evidence collection, it is later shown that it is precisely by the home search that a file is not susceptible to be assigned a judicial investigation. Today, however, in the absence of a mini-instruction, it has the effect that the entire template of the council chamber, the arrangement of the procedure and the like, still have to be passed, wasting a lot of time and resources for Justice, while that is actually not necessary.

On the other hand, you have agreed, Mr. Minister, to address the other, original coercive measures within the framework of the major reform that is coming. There will also be the assessment to maintain one or two procedures, the question will have to be answered how we deal with the role of the investigative judge, with the coercive measures, and so on.

It was an exciting debate in the committee. You also accepted a number of amendments, Mr. Minister, which arose from hearings with actors in the field. You have heard the voice of the opposition. You have taken into account the concerns and considerations of this Parliament for better justice. This has led to a text that hopefully will receive the support of this House.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, I will not say anything fundamentally different today than in the committee. I will be consistent and try to keep the same line. I will not be too extensive either.

Potpourri II has already made a lot of ink flow and has also received a lot of criticism in the media, in the comments and also in the committee. There are, of course, good elements, but do you now expect the opposition to talk about everything that is good for half an hour? We will, of course, primarily look for the hassle points, but be assured, I will also say something good from time to time.

It is right that there is criticism. As with the other potpourri laws, it was, as I thought, still the intention of potpourri II to realize some quick wins in anticipation of the major reforms of the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, as it is called in the beautiful Dutch. One wanted to realize some savings, without fundamentally changing the rules of the game. This will, of course, only happen with the major reforms, for which working groups have now been set up and for which we expect to be able to conduct a principled discussion on the major orientations already this year. However, the preceding text has a much greater impact than what was proposed to us. Some changes are fundamental adjustments, which also affect the rights of the parties. They are not just quick wins, they are often already advance deductions on the necessary reforms, which will happen later.

Therefore, we made three fundamental comments in the committee. I will return to it soon. I will not overcome all measures one by one; I try to get a line in it. First, the changes lead to a shift in balances. I will give a few examples later. This is a delicate thing in criminal proceedings. Second, they lead to the degradation of the role of the judge and a shift of power to the parquet, a reinforcement of the power of the parquet. Mr. Minister, I see you the eyebrows already frons, but I will give a few examples. Third, they are primarily focused on making large savings, sometimes without thinking about their consequences.

It is characteristic of a criminal procedure that there is balance in the laws and procedures, in the system, if we can call it so. This balance has been achieved by years of evolution, by new insights, by jurisprudence developed by the Court of Cassation, by treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights and by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Think of the Salduzarrest. Without the European Court of Human Rights, we would never have received that judgment and all kinds of amendments. We are trying to re-establish that balance. We also pay more attention to the victims. Without the Dutroux case, we would not be where we are today. Some of the essential changes that we consider obvious today would not have been introduced in the early 1990s. Furthermore, new balances were created by social developments. Think only of the technological developments that require an adjustment of the procedure. Now we also have DNA and telephone contacts. We didn’t have it when we wrote the code two hundred years ago.

Given that healthy balance in certain areas, we must also be careful when we reach that balance. Where displacements have arisen, we must of course intervene. We will support these measures.

Essentially, it is about the balance between efficient prosecution and a fair trial. I would like to give a few examples.

Mr. Minister, we talked about the control of the provisional detention and about the changes you propose in that regard. From the third decision, the inspection would only take place every two months. The purpose is noble, namely to keep the interim detention as short as possible. The only question is whether that measure will result in shorter preliminary detention periods.

I would like to repeat the arguments on this subject. Appearing every month before the Chamber also means that every month the investigative judge must go to the Chamber and be able to present a number of new elements from the investigation. If this should be done every two months, the investigators may consider that they have two months left, and therefore a little time left. They may then give priority to another file. So will the investigation go faster if the inspection takes place twice a month? I am not convinced of this.

Appearing every month also means every month access to the file by the defendant and his lawyer. If the deadline is reduced to two months, the control is reduced. That given linked to the removal of the possibility of a cassation appeal also means that the reasoning can no longer be examined.

As a result, the existing balance is disturbed. There may even be more persons threatened to be in detention than today, which is therefore actually contrary to the objective of your justice plan.

Mr. Minister, that is why we have also pledged – we are the requesting party and would even fully support you in this regard – to link a number of other elements of the judicial plan to the aforementioned measure.

In fact, you had announced that the provisional detention would make a number of ⁇ revolutionary changes, such as the introduction of maximum deadlines according to the severity of the crimes and according to the penalties imposed on those crimes. If you had linked that intention to the new reform and the two-month audit, you might have reached a new balance that we would have found acceptable. The first part of the amendment has been implemented. However, a second, for us essential and related component has not been implemented. We will have to wait for a moment, as long as this measure will ever get the approval of the government.

The abolition of the absolute nullity of telephone calls I have already cited in the committee.

I will not go deeper into that. After what happened today, we may need to remove invalidity next month if a signature on an arrest warrant is missing, or to cover up drivers’ mistakes – apparently a president of a court proposes drivers to support investigative judges, but that’s a topic for another debate.

I hope that we will not attempt at every incident to dismantle existing nonsense. We must be vigilant. On the one hand, I get an awkward feeling when people are released after mistakes. On the other hand, if we cover all our faults with the cloak of love, then our justice evolves into a system where nonchalance becomes the rule. So we need to find a good balance. You have decided to erase the nullity of the phone calls. Again, an essential balance is being broken.

Third, the mini-instruction is extended to the home search. The investigating judges were not really prepared for this during the hearings. Following a house search by an investigative judge, the accused and his lawyer are now regularly accessed to the file and can read the findings. From now on, it will be through the park. If the investigative judge does not retrieve the case, we will therefore again determine a reduction in rights. As long as the investigation continues, the accused has no access to the file. That change will not be offset by more rights for suspects. Therefore, the existing balance has again been amended after that measure.

We have discussed the amendment of the BIM Act for a long time, even though it was an appendix, right at the end of the discussion. The method for identifying telephone numbers and IP addresses is considered a common method rather than a specific method. There are changes in control. The six-month report becomes an annual report. The BIM committee was able to monitor. It could apply a review of proportionality and subsidiarity. If the BIM committee found a violation of those principles, it could intervene by suspending or destroying data. What do they do? The procedure has been smoother. I have no problem with that in myself. The control mechanisms, which were attached to it and sometimes useful, disappear. This again leads to a change in balance. Parliament should remain vigilant, ⁇ with regard to the control of intelligence activities.

I do not return to the agreement with the National Bank on the exchange of data. The debate arose whether or not that was a circumvention of the BIM law. We asked questions about it.

We must always be careful, Mr. Minister, because the intelligence services always want to be able to use more methods in a easier way, and with less control. It will always be so. The BIM Act will soon be evaluated, and I am sure that in that evaluation they will insist on a law change, with the argument that anything in the Netherlands, Germany or France can. We want that too, they will say, but with not too much control please. You, Mr. Minister, and the Parliament will then have to make very clear that if new methods are necessary and useful, they can be discussed, but that good control will be ensured. This balance must be established and ⁇ ined. This is a small change that will reduce the control a little.

With regard to the mandatory conclusion deadlines, there was a problem with the Prosecutor’s Office. This is resolved by amendment. The balance has been brought back into the text. That is a good thing.

These examples show that there is always a shift in balance in favor of Justice but at the detriment of the accused, or in favor of the intelligence services but at the detriment of the control. I think this is not a good thing.

These are my conclusions about the first line. For all these reasons, Mr. Minister, we re-introduce a number of amendments we have previously submitted to the committee, in order to re-establish the balance in BIM legislation and to give the BIM Commission the opportunity to act again in cases of breaches of subsidiarity and proportionality.

I want to remove the role of the judge. Not only in the wake of potpourri II, but also in the new anti-terrorism measures, at least in its communication several months ago, it was sometimes insinuated that the role of the judge would disappear. And in the course of the route, this may still be adjusted. We will see.

What do we see today in the potpourri II?

First, the guilty plea, giving clearly more authority to the parquet. Under certain conditions, the prosecutor’s office can conclude an agreement with the suspect, and that agreement is still presented to the court, but in practice this will only mean a marginal control. The power of the Prosecutor’s Office is increasing.

Second, the extended friendly settlement. There it is even more problematic. There, the prosecutor concludes a deal with the accused, often concerning financial crimes, and the judge can not even make a fundamental judgment. He can’t even refuse the deal for the sake of the opportunity. He must only check whether the law has been complied with, or whether the procedural steps have been followed.

Therefore, we submitted amendments in first reading to abolish the system of extended friendly settlement, as introduced a few years ago. If it still exists, more control mechanisms should be installed, for example, no longer after the summoning or with the explicit consent of the investigation judge when there is a judicial investigation. I also think of an explicit confirmation by the judge on the substance, because if the judge has already been taken on the substance through the summons and then is faced with such an agreement, he can no longer judge on the substance.

There are many possible changes to strengthen the role of the seating judge, but you did not choose to do so. You have chosen it, and that is a good thing, that there will be a notice in the criminal register and that it can no longer appeal or cassation, which is the logic itself. This is a small improvement that has been made.

A third example of the reduction of the role of the judge is the mini-instruction, which is now extended to house search and again giving more powers to the public prosecutor. One can, of course, argue that the investigative judge can always decide to keep the file, but when such a system is in rotation and the prosecutor comes at the end of the investigation with a heavy file — we have noticed this in the hearings — then many investigative judges will choose to give that mandate back to the prosecutor’s office; otherwise they may have to thoroughly review that liable file at night or during the weekend. Again, one notices a sliding evolution towards more powers and more power for the prosecutor’s office.

