EDITORIAL. Too lenient, too slow… The Court of Justice of the Republic criticized again after the acquittal of Éric Dupont-Moretti

François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron have promised to remove it but it is still there. What should we do with the CJR?

The Court of Justice of the Republic acquitted on Wednesday November 29 the Minister of Justice who was being prosecuted for “illegal taking of interest”. Éric Dupont-Moretti was found not guilty, cleared of the accusation of having taken advantage of his ministerial position to initiate administrative investigations against magistrates with whom he was in conflict during his career as a lawyer. A decision welcomed by Élisabeth Borne and staged by Emmanuel Macron himself who took care to receive the Minister of Justice at the Élysée “in order to review current and future projects”.

The executive thus justifies the choice to keep him in office despite his indictment and the trial. Note all the same that Éric Dupont-Moretti is acquitted in the absence of “intentional element”. He was in a “objective situation” of conflict of interest, but it was not his fault, and he was not aware of it.

The urgency of a politically neutral body

This decision is criticized by some opposition parties. France Insoumise castigates a “political decision”, the National Rally is still demanding the resignation of the Minister of Justice, this time, due to incompetence. And this acquittal rekindles criticism of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), accused of being too lenient towards elected officials and too slow in its procedures. It is the only legal body capable of judging ministers for acts committed within the framework of their functions. And it is made up of three magistrates and 12 parliamentarians. A somewhat embarrassing mix of genres, even more so when it is the incumbent Minister of Justice who is therefore judged by his political peers, supporters and opponents, and by magistrates, independent of course, but who maintain a professional link with him .

Emmanuel Macron had promised to abolish the Court of Justice of the Republic but he did not do so, nor did François Hollande, who made the same commitment. The constitutional reforms undertaken have become bogged down. So, we understand that a specific system is necessary to protect ministers based on the risk that an avalanche of unjustified complaints paralyzes their action. But given the scale of the civic crisis, there is undoubtedly an urgent need to replace the CJR with a legal body composed differently, politically neutral, to restore the confidence of voters in their representatives. A democratic issue which should go far beyond the small partisan calculations of one or the other.