The third aspect is the savings. It is clear that the potpourri II was inspired by the unacceptable austerity drive of the government which also attacks the domain of Justice. That is in itself unacceptable, especially the linear, never seen savings that lay deep wounds in the functioning of Justice. The potpourri I was also intended to be able to realize savings, but poured with the sauce of efficiency. Now we see the same thing, but the consequences are deeper because we are dealing with criminal law and criminal proceedings. This is different than civil law.

The best example is assists. We can discuss a lot about this. One is for and the other is against. I would like to conduct the discussion about quality, the added value that an assistant business has or does not have. Is this good for our democracy or not? Is this good for our justice or not? Should we modernize or not? For what crimes will we keep that?

What is now decided is the compromise of the compromise of the compromise of the compromise. There may have been some people in the government who wanted to abolish it and others who did not want to abolish it. The first compromise that was reached was that affairs could only go to assises when they were related to the qualification of the victim, police officers or children. The State Council has rightly stated that this could not be done because it is discriminatory.

Now there is a compromise, where one has to determine case by case whether one will still send the case to Assises or not.

Other aspects and positive elements in assistive cases did not play a role. An assisting case also concerns the depth of the debate, the oral hearing, the overworking of a number of matters. We have already been able to read in the press how through a thorough investigation at the sitting, through hearing experts, the jury sometimes also discovered errors in the investigation, because a number of investigative acts had been carelessly done, and how that led to an acquittal.

If all such cases are brought before the correctional court, will they then be handled in the same thorough manner? After all, these are the cases where the heaviest penalties are imposed, and they are being increased. And is it not at risk that important cases will be delayed by the correctional court? We already talked about this in the committee and I felt that everyone felt that such matters should not be dealt with like other correctional files. For such cases, we need to do something special. However, it is not drafted in the law. Mr Cheron will come back to this later.

I also read comments from experienced assistants, who say that when the murder attempt was correctionalized, it was originally allocated an entire day for such a case, because before it was for assistants. Then it was half a day and now it happens that cases of murder attempt are on the role with other cases in half a day of the correctional court. That is, of course, the steady evolution.

We can all agree here, today, in this hemisphere that this must be a valuable procedure, with the opportunity to hear an investigative judge or experts. If this is not the case, what will happen in a few years? Will these issues still get the qualitative treatment we have in mind, or will some people want it? And this is ⁇ true if Justice continues to face staff savings and the workload increases.

It was remarkable, colleagues, that the judges we heard were almost all in favour of the quasi-abolition of assises. For they began to count — one must always be careful of lawyers who start to count — and proposed that this could save 9 million and that thus fifty magistrates and fifty employees could be hired. That is fantastic, they said.

Do the magistrates really believe, if this draft is approved and if 9 million can be saved, that those 9 million will be used for fifty additional magistrates and fifty additional employees? But no ! After all, you also know that next year you will have to make some savings again, so any savings you can realize today will be extended over the coming years, because that forms the basis for future savings. There will therefore be no extra magistrates due to those so-called efficiency gains that are realized. Per ⁇ in a few years the magistrates will think differently, if they reconsider this passage.

A second example of savings is about parket lawyers. I have a lot of trouble with that. I really don't know where it comes from, but apparently it's a proposal from the prosecutors themselves. The prosecutor’s lawyers can take over a number of duties of the prosecutor’s magistrates, they can bring a claim before the police court, they can give advice to the court of first instance and thus also in family matters. However, the potpourri I has already decided that advice in family matters is no longer mandatory, so the importance of those advice has already been reduced. Now you even decide that those opinions may not even be drawn up and issued by a magistrates, but by prosecutors. They can write out research assignments and they can even ask for a mini-instruction. They can deal with the GAS and the football law and so on.

This measure, of course, arose from this government’s austerity logic. Logical, because a parquet lawyer will cost less and is therefore cheaper than a parquet magistrate. A parket magistrate must undergo training and take exams, because it is not simply appointed. A parket lawyer works contractually and if he is appointed, he can be engaged, actually as cheap workforce. This is not a good development, Mr. Minister. I have the impression that colleagues across the boundaries of majority and opposition are not so happy with that measure. Not only the police judges are unhappy with this measure. I think it is not a good thing. After all, what is the next step? Will prosecutors for minor crimes in the future also be allowed to bring the case to the correctional court? Why not go to the council for a reference or something like that? This is how the ball rolls. That is the great danger.

Therefore, we have again submitted our amendment with a view to the deletion of that article, so that we would not allow such tasks to be taken over by prosecutor’s lawyers. We are ready from the opposition to support you, Mr. Minister, if there are additional needs with the parliament. If there is a genuine need for a reinforcement of the prosecutor's office, then we support you in raising more resources for a correct framework of the prosecutor's office, rather than making a shift by engaging more prosecutor's lawyers instead of prosecutor's magistrates.

Colleagues, the so-called efficiency exercise dominates the design. Sometimes it goes very far. Thus, in the appeal, compulsory and fairly detailed records of the grievances must be recorded.

I think it is almost school master. If one notes an appeal, we as legislators will say which form should be filled in and what should be crossed. We also advise that one should be careful, because if one does not, there is a problem. After all, the judge would then only judge about the grievances that one has crossed and woe if one holds another plea at the hearing to bring forward another additional argument.

I think we are going through. Sometimes it can actually be a little more efficient and transparent. It is true that some lawyers make a chaotic appeal and develop their complaints, but I don’t know if this method in practice will be a great progress.

Efficiency is not everything. There is also such thing as the quality of the judiciary and the thoroughness. It is about criminal law, about the condemnation of people, about justice and about weapons equality. These are principles that we should always keep in mind when we make changes, especially in matters such as criminal law or criminal procedure law.

Mr. Minister, I would like to leave it here. You will understand that we cannot support these reforms. However, I would like to say that the treatment of potpourri II was a progression compared to potpourri I. After all, there was more openness to make a number of obvious adjustments and corrections, an openness that did not yet exist with potpourri I.

We have not been able to make any fundamental changes. I think we should not dream about it either, but when the practice showed that there were a number of punctual problems, it was addressed. It is a good thing that this has been taken into account, but fundamentally we still have a very big problem with many of the proposed measures.

I hope that you are not all weary and tired. In any case, we will do our job and say all the good and, sometimes even the least good, that one thinks of the text that is proposed to us. (The M. Nollet applauded

I have not finished, Mr. Nollet.

I have a problem with your working method. As I said in the committee, as much as I appreciate your general policy notes, your exhibitions and your Justice plan within certain limits, as much as I find it important that you can consider with us profound reforms of our Criminal Code and our Criminal Procedure Code, as much as I do not understand too much why – while the work on these two subjects is announced to us within reasonable time, still under this legislature – it is necessary that we work head down on changes that do not always appear urgent, unless they are necessary or timely.

I am not the only one who says it. The State Council, the first judge of the texts deposited by the government, does not say anything else. He may say it in a more diplomatic way than I do. When he tells us that it is up to Parliament to assess whether these reforms should already be implemented or whether they should be integrated into a more comprehensive revision of criminal procedure law, he says what I just said and asks why these small packages, step by step, while everyone knows that more important things will happen tomorrow.

You have an advantage over us. In fact, you know – I’m sure – what these changes lead to. We, parliamentarians, at this stage, do not know the terms and conditions and do not know in what direction the experts appointed for this purpose are working. You will understand that we do not want to buy "a cat in a bag" and that in relation to this we sometimes have some difficulties following you.

The Council of State is not the only one to relay a little what I say. We have already mentioned it today. Ms. Tulkens also believes that it is necessary to avoid the scattering of initiatives because it denies any real reform. by Mr. Paul Martens says the same thing by clarifying that it would not be necessary, because some have abused their rights, that eventually a whole category of people be deprived of the exercise of these rights.

The Human Rights League, which I quote in the last place because it is not always necessarily appreciated by those to whom one would like to quote its thoughts, says exactly the same thing. We would still be interested to wait for the work of the Code and Criminal Procedure Reform Commissions. This, Mr Minister, we have already said to you.

You persist in believing that things need to be done. In the end, they are brought together into a single document that brings together different provisions. So we are faced, as parliamentarians from the opposition... This is not the case with our colleagues from the majority who, they, know that they must vote for everything, without any opposition.

In the afternoon, however, I heard a few questions, some states of mind. When someone in the majority speaks of assessment, it often means that they don’t quite agree, that they want to follow you, but that they may need an assessment in six months, a year. I heard Mrs. De Wit, who is not there, I heard Mr. The President also talks about certain aspects. I realized that mr. Terwingen, who is not there either, also sometimes had little trouble, even though he supports his minister – it’s the slightest of things, we don’t think he would do the opposite.

You are still bringing us tonight to make a choice on a comprehensive text, and thus to issue an indivisible vote, while there are in your text provisions with which we, at the CDH, have no difficulties, with which we can agree. I’ll start with that, maybe it’ll go faster than the rest. The flowers before the pot, if you allow me the expression.

You invite us to vote on this text that we were waiting for on the recognition of guilt. We totally agree with you. This will allow you to move toward what you want: a more efficient execution, because the suspect will have accepted the idea of his guilt. He will be involved in a form of negotiation of the sentence that will be applied to him. One can imagine that the penalty will have a much more effective effect than simply saying: you will go to jail for a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years.

Therefore we have no concern with this, even if, like what the Human Rights League desired, one could have imagined that the fact for an accused to acknowledge his guilt, to agree to participate in this new way of considering the punishment, gives him a possibility to hope for a slightly different and maybe, why not, a slightly lighter punishment. Per ⁇ this would have allowed wider access to this defendant-guilty than we could have expected.

The extensive criminal transaction has shed a lot of ink, it has raised a lot of questions. At that time, we voted the bill.

Today, on the basis of the conclusions drawn from practice, it is decided that it will no longer be possible once a decision has been taken. That is of course. This is the result of common sense. It is therefore very good that this is the case, just as it is normal that this type of decision, which is also a court decision, appear in the criminal record.

We are proposing a reform of the Court of Appeals aimed at allowing magistrates to enter into deliberation with the jury, not only, as is already the case, for the sentence, but also for the decision of guilt.

Furthermore, some of your proposals on simplification, meaning, quotes, judgments and rulings go in the right direction.

But you will not stop me from thinking that everything that is proposed to us is dictated by purely budgetary considerations. I think you will agree with me on this point. In doing so, you are registered in the square of the circle. Between the good dispositions, the cravings of the humanist you are and the realities of the field, there is often a certain margin.

You always ask us to move forward, and you are right. Others before me have said, the judiciary, the functioning of our justice deserve to be concerned, to be reformed. It is not because it is a power recognised by the Constitution that the said power is established once and for all and that we must not ask ourselves questions. Yes, there are questions to be asked. You have to try to be effective. Yes, we have to be efficient.

Now I come to the points in your text that I disagree with. Mr. Minister, do you think that we are moving towards greater equity when you propose to increase the sentences by raising them from thirty to forty years? I know that’s a technique. I know that you are, so to speak, doomed to do so, from the moment you want to avoid passing the crimes to court by correcting them.

If these punishments of forty years may never be applied, as I hear some say in commission, why is it written, why is it said? In no civilized country, or at least in any European country, there is no punishment of this order. Even for convicting someone for crimes against humanity at the level of international institutions, the limit is thirty years. And, in Belgium, we are going to go to forty years for some sentences, while in 2009 we were still only ten years, then we have gone to twenty and today we are going to go from twenty to forty years. Is this how you intend to fight against prison overpopulation, which is one of your important political issues?

Is it better, is it more fair to greatly reduce the impact of mitigating circumstances? There is notion of mitigating circumstances. It is used to explain that we will move from the court of seats to correctionalization, but at the same time, we will consider that the mitigating circumstances will no longer have as much effect on the fixation of the criminal penalty and we will even refuse in some cases to the magistrates to be able to use them to apply alternative penalties or accessory penalties, better targeted than the prison penalty.

Is it better, is it more fair to increase the duration of instructions and preventive detention? What we are proposed in this text tonight, the fact of extending in time the judicial control of preventive detention, to make sure that the instructions will be longer, it will also not be in the sense of your will to fight against the prison overpopulation, of which it is known that for the most part it consists of persons in preventive detention.

Is it better, is it more fair to further increase the deadlines to obtain a conditional release? All reports say it, the only and only obvious tool to limit the prison population is precisely conditional release, which also allows to fight against recurrence, to avoid convicts going to the bottom of penalty to no longer be indebted of anything to society at the moment they leave.

Is it better, is it more fair to limit in criminal matters to the point of almost emptying it from its substance? Default convictions are often accompanied by immediate arrests, which have the effect of filling prisons. If tomorrow someone is arrested on the basis of a default decision, that he wants to oppose but cannot justify this opposition by a case of force majeure, he will be answered that his immediate arrest remains relevant and that he will remain in prison.

Is this how you will fight the overpopulation? I am convinced of the opposite. Is it a better, is it a greater equity to remove, for the judge of substance, the possibility of punishing by alternative penalties certain offences, certain crimes, or even certain crimes? Isn’t this contrary to all the trends of current criminal justice, or at least to a criminal justice that wants to be modern?

Mr. Minister, in your proposal, and in reference to what I have just mentioned, fundamental rights are, in many ways, compromised. They are neither insulted nor suppressed, but their exercise is made ⁇ complicated and difficult, especially for a fraction of the uneducated population. When I say educated, I’m not just talking about the procedures and the functioning of the judiciary, but about the ability to understand the documents that are addressed to these people by a judicial authority, who, when they wake up with a judicial decision of which they will understand the effects and that they will want to fight, will hear each other answer: “It’s too late. You should have figured out faster what you were facing. Now you are no longer in the deadlines, or you are not in the conditions of force majeure. If you are going to call, you have not filled out a box correctly. The decision is final and nothing can be done about it.”

This was a more general intervention. Now on to the more specific aspects of your proposals. A matter is being debated and will continue to be. We will not exhaust the debate today. In addition, you do not give us the opportunity to do so. This is the place of the court of assises in our judicial arsenal. Should the House of Representatives be retained or removed? This is an interesting, important and constitutional debate, and I will return to it. For me, it is first and foremost a social debate, and we don’t have it. Why Why ? It is obvious that in your proposal there are two things.

You cannot concretely announce in the face of our fellow citizens that you are removing the court of assises. Not for fear of saying it, but for fear of not having a political majority to do it. Therefore, we bypass the problem by emptying the court of assises of its substance and saying that we will correct everything so that professional magistrates can know of these files, being heard, and it is the custody that you systematically propose to us, that it will always belong to the chamber of accusations to decide whether to be returned before a court of assises.

My frustration comes from the fact that we do not know what we will do with the court of assises, which we maintain by principle. I would have preferred to be told that the court of assises is ⁇ ined, that it is reformed and that it is modernized, or to be told that the court of assises is obsolete, that it has no longer any meaning and that it must be abolished, especially because it generates costs that are no longer sustainable today for justice. That would be a clear speech. Either there is a sitting court that has the means to function, or there are no longer sitting classes! What we are proposing today is to stay in the middle of the veil. There is a court of assises, it is in the Constitution, it can hardly be avoided. Now we want it, so we will do as if we kept it while bypassing it. It is not OK! This is not political transparency towards our people!

What about the constitutionality of what you propose to us in relation to the Court of Assises? This is a debate that has not been sufficiently in-depth and of which we have not taken the full measure in committee and again tonight in our homicide. However, the State Council was relatively concerned about how you work.

What is the principle contained in Article 150 of the Constitution? This article tells us that the court of assises knows of all crimes. All crimes are then sent to the court of Assises. It is true that we have already introduced exceptions to our law for certain crimes that have been correctionalized. And when the first crimes were correctionalized, they were never seen returning before the court of assises, they were systematically returned before correctional chambers. Today, what do we propose to do in your pot-pourri II?

What you are proposing is to reverse the situation. You tell us today that the court of assises becomes the exception and that correctionalization is the rule. This is what you are proposing to us, and it seems to me to be contrary to the constitutional principle of Article 150 – constitutionalists have come to say it during the hearings before our commission. What is even more surprising – and this is probably where the unconstitutionality lies – is that the transfer operation you propose to us, you do it by the law and not by a constitutional amendment.

It was simpler to say: "We amend the Constitution and we say that the court of assises is competent except in the cases that the law determines" by specifying a minimum of modalities. Here you touch nothing and you tell us that it is the law that, today, will correctionalize the crimes so that they can be returned to the court of assises. You are going even further, Mr. President. Where the State Council tells you that it would be necessary at least to specify, in the law, the cases and conditions under which one goes before the correctional court rather than before the court of assises, nothing, nothing, no proposal. This is where the sum and risk are, it is a circular of the general prosecutors who, tomorrow, will tell us, instead of the law, what will be done: removal in correctional or removal before the court of assises. Since when has a circular, if it were the prosecutors general, replaced the law? I think you are facing difficulties. Whether you are a supporter of the Court of Assises or not, there will ⁇ be appeals that will be filed before the Constitutional Court regarding your text.

We started a discussion in the committee. The debate has allowed to give rise to an idea following the interest and surplus value that even the critics of the court of assises recognize to it. What is it? Essentially, it is the orality of debates, the ability to refresh before magistrates and a jury all the information and instruction that sometimes allows to give birth to things different from those we have in the written dossier, where one takes his time, where the victim has all his place, where she feels heard, recognized, where one makes participate the citizen has a work of justice in a time when one is increasingly asking for the intervention of the citizen in a series of spheres where it was the appellation or of politics or public service.

Today, we are asked more and more—some even think that we are going to take the lot of the elected members of this assembly—to refrain from citizens’ participation in the function of judge, especially since this right recognized to citizens is a constitutional right in the same way as the right to vote, for example. Is the right to vote, guaranteed by the Constitution, restricted by law? No to! And we are preparing, not to limit by law the existence of the court of assises, we charge our prosecutors-general to clarify the cases in which the choice between one or the other way might still be offered to us.

Now, and that is where the interest or non-interest of your method arises again, even if you are still going to defend yourself from not touching the court of assises, you are targeting it and in commission, we realized that we were going to lose very interesting and important elements of this procedure before the court of assises, to such a point that we considered, in the event that the crimes would be tried in the correctional court, to finally arrange the traditional correctional chambers by ⁇ increasing the number of participants rather than that of the three judges.

And here, Mr. Minister, I am giving you justice. Just before, about my speech, Ms. Özen said that there was a risk of being removed before a single correctional judge. I assure you, this is not the case. The "pot-pourri I" provides for a Chamber of Three Judges for such cases. You have to recognize your mistakes and return to Caesar what belongs to you.

Therefore, we found it useful to add a fourth or a fifth judge from civil society. Then we thought to review the way witnesses are heard, to translate the orality of the debates before these correctional chambers. We almost agreed that, in this direction, a special correctional chamber had to be created to accommodate this type of situation. Wouldn’t it be better if we had this debate at the time of the reform of the Criminal Code, the Code of Procedure? We would have been in front of all your proposals and everything that could have been considered. We would have done a lot more than what we are doing now.

I would like to speak because I share the same opinions as Mr. President. and broccoli. This will prevent me from speaking sooner.

On the subject of the Court of Assises, I agree with what was said by Mr. and broccoli. I think this was also said in the committee. We regret that there was no real debate while Article 150 of the Constitution is open for revision. All the others are not, but this one is just yes and we do not use it; it has a little frustrating side.

Beyond these frustrations, we did not have a real debate on the modernization of correctional courts. We will probably have it someday. It seems to me, ⁇ you will confirm it just recently, that you said in the committee that we should have this debate on the adaptation of correctional courts intended to host debates. I remind you that the assembly courses are about a hundred transactions per year; in correctional, approximately fifty thousand. It may be interesting to keep things positively viewed from the citizens’ point of view, namely the orality of the debates, the ability to bring witnesses, the taking into account of civil parties, etc. We would have liked to have a debate. When you are in the opposition, you are modest, you ask for a debate; sometimes you have amendments translated into positive votes; this is rare but it can happen. Therefore, we would have liked to have a real evolution in correction taking this into account. The first element.

The second element, and I will finish on that, is the famous circular of the Attorneys General. It seems to me that in the committee, you promised it to us in times that were approaching the plenary session; as the plenary session has retreated, I imagine that things have evolved and I hope that we will have information. The goal is also not to have different courts depending on the places and to have a jurisprudence not to mention uniformization. This is also the risk. Or then it will be the race to choose the best place to be judged. This information would allow to have a debate on this matter, beyond the regrets that are expressed and that I share with Mr. Brotcorne and Mrs. Özen.

Thank you Mr Cheron. I think the minister understood. At least the debate in the committee would have had that usefulness.

However, we have not been heard regarding the amendment of the text or its possible postponement, as there is no urgency to reform the Court of Assises and to extend the correctionalization. I don’t know exactly what profit can be obtained. I hope we can discuss it again. It is possible to find an intermediate path, as the procedure relating to the Court of Appeals has undeniable qualities. It is, for example, a tool of social cohesion. Imagine that, in the Dutroux case, there was no court of assises, no one could have been heard. The catharsis would not have been able to operate if this case had been judged by a confidential chamber of a correctional court.

Mr. Minister, you are a lawyer. To turn the court of assises by resorting to mitigating circumstances instead of being invoked for the fixation of the sentence, is nevertheless a deviation from the law! That is why I spoke recently on the radio of the legal entourage, to the great dam of Mr. by Goffin. In order to correctionalize crimes, it will be necessary to consider that they benefit from mitigating circumstances – in such a way that, if the perpetrator of a crime wishes to be tried by a court of assises and not by a correctional court, he must advocate the absence of mitigating circumstances. You can see in what legal structure we find ourselves. This is a pirouette, a "legal dress", since you prefer these terms, Mr. Chairman of the Commission. In any case, it goes away from what should be a good practice of law. Obviously, as the penalties differ from one type of court to another, you will increase them. It is a true pass-through tower worthy of a magician who pulls a rabbit out of his hat. This legal construction can hold the road, but by using instruments that are deviated from their usual use.

I have already had the opportunity to tell you what I thought about compensation and the extension of sentences. We will probably be one of the only civilized countries to have a 40-year sentence in our legal arsenal. While there too, you do not stop telling us that the importance and interest of the reform of the Criminal Code will be in particular to re-evaluate the scale of penalties, to see how we will be sanctioned tomorrow, in order to be effective, to empty our prisons, to avoid the recourse to the prison, which you call yourself the worst solution, to examine in last resort whether one wants to resocialize and avoid recurrence.

We do exactly the opposite of everything that is regularly pledged – I almost said preached – to explain to us that it may be difficult today, but that the best will come tomorrow in the reform of the Criminal Code and the procedure. Even the State Council has recommended that you review down the most severe sentence that the correctional judge can impose. You didn’t listen to him either. I am also afraid that we have a few shortcomings in relation to this.

I try not to be too long and sometimes I pass some elements of the intervention I had planned, but I still want to intervene on one or the other point, Mr. Minister. I am not going to delay the extension of the prescriptions.

With regard to the suspension and suspension, I agree. It is about expanding the scope of the suspension, since anyone who does not have a criminal record of more than three years will be able to benefit from it, whereas today it is 12 months. This will allow our magistrates to apply this modality in a much wider way to avoid incarcerations. But at the same time, you tell us that a suspension or suspension may not be granted in all cases, with the exception of certain types of offence, crime or crime, or certain penalties. It is in this that your project, Mr. Minister, induces, unintentionally ⁇ , but it is a reading that you cannot prevent, a certain distrust towards our magistrates. This distrust seems to me completely unjustified.

The mini-instruction is not so anodine as this. First, the State Council has once again stopped you, to eventually reduce it to the only problem of searching.

Why do you come up with this very precise, particular element, when we know that it will also be part of your overall reform, that the question of the place of the investigative judge is raised? What are we moving towards in our system of tomorrow with the reforms we do not yet know? Removal of the Investigative Judge? Keeping the Investigative Judge? The creation of a judge of instruction? We know nothing about this at the current stage. I don’t know what your experts will give in the reform project that will be proposed to us in some time.

In the meantime, you are moving forward. And you say considering mini-instructions. Recently, it was the place of the public prosecution at the hearing of the family or youth court. Why is this not settled tomorrow, when we are facing all the elements to adopt a consistent approach of your political will towards the judiciary world?

At this point, what worries me and which is filigrane in the texts that we have voted so far, is this rise in power of the prosecutor’s office in a whole series of subjects. Sorry, but the prosecutor’s office, these are magistrates, but hierarchical magistrates, first and in the end subject to the authority of the Minister of Justice. There is a slide there, in the absence of talking of a derivative towards a form of justice or organization of justice, where the interest of conducting an information or an instruction with the elements "for" and the elements "against" is undermined. I would like you to answer us about the place of the Investigative Judge, tomorrow, in our judicial system. Is it the court that will eventually have to replace it?

We talked about the “telephony and nullity” component. I do not understand why, at one time or another, for such an intrusive act in privacy, the regime of nullity is not ⁇ ined for certain cases or certain situations. At the end of the vote, there will no longer be a single case of nullity provided for in the Code of Criminal Instruction in relation to the right to privacy.

It doesn’t seem like anything like that in this tribune! I think it’s important to say this to the tribune. Indeed, this means that a form of protection, yet essential in a democratic regime, of private life is gradually undermined!

I know that we are facing complicated cases, terrorist cases. I know that public power must provide answers to these situations that we may have known less in the past. Answers must always be proportionate, measured. In the end, it must be said that we do not make exceptional legislation because a few individuals would deserve it. Indeed, these exceptional legislations apply to the whole of our population and to all those who, tomorrow, may be in the position of justiciable.

Preventive detention is one of the levers by which you will reduce the prison population. And what do you propose to us? Increase the time limit for examination by the Magistrates. What will happen then? We will wait until the deadline is expired to appear in front of the Board Chamber and to ensure that an instruction is activated. You’ll say, “I’ll go tomorrow to the board room or to the betting room, it would be necessary that this file has evolved compared to the last time.” We will give again a form of improperly used comfort, as in this case. One might say, “I will go as far as the law permits me to go before performing additional duties and advancing in the information or instruction of a file.”

You have at least agreed to postpone the entry into force of this provision until the next month of July. I think it was wise. Again, this is a discussion that we should have had as part of your overall reform.

Then comes the “defect and opposition.” You are starting from a principle that could be admissible and understandable. It must be avoided that people choose to be condemned by default, so that they play the clock, and hope that, when they return to the court, the prescription may have played.

Even though we do not have a lot of statistics in the judiciary, we know that these situations are not the most. They are even the rarest, for the matter of the opposition. In order to ⁇ that goal, we will greatly complicate the situation and ⁇ see people going to prison who would have nothing to do with it – it is not your goal, nor is it ours.

This could happen because those persons would have been sentenced to immediate arrest in the framework of a default sentence, and they would not be able to declare an opposition, which was declared unacceptable because it was not based on a justified state such as force majeure or the valid motive.

What will happen, Mr. Minister? It is the most vulnerable audience that will pay the cost of legislative changes such as those you propose. This fragile audience does not already understand most of the time what happens to him, who does not know that he will have to go to the audience, who does not learn it until well afterwards, when it is already too late, you risk finding him where you do not want him, that is, in the prison universe.

This measure, which is unfair, especially in the case of this public, is not compatible with international texts. Belgium’s international commitments and obligations do not allow us to follow the path you propose to us today with this bill.

This is somewhat the same principle for the grief call, although here too we can join you regarding the limitation of unnecessary calls, which are only meant to save time. Asking people to make a grief call makes sense if you really motivate the call.

If, as we have heard since the beginning of the commission work, these complaints will consist simply in filling a model that will be at the implant, on which you will have to check boxes, people will check all boxes to be sure not to be mistaken, not to be limited in their call. Then, you will go beyond the goal of your reform.

You will have no fewer appeals, they will always be as extensive, unless the appeal judge’s appeal is necessarily and formally limited to what has been mentioned in your template available to the justiciable. In the end, the reasoning of the appeal act should not serve only as a pretext for limiting it.

We discussed in a committee the difficulty of those who appear without a lawyer, the power that is recognized to the public prosecutor to make a broader appeal after the convicted, without the latter being informed and without having the possibility to extend his appeal. We also discussed all the problems that may arise in the event of a change of counsel between the time an appeal is interjected and the time the appeal is pledged.

A lawyer does not necessarily have the same view of a case as the colleague he succeeded. He may have to successfully raise before a court of appeal complaints or grounds that would not have been addressed by the previous council of the convicted; he would therefore find himself in the inability to assert rights, which he would have been justified to assert.

Mr. Minister, you are making changes to the external legal status of detainees but mainly for people in a difficult and vulnerable situation, who are not allowed to stay in Belgium but are still in our prisons. Many of those we heard during our hearings said the evil they thought of these provisions.

Finally, let me refer to the use of lawyers. Our colleague Van Hecke, the first, in committee, drew our attention to a deviation from what the use of the procedure or judicial staff should be. You propose that, tomorrow, in front of the police court, instead of a substitute for the King’s prosecutor, it be a prosecutor’s lawyer sitting. The attorneys, despite their competence, are not full-fledged judges. I remind you that, if the prosecutor’s office today requests the police courts, it is to remedy what appeared before as a real farce, where one saw that the representative of the prosecutor’s office was the police commissioner. Everyone knows that a commissioner or police officer was not necessarily the guarantee of an obvious competence to go to a police court. We wanted to end that by saying that the prosecutor’s office would take care of this kind of situation. It was more credible, more serious, it made more sense. Today, you do some sort of a return, the prosecutor’s lawyers will do the job and while they do that, they are no longer at the service of the substitutes they are supposed to help.

If you consider that the public prosecution should intervene before the police courts, by grace, appoint substitutes. Fill out the framework and the substitutes will be able to perform their duties before the courts where you believe the voice of the prosecutor should be heard. This would have a much clearer logic.

This is never an obligation, it is a possibility. We may not go to the court of assises. You cannot go before a single judge (“pot-pourri I”). You may not send a lawyer. But the possibility will exist.

I would like to draw your attention to the issue of prosecutor’s lawyers. It will happen that on the occasion of a hearing of the police court – the police court deals with serious cases with significant personal and human consequences – one will decide to send a prosecutor’s lawyer, while on the occasion of another hearing of that court, one will decide to send the replacement of the King’s prosecutor. In other words, when one considers that an interesting affair deserves the interest of the prosecutor’s office, one shall send the King’s prosecutor, while when one considers that it is a less serious affair, one shall send the prosecutor’s lawyer. This is a two-speed justice, a justice represented by two types of magistrates. This is an evolution that we cannot accept.

It is nevertheless extraordinary to find that it is enough to say that one will finish his speech to be applauded while discussing fundamental elements relating to the functioning of justice, with fundamental and essential considerations. The turn taken today, however, is not without importance. The various measures that were taken under this government, but also under the previous government – I do my mea culpa here since we were then part of the majority – aim to have an increasingly secure view of things, which is not the best way to make justice in a democratic society worthy of that name.

I will conclude my speech, for the great pleasure of those who wish, by referring to the conclusion of a white card published in La Libre Belgique and signed by two eminent magistrates, now retired. By the way, Mr. Minister, your project also includes a measure relating to the situation of magistrates after the retirement age. This is a measure that can also be welcomed.

These magistrates wrote this: “Fighting prison overpopulation, allowing the judge to retain its role of mediator between law and citizens, respecting the principle of arms equality, these are key issues.”

Justice must more than ever care about people, save them as much as it can the pain that every conflict necessarily generates. This goes through punishments administered serenely in order to educate, correct, insert, socialize; punishments pronounced by courts and courts to which the means are given to listen to the defendants, to perceive their lives and to adapt their decisions to the diversity of situations, respecting the fundamental principles that govern the fair trial.

Equal access to the judge, equality of weapons, respect for contradictory, this justice, I recognize myself in it and I hope that we will not deviate too much in the weeks and months to come. But I still have fears when we see what we are proposing to vote today.

Every day is being demonstrated again that a soft approach has only produced severe crime. Today, untreatable detainees receive compensation because they would have been ill-treated in prison. Heavy criminals are still released today after having served a third of their sentence. Prison sentences of less than three years will be converted into a period of home detention. Foreign thief gangs are given free play due to the lack of international cooperation. Procedural mistakes cause gangsters to go laughing freely. Those who ultimately have the resources, who can in many cases purchase their process without problems.

Through the decades of neglect of Justice, by the policy of dust and the soft approach associated with it, our society has almost forgotten what a normal justice policy means. In my modest opinion, it concerns four essential elements: first, the unhindered establishment of the criminal offences; second, an appropriate response by the public prosecutor; third, of course, a just punishment and, fourth, the consequential execution of the sentence imposed. I am convinced that it can and should be more efficient in these four areas, and that especially the latter element constitutes the biggest problem facing Justice today.

Therefore, my expectations for the potpourri II law were very high. If you want to make Justice credible again, you must turn the wheel in criminal law and criminal proceedings. However, the result that is announced today disappoints me. Of course, there are good elements. I have already heard my colleagues from the opposition here crack the penalties. I think that is a very good measure. There are still good things in it. Expanding the repatriation of convicted persons is a step in the right direction. You won’t be surprised that, in my case, there could have been more.

However, you also missed a lot of opportunities. Life-long is still not life-long and that crazy law-Lejeune is still not abolished.

I realize that the major reform of the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code is yet to come, but many of the changes you make today in this bill would be much better done in a broader reform of the criminal law, within a reform with a vision. What is happening today is some isolated changes here and there, making the risk far too high that the balance between the parties in the criminal procedure will be disturbed. If, for example, as in this draft law, you give the prosecutor’s office more powers, that, on the other hand, should be accompanied by more rights of defence during a preliminary investigation, because otherwise you are at risk of an imbalance between the parties.

The discussion has repeatedly referred to the budgetary tightness within which this draft was implemented. The savings are a clear red thread.

Completely driven by the urge to save, by the process economy, the shift to the correctional courts, which today has already been said a lot. Specifically, the most serious crimes will receive the same procedural treatment as the wicked companies. The extensive right to dispute, including the hearing of witnesses and experts, disappears. The investigation, the finding of the truth, in those most serious crimes will be done much less at court than in the court of Assises. It is simply impossible, because the workload of the judges in the correctional courts simply does not allow such a way of working. The judges will therefore have to rely much more on merely the criminal file. However, if the criminal file becomes more important, it must incorporate more guarantees for the parties, because otherwise you are at risk of infringing on the fundamental rights of the parties, resulting in a distortion of the balance between the parties and also a much greater chance of judicial errors.

The preliminary recognition of guilt, the guilty plea, also creates a gap, namely between the prosecutor and the other parties. It is logical that there may be an accelerated path for those who confess, but that also involves a risk. After all, the higher the negotiation margin for the prosecutor’s office, the greater the likelihood of arbitrariness and abuse. The pressure on the suspect to confess, no matter how, can be very high. In the present draft, the negotiating margin for the parket is quite wide.

The main fundamental criticism of the bill is the introduction of electronic surveillance as an autonomous punishment. Also here it is a measure of austerity considerations, but now at the expense of safety. The greatest pain point today at Justice lies in the unreliable, even mostly completely absent, execution of imposed sanctions. In practice, it has been shown for years that the majority of effective prison sentences are not or barely executed. The criminal policy of the last twenty years is characterized by a kind of deep aversion to the prison sentence, which is so-called harmful to the detained and therefore counterproductive. Instead of finally breaking with that mentality, with this bill, you continue to see the prison sentence as an ultimum remedy. That is a dogma from the leftist view that consciously focuses on non-execution and the systematic reduction of effective cell punishments. Furthermore, the role of the criminal judge is dramatically limited.

With the draft law you give the criminal judge a number of alternatives to the imprisonment, because the prison sentence remains for you a true ultimum remedy, a last resort when the other penalties are not meaningful. In this regard, we differ fundamentally. I do not share that naive and world-strange view that a prison is seen only as a means of keeping the truly dangerous, preferably not too long, away from society. That vision was the basis of the orientation note, from 1996, of then Minister of Justice Stefaan De Clerck, which defended an absolute ceiling for prison capacity of up to 8 000 cells. This is the absurd philosophy of reductionism. As a result, it has been refused for years to expand the capacity of those cells. The overpopulation – you know the story – increased systematically, and one continued on that twisted path of non-execution of prison sentences. While in recent years it has finally come to realize that the capacity of the prisons needs to be expanded and work is finally being done to expand the capacity, now take a step back.

Due to its security character and its example function, Vlaams Belang believes in the necessity and effectiveness of the imprisonment, not only for the detained person, but for the whole society. We have always, until today, been of the opinion that a actually executed prison sentence is much more deterrent than a single-band regime. Gidsland Netherlands shows that it is really efficient. In the 1980s there was a turnaround, when it was decided to systematically switch to the execution of prison sentences, no matter how short they were. That signaled that impunity no longer exists. It worked very preventively. Crime has fallen. There is now an overcapacity of cells, precisely because there are fewer criminals now, not because they are allowed to run around on the streets with some alternative punishment, as you would like to do. Your intentions, for budgetary reasons, will have the opposite effect. Theft and rape cannot be solved with a single band, nor does the problem of radicalization among Muslims, by the way.

Enchants are a gift to the travelling Eastern European thief gangs. These are not even my words, but those of Professor Brice De Ruyver and those of Antwerp investigative judge Karel Van Cauwenberghe. In those Eastern European thief gangs, one can not even turn the single band, just because they do not have an address here.

In the Dutch example, the prison sentence must be revalued so that it has a deterrent effect. Only in this way can Justice regain credibility and our criminal judges regain the respect they deserve.

We therefore advocate for a meaningful and humane punishment. Contrary to what some argue, prisons for the Flemish Interest are not gaps in which suspects or convicts must rot away. Most of the prisoners will be released after completion of the sentence. They must be prepared for reintegration into society. In fact, prisons must provide basic comfort, but they must not be refined internships that lose their deterrent character.

The fact that the Flemish Interest advocates the maintenance of law and order through a harsh approach to crime does not mean that we are unnuanced in favour of draconian repression against anyone who takes a sluggish step.

Repression is in many cases the best form of prevention. When potential criminals know that they have a high chance of being punished when they are caught, they will be less likely to go the wrong path.

Fewer inmates in prisons and therefore more investments in alternative punishment and bands should not be a goal in itself. On the contrary, there must be as many people in prisons as is required to ensure the safety on the streets. Several studies have already shown that effective enforcement requires the capacity of the prison to be expanded to at least 15 000 seats.

Colleagues, it is up to the government to fundamentally guarantee the right to security by fighting all forms of crime strongly and efficiently. The government must guarantee to all citizens the same security without distinction of rank or status. Therefore, the safety of people should not be put at risk by saving. Safety is essential, not accessibility. Having more eye for savings than for safety works both short- and long-term nefast. The neglect of security, thus attracting even more crime, even more foreign criminals, comes back as a bumerang. It will eventually cost the government much more and that is just the opposite of your intention.

The Flemish Interest cannot therefore support this project. I hope that in the major reform of the penalty enforcement, which is yet to come during this legislature, something and something will be corrected. We will be very vigilant.

Mr. Minister, as you hear, the bill under consideration will make the procedures faster and more efficient, without compromising, say you, the quality with which justice is administered or without compromising the rights of defence.

It is true that this second bill called “pot-pourri II”– recognize that the term is unrelated to the content, except to understand that it may contain some false notes –, on a list of four quoted in the Justice Plan, reveals contradictions with respect to this plan.

It must be said that we would have hoped to first have knowledge of the 4th part, the one that you announce for the end of the legislature and relating to the penitentiary policy and which should have been the cornerstone of the whole reform of the criminal system. How to design a reform of criminal law without first addressing the major guidelines to be achieved in the framework of a new penitentiary policy.

This is, therefore, a first paradox, a first reason for regret and surprise. Moreover, two committees were mandated, as recalled by other speakers. So this project is now put to the vote before even the committees could make their conclusions and this is probably a source of legal uncertainty.

The main measures of your project are the extension of the prescription period, the limitation of the control of preventive detention, the reduction of the possibilities of granting imprisonment leave and exit permits or the extension of correctional sentences. Obviously, these measures will aggravate the prison overpopulation that you claim to fight in your Justice Plan, presented a year ago, and which was welcomed with interest by members of the Justice Commission. Indeed, since Ms. Onkelinx, we had no longer the right to a Minister of Justice explaining with a certain consistency his political objectives. I will always recognize this quality of having presented a summary document. But why so far away from it?

It was permissible to say that the draft law on prison establishments could have been adapted in the first place. In this way, you would have respected with a well-affirmed will your first, significant and courageous commitment – I acknowledge it – to reduce the prison population, in particular through alternative punishments. Therefore, we are now facing a project that is inserted in portrait of your declarations of intent.

Finally, the government would ultimately rely on the implementation of the principle law of 12 January 2005 on the internal legal status of detainees, of which only the articles concerning security, disciplinary regime and surveillance have entered into force, at the expense of the detention plan which, however, aims to maximize the chances of reintegration of detainees.

It is therefore a serious breach, which has already been highlighted and condemned by the Brussels Court of First Instance in a judgment of 4 October 2013. The executive power is obliged to fix the date of entry into force of a law within a reasonable time. Today, however, the entry into force of too many laws – and, a fortiori, reform laws – on the criminal level, in the broad sense, has been postponed.

It is true that, for the examination of this bill, several experts have been heard. It must be acknowledged that, unlike the first so-called "pot-pourri I" package, they exercised some influence, even though, essentially, they were not always heard. In this regard, I allow myself to point out that undertaking a reform by having almost the entire judiciary world against yourself – even though I admit that you have obtained satisfaction on some accessory points – is taking the risk of seeing a law remain a dead letter. You know very well that law practitioners, and you remain a good thing that you are temporarily abstracted from this role, always find the argument to limit the actual scope desired by the legislator.

Therefore, I am submitting amendments and would rather comment on them than return to all the findings that I agree with and have already been expressed by other speakers.

The first four amendments reject the new prison sentence from 30 to 40 years and, consequently, the increase in the ceiling of criminal penalties that the draft proposes to include in the Criminal Code. This increased correctional penalty is contrary to the objectives of the Justice Plan. Nevertheless, you have not heard the fierce criticisms of the State Council and other authorities on criminal policy.

However, it is necessary to promote the reduction of recurrence, as it is indispensable in that it tends to increase the safety of citizens and prison personnel. You regarded it as a priority, but we do not see, today, the translation of that concern in your bill.

As stated by the counsel of the Brussels Court of Appeal. Peter Hartoch said that imposing more than 30 years of penalties makes no sense, because sooner or later prisoners will have to be released. Most scientific studies, devoted to the deterrent effect of penalty duration on criminal behavior, show that an increase in penalty duration has no deterrent effect on behavior. On the contrary! And I have known, as a lawyer, as a lawyer, people who have been subjected to very long periods of imprisonment. They adopt, upon their departure, despite attempts to re-integrate socially and professionally, behaviors often severely disrupted with psychological disorders, often irreparable. I could explain cases that I personally experienced as a young lawyer. Consequently, very long prison sentences fail to meet their objectives of reintegration and protection of society.

The amendment I submit to Article 6 aims, on the other hand, to preserve the maximum period of correctional imprisonment to 20 years for crimes punishable by imprisonment of 20 to 30 years or more that have been correctionalized.

It must be recognised that the insertion of a sentence of 28 years – we ask what justifies this particular duration – is not justified in that it creates an enormous difference between the crimes punishable by imprisonment from 15 to 20 years which have been correctionalized and are therefore punishable by a sentence of 15 years, and the crimes punishable by imprisonment from 20 to 30 years which have been correctionalized and are therefore punishable by a sentence of 28 years, or a difference in sentence up to 13 years according to the category of crimes correctionalized and punishable by a prison penalty.

A contrario, the difference between the maximum period of deprivation of liberty provided before and after correctionalization of crimes punishable by imprisonment of 20 to 30 years, as well as for crimes punishable by imprisonment of 30 to 40 years, is minimal, i.e. two years. In the opinion of the State Council and the audited experts, this minimal difference is likely to lead the judges to retain the mitigating circumstances in an improper manner. When I told you that law practitioners always had the way to correct the errors of a wrong-thought law, but often by using certain concepts of law in a possibly inappropriate way, it was to warn you against this wrong-thought and bad-constructed law regarding the hierarchy of penalties.

My amendment, therefore, aims to preserve the bill in the draft of a possible appeal before the Constitutional Court for violation of Article 10 of the Constitution, since the small difference in punishment does not justify that some crimes come from the correctional court and others from the court of assises.

As for Article 12 of the draft, I fully understand the objective of excluding from the possibility of benefiting from a labour penalty the perpetrators of ⁇ serious acts. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that this increased impossibility to pronounce alternatives to prison punishment is contrary to the principle yet now firmly defended in the legal doctrine of the individualization of the punishment and constitutes an interference in the work of the magistrates, who are best placed to assess whether this type of punishment can be applied to a convicted person, in particular in order to maximize his chances of reintegration.

My amendment seeks, therefore, a balance by extending the prohibition of imposing an autonomous labour penalty not to perpetrators of acts which would be punishable, if they were not translated into crimes, by a maximum sentence of more than 20 years, but to 30 years of imprisonment.

As for article 59 of the draft which extends the limitation periods of public action, I have already recalled in the framework of the bill "pot-pourri I" that extending the limitation period reduces to null the objectives that the legislator has assigned to the limitation, namely the need to conduct a trial on the basis of substantial evidence and to avoid judicial errors. This extension will not necessarily be made for the benefit of the victims, even though this is often invoked. This is for two main reasons.

First, the extension of the limitation period would require victims to establish the reality, nature or importance of the injury suffered when this becomes more difficult, or even impossible, due to the loss of evidence. Secondly, accused persons will more often invoke the exceeding of the reasonable time to benefit from a mitigation of the sentence, or even a simple declaration of guilt, or even the inadmissibility of the prosecution.

I therefore fear that we will create for the victims a false hope of certain and severe condemnation by society at the end of a procedure that was conducted by extending the limitation period.

I believe that it is sometimes more reasonable and more acceptable for some victims to explain why the prosecutor's office, the investigative circles, have failed to establish the truth or the search for the truth in particular circumstances in a certain way rather than to give rise to hope by extending the prescription deadline. Extending this period means continuing proceedings without ever leading to a real outcome and, if an offender was identified, not seeing him convicted in a certain way because he will be able to invoke the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the reasonable deadline. I believe that at the end of such a procedure, the frustration will be even greater than if there were the frankness to explain the reasons why sometimes justice cannot go beyond what it is humanly possible to do.

The extension of mini-instruction to search, proposed by Article 63, is not acceptable in that it accentuates the already existing imbalance between the prosecutor’s office and the accused. I cannot say too much what the wisdom of our judicial system is between the function of the prosecutor and the function of the judge of instruction. Ms. Özen correctly recalled it. It is this right of cross-looking between the prosecutor’s office and the judge of instruction that allows to avoid excessive abuse of power in certain investigations. You’ve probably heard this from most judges. Each verifies what the other accomplishes in the exercise of his very discretionary powers. It should not be hidden; both the prosecutor and the judge of instruction have discretionary powers. This cross-look is part of our subtle balance in organizing the inquiry or instruction. Anything that puts this balance into question will make the criminal correctional justice of our country lose in quality, which, however, is often cited as an example and serves as a reference for states seeking other balances within the judicial power.

The balance of powers is not just a balance between the established powers (executive, judicial and legislative). It is also to have counter powers within each power that helps to avoid excesses. As the syndical association of magistrates underlined during the hearings, it is an illusion to make believing that by redistributing the tasks between the prosecutor’s office and the judges of instruction, we will solve the problem of sub-effective. Unfortunately, the prosecutors are not better accommodated than the seated magistrates regarding the problem of staff management.

Let’s not talk about what we believe to be profits in terms of budget savings. They are very illusory. Even assuming that this would be demonstrated, which is not the case, it would be unrelated to the protection of fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the current organization of the judiciary and the judiciary in criminal matters.

With regard to articles that tighten the conditions for the validity of the opposition, it is clear that dilatory opposition must be avoided under the penalty of not being able to bring justice within reasonable time. This is a goal that we can share. But once again a kind of automaticity of the law is not desirable in this case: it is necessary to leave to the magistrate the care to assess whether the defect was justified by reasons that can be invoked and also leave the possibility of exercising certain means of appeal. It is therefore this automatic character that you introduce by law to sanction the lack of force majeure justifying the opposition that is not acceptable.

I think that should also be amended. My amendment aims to preserve the rights of defence by deleting this article, which goes against the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, which has already held that the refusal to reopen a proceedings that have been conducted by default in the absence of any indication that the accused had renounced his right to appear is considered a flagrant denial of justice, which clearly means that it is still the right of defence that must prevail over any other consideration of the effectiveness of the proceedings.

As for the procedure for the preliminary recognition of guilt, it is indeed an orientation that my party has been calling for many years, in that it will accelerate the processing of relatively simple cases and can thus contribute to the fight against judicial retardation in particular before correctional courts. But the terms deserve to be clearer. In particular, the person subject to prosecution must have the necessary time to decide whether or not to accept the legal qualifications held and the proposed penalties. Ten days is too short. My amendment therefore aims to increase the consideration period to thirty days.

And believe me, with the ten-day deadline, you will probably have little adherence to this new possibility to determine the outcome of the prosecution, while with the time of reflection and the work of persuasion of the lawyer counsel, which is crucial to persuade a suspect to agree to resort to this new procedure, it will be different. Let us not hide it, the role of the counseling lawyer will be essential, it will take time to get acquainted with the case and do his work of persuasion. Justice will win.

It is not the ten-day period that gives a guarantee of effectiveness to the new procedure.

I will conclude with the future of the Court of Assises. I agree with what was said by several speakers at this tribune. I cannot understand this from a majority who boasts to want to bring justice as close as possible to the concerns of the citizens. It has not often been heard that the judiciary was too far away from the deep aspiration of citizens to understand the functioning of justice! I cannot then understand that those who want the judiciary to be more present and more accountable to society reduce the role of the court of assises. It is true that the court of assises has a logic of the course of the debates, the procedure that remains atypical in relation to the so-called professional justice. It is true that the theatralization or the excessive mediatisation of certain court trials can lead – which some denounce – to a too popular justice. All practitioners will tell you that, except in very exceptional cases, the jurors of the Court of Assises demonstrate a conscience and a rigour always respected by all parties to the trial – except in very special circumstances – and that the very fact that justice is rendered by citizens drawn in cases that mark the public opinion, is the very condition of the collective adherence of society to justice.

Some lawyers and some magistrates say that professional magistrates have at least the knowledge of jurisprudence, they have the comparison points to appreciate. I challenge those practitioners who would denounce the possible deviations or excesses of the court of assises to make a comparative analysis of the judgments pronounced by the jury of the court of assises – with the surely contribution of professional magistrates, which is a guarantee in our system and could be further reinforced – and to check whether there are such deviations in the sentences pronounced by the courts of assises in cases more or less comparable.

A relative unity in the jurisprudence of the courts of assises, although some say it, is verified almost every time. As it has been said, these classes of assises remind us what, ultimately, is the work of justice. Without this, there is no more work of justice. If the citizen does not have the deep conviction that justice is rendered in his name, in the name of society, if that membership has disappeared – and we now know what the divorce between citizens and the powers, the institutions – if the judicial power does not eventually become but an ordinary public service, banalized, detached from the perception and understanding of the citizens, I fear then that your pot-pourri will give rise to the worst of tintamarras.

Let us start again from the beginning. well well ! Mr Vuye is! You learn quickly. As I said before, the PTB considers it necessary to reform the judicial system. But there is a “but,” Mr. Minister. These reforms must be made in the interests of the people. Unfortunately, we do not see this in the pot-pourris leaflets I, II,... So think of Ripoux 1, 2, 3. These are films. Under the cover of effectiveness, the real goal of the pursuit is to reduce the already largely underfunded budget of Justice, to make access to justice more difficult for citizens, and to limit democratic rights.

The PTB has already voted against the pot-pourri I: sorry. In fact, this law limits access to justice by making it more expensive and complex. The Pot-Pourri II continues on this antidemocratic path. First, it introduces a more repressive policy. Second, it undermines the rights of defence. Third, it strengthens the executive at the expense of the judiciary. Fourth, it provides for a court of assises reduced to nothing.

This is a good summary of the law, I think. Did you understand me? So I suppose you will ask the majority to vote against.

The PTB is far from being the only one to express such criticism. First, there were the objections of the State Council. Then, we were able to hear in committee the virulent remarks of the Ordes of Lawyers, the League of Human Rights, academics, judges of instruction and other members of the magistrature, who did not hesitate to speak out against this reform. There has even been a question of “recession of civilization”, an expression already cited by some colleagues.

Let us look at the four points. This project first advocates a more repressive policy, as evidenced by the extension of imprisonment sentences. Our country has long experienced a problem of prison overpopulation. A thoughtful reform of the criminal law could address this. In addition, Mr. Minister, you have stated that you want to take care of this. It is therefore quite surprising to see that the "pot-pourri II" extends the sentences. I quote the president of the Human Rights League: “The correctional sentences have already gone from a maximum of ten years of imprisonment to a maximum of twenty years when the 2009 law was amended. Today, the government wants to extend them to 40 years. The maximum of a correctional prison sentence will thus be quadrupled within a few years."This more repressive policy also results in longer preventive detention. Indeed, from the third decision of the Council Chamber, it would reach two months instead of one.

Then, the rights of the defence are compromised, since the “pot-pourri II” introduces a reform of the procedure before the main judge. It is therefore a fundamental right that is beaten up in the name of budgetary efficiency. Criminalist Walter Van Steenbrugge writes on his blog: “Particularly, don’t let efficiency stifle fundamental rights. It is precisely where the battle hurts, because it goes from bad to bad when it comes to the protection of human rights. I expect in the near future a number of serious convictions from Belgium."Mr. Minister, wait for our country's convictions by the European Court of Human Rights. I think, in this case, of the largely insufficient possibilities of contradiction in criminal proceedings, of the overwhelming power attached to the ink of the police pen, of the enormous inequality between the public prosecutor and the other parties to the trial.

The third criticism concerns the strengthening of the executive at the expense of the judiciary. The "pot-pourri II" extends the possibility of intervention of the judge of instruction to a mini-instruction. The Human Rights League observes that there is a risk of reducing, once again, the prerogatives of the judge of instruction in favor of the prosecutor’s office. There are questions about the motives of the government. Is this fundamental right being attacked just for budgetary reasons, or is there more than that? Is it not also a matter of realizing this old aspiration of the public prosecutor to reduce, or even abolish, the role of the judge of instruction? This is an old claim that had already been formulated at the time of Franchimont. I wonder if it does not work today.

Finally, I come to the de facto abolition of the Court of Assises. This is ⁇ the issue that causes the most debate among actors in the world of justice. One of the opponents of this measure, penalist Jef Vermassen, who attended ⁇ a hundred trials, explains why they are important: “A trial is the only time when the citizen has contact with justice. This goes further than reports in the media. Thanks to the popular jury, there is an active involvement.”

Furthermore, the removal of seats puts the quality of instruction at risk. The same Mr. Vermassen fears that the treatment of extremely delicate cases such as homicides will be handled expeditively, and not in depth by correctional courts judges, as was the case with the correctionalization of the homicide attempt. He also adds: “Maybe we should talk about big tax files that drag for ten years to result in a prescription; for me, that’s the real waste.”

In conclusion, the PTB is convinced that profound changes are needed in the field of justice but the “pot-pourri” is absolutely not, and it is little to say, the path we want. Of course, action must be taken against crime, but the ambition must be the resocialization of the convicted and a comprehensive compensation for the victim. For this, it is necessary to establish a deep reflection and not an expedient law that will only have as a consequence an increase in repression, in addition without much effectiveness. This same repression is not applicable when it comes to white-collar crime. Even the N-VA through M. Vuye talked about class justice. This is the case because for large fraudsters, there is the criminal transaction system. Please rest assured, I’m not going to talk to you about diamonds.

We then criticize this logic of austerity that has won the cases of justice.

It threatens fundamental rights such as the right to defence, the right to a fair trial, the right to instruction and discharge and the de facto abolition of the Court of Appeals. Finally, an additional problem arises on a democratic level, namely an increasingly strong public prosecution at the expense of the investigative judge.

I would like to point out that, unfortunately, the BJP will not be able to support this project.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I assume that you will not insist that I repeat all the answers I have already given in the committee here in the plenary session at this advanced hour. However, I would like to say that I have responded very well to many of your arguments.

I am grateful to the majority and the opposition for the good cooperation we have been able to ⁇ in the committee, including following the hearings.

I have a few things to add to that, but it will not last long.

With regard to the prison overpopulation and the prison regime, I dare refer to the long discussions that we had yesterday in the committee and the report on it. I think we had a very good discussion and I have to tell you that under no circumstances would my ambition to reduce this overpopulation and reach a sustainable population of less than 10,000 prisoners be no longer present or I would realize it. You all know that in order to allow a widespread correctionalization, penalties in case of correctionalization had to be envisaged that were larger than those known so far. But you also all know that it is not because the maximum is important that the judge necessarily pronounces that maximum. As there is already a long tradition, Mrs. Onkelinx, of correctionalizing even major crimes – I remember the 2009 law that allowed the correctionalization of very major crimes – I think you can be comfortable with that.

As regards the amended balances, I would like to point out, first and foremost, the fact that, in my view, many balances have been amended in favor of the defendant. Take, for example, the question of conclusion deadlines. The Prosecutor’s Office, as well as the defendant’s lawyer, will be held by those conclusion deadlines. The lawyer of the defendant will always have the last word. Take, for example, the issue of appeal. It can be a little schools, just as the conclusions that we organized in potpourri I may look like schools. However, Ms. Van Cauter has rightly emphasized that due to the limitation of the appeal by the defendant, it is not possible to allow the prosecutor’s office to return a number of matters that are intended to be preserved in the subsequent appeal. That follow-up appeal can now be withdrawn, which is also a positive note for the accused.

There has been a lot of talk about resistance. I can imagine that on this point the opinion is that the rights have declined. However, I must note that I do not understand this correctly. A defect must only have a valid reason. It can’t be so difficult, right? In addition, the profession is always possible.

The guilty plea is in the favor of the accused. He should not accept it. He can accept it. He will also ask it in many cases himself because it is in his advantage.

In all these measures, I therefore do not feel where the rights of defence are compromised. There may be a different balance than the previous balance. The balance has changed. However, it is often more in the favor of the accused than it was before.

Mr. Brotcorne, you have recited very well what I always say. When it comes to mini-instruction and seats, I always return to the fact that the seat has the possibility to do what it wants in this case. Therefore, it is the seat that is responsible, and not the legislator who requires it to do certain things. The extension of mini-instruction to perquisition, I do not feel it as a limitation of the rights of the accused or as something that in the event that the investigation judge would see an advantage there, he can always take possession of the instruction.

Often, the search does not give results that can justify a judicial investigation. We all know this, dear colleagues. Those of you who are lawyers know that. Therefore, I ask you not to say that in this case, the rights of the accused are limited.

As for the seats, I understand that we are not necessarily happy with the fact that the accusation chamber will master the cases where there will be correctionalization or not. But you know very well, Mr. Brotcorne, that it is always possible, when the mitigating circumstances are not accepted by the Chamber of Accusations, to plead them before the Court of Assises. There is no incompatibility. I think I realized that you thought there would be one.

Regarding the assistance procedure, I would like to say again that it seems to me an added value that in a lot of correctionalizations an appeal is possible, while this is not possible in the case of assistance. I know that they say that I could have brought the appeal, I have heard that well and I will come back to it later. As far as I am concerned, this law is perfectly subject to evaluation if it were established that the correctional courts would not have the attention we expect from them on the part of the open debate and the proofing. I understand that comment very well and I am fully prepared, as for the parquet lawyers, to go deeper into it on the occasion of an evaluation.

Per ⁇ I need to say something more about the entry into force of the law as regards the participation of the seat in the debate on the debt issue. You know that so far the seat has only participated in the discussion on the penalty measure and not in the discussion on the debt question. Mrs. De Wit, you asked what happens to the transitional right if there is a assistance procedure that is suddenly caught by a problem related to the debt question.

Colleagues, let’s assume that the law is published on February 2, then the provisions amending the draft on the debt question will enter into force on February 12. Due to the immediate entry into force of the law on 12 February, the seat will have to participate in the discussion on the debt question, if that discussion takes place on 12 February or later. The only thing that could be problematic, but I think it is difficult to imagine in practice, is that a case would have been taken into consideration before 12 February and it would continue after 12 February. It is sufficient to point out to the presidents of our assise courts that they should avoid such a fusion of new and old law when dealing with the case, but that is a rare problem, in my opinion.

A new BIM and BOM bill is coming to the Chamber soon. At that point it will be clear whether Mr. Van Hecke can confirm his words, namely that we will further restrict the rights of the person being investigated or the person to be monitored. I do not believe it. Where appropriate, to the extent that we have amended it, we have accepted your amendments and have the usual method accompanied by the need to obtain the consent thereof from the head of service. I think you cannot overly complain about this.

Madame Özen, I’ve heard you say I believe, but maybe I’ve heard wrong, that in the case of a prisoner without a residence permit in the country, what is incorrectly called an illegal, there would be no way to give him an exit permit in case of illness. It is not true. It is perfectly possible to grant such people an exit permit in the event that this would be justified by family or medical reasons. This is included in the draft that is subject to your vote for now.

Dear colleagues, I sometimes have some difficulty in understanding why they say: we thought the justice plan was good, but we don’t think this is good.

I feel that I am somehow inconsistent. I do not understand. Indeed, in the Justice Plan, I announced the “pot-pourri” projects. I even said where the arrangement would be, in what ripe, Mr. Van Hees! You don’t look so much like Robert De Niro, but it’s you who makes this comparison! I recorded it at each recovery.

Given this measure, Mr. Brotcorne, I am not guilty of what you insinuate.

In any case, I would like to continue in the committee next week with potpourri III. There will be discussions about the detention. I hope that there is more interest in that it goes fast, because it should have been in effect for a while. I will do my utmost to bring them into effect. Potpourri IV is also coming, but we are fully preparing for the leap.

I promised debates on a number of topics. You have heard it well.

Mr. Cheron, I promised that there would be debates on issues such as the future of the investigation procedures relating to serious crimes. Be assured that these projects are progressing well and that I will keep the promises I made in the Justice Plan.

Another word, Mr. Cheron – because you were very brief, and I thank you for that. The circular is ready and will be presented to the Council of Ministers next week.

Do you have the word for a response?

Mrs. Ozen, you have the word.

Mr. Minister, I thank you for your explanations. No doubt, I do not agree with all of your opinions. We had the opportunity to carry out constructive work in committee, during debates that lasted whole days.

You say there are obviously changes. You cannot be blamed for this: you dare to change! But you claim that balance is always in the advantage of the warned and, on some particular points, I do not agree at all with your point of view. In what way is a bimensual appearance of a prisoner always presumed innocent to his advantage? In what way will the removal of the nullities that are there, in the case of telephone listening for example, to guarantee our dearest rights be positive? How will this bring a positive balance for the citizen? How will the increase in the duration of sentences have a positive effect on the prisoner and for society?

I’m looking forward to your “pot-pourri III” in June. We are not guessed. You tell us that things are in preparation. I prefer to discuss texts after having had the full knowledge of them. In terms of chronology, there is really a big concern in your methodology.

Jan. 14, 2016 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I am referring to the written report, which is ⁇ well written.

Mr. President, Mr. Minister of Defense absent, dear colleagues, the excellent work of our military is no longer to be demonstrated, especially in emergency situations and in helping the population. The "Homeland" mission illustrates this, like the permanent missions, ⁇ with the Royal Military Hospital or the demining service mobilized during the various searches that it has been carried out in the fight against terrorism.

We know that in the face of certain crisis situations, in a complementary way, only Defense has the necessary material and human resources to respond to them and help the Belgian, European, and even international citizens, especially through B-FAST. Therefore, existing or new synergies are to be found, to be amplified.

My Group has made aid to the Nation one of its five Defense Strategic Guidelines for 2015-2030. However, this government no longer makes aid to the nation a priority. than the opposite. I would like here, dear colleagues, to quote part of the intervention of one of my N-VA colleagues: “Defence is not a kind of alternative civil protection, let alone a platform for social workers.” I do not share this view of things at all.

At a time when this government uses the military as Swiss knives in an unprecedented way (repatriation of immigrants, faction missions) and charges these aid missions to the most fragile, it is still a little the hospital that laughs at charity. Indeed, Michel’s government agreement leaves no room for doubt on page 204 on his missions: “If these tasks involve additional costs for Defense, they will be charged.”

Dear colleagues, we are not talking about charity but about helping people and national, even European and international solidarity. However, this government applied this part of the government agreement before even the slightest strategic plan, yet it was also included in this same agreement. This government in fact charged for the first time some tasks of aid to the population, as in the framework of the Grand Froid plan. This is an unacceptable decision for my group. The weakest do not have to suffer from defence budget savings. This decision does and will date not because of the 7,000 euros of revenue expected for defence in Liège, for example, but because it announces an ideological change in the level of aid to the Nation.

If, thanks to the intervention of my group, this incomprehensible decision was finally cancelled by the minister, what will happen tomorrow? There is no answer. Despite recent announcement effects, the strategic plan is still not available and therefore it is impossible to say whether these missions of aid to the Nation, their importance and their gratuity, will be addressed there. We fear that, tomorrow, the military will pay the communes, or even the victims – why not? Help in the event of flooding.

Worse, we saw it yesterday, a continuation of search and rescue at sea is currently being studied. We can fear the worst.

My group submitted several update amendments following the visit of our committee to the Army Central Commission to accentuate these missions and their free.

It is in this context that I presented this text in the committee and it was rejected in a few minutes by the majority, increasing my concerns a little more.

The main purpose of this text is to send a clear message to the government so that it fully considers the so-called tasks of aid to the Nation in the future strategic plan.

With your nominative vote, I ask you to answer a simple question. Yes or no, should the missions of aid to the Nation be ⁇ ined, in graceful terms, when the civil authorities appeal to them?

There is no ambiguity. The priority of defence is and must remain the international operational capacity of our country. However, when the Defense does not use its personnel, equipment and infrastructure for its missions or preparation, it must put them to the service of civil society and public authorities, both inside and outside the country.

It is therefore necessary to avoid the public authorities being completely disempowered in the face of such situations, as unfortunately we fear, so the dark budget cuts that are imposed by this government on Defense (more than 2 billion) are enormous.

I thank you for your attention and I hope to get your support. I do not doubt for a moment because it is never too late to become wise. I invite you to meditate on a Chinese proverb: “When a wise man points to the moon, the simple man looks at the finger.”

At the time of the vote, dear colleagues of the majority, we will see how many of you will have looked at the finger.