2023-04-21 12:39:25
Hard blow for Éric Dupond-Moretti. The Constitutional Council has just rejected a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) on the regimes of searches in ministries raised by the defense of the Minister of Justice, concerning the accusations of illegal taking of interest of which he is the subject. A counter-attack that the Constitutional Council considers “ineffective”.
Éric Dupond-Moretti’s lawyers, under the threat of a trial before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), a first for a Minister of Justice, considered that French law, which does not provide for any restriction when searches in a ministry, infringed the principle of separation of powers. The Constitutional Council recalled that this principle was not “a right or freedom that the Constitution guarantees” and therefore could not be the subject of a QPC.
“The Council refuses to recognize a constitutional value in the independence of the executive power when the parliamentary power as the judicial power benefit from special regimes with regard to searches”, regretted Patrice Spinosi, counsel to Éric Dupond-Moretti.
Accused of abusing his position as minister
At the hearing, on April 11, the lawyer recalled that the Constitutional Council had recognized in 2015, in connection with a search in a court, that the fact that the code of criminal procedure does not specify “under what conditions a element covered by the secrecy of the deliberation can be seized” was contrary to the “principle of independence of the courts”.
Drawing a parallel between the two situations, he was moved “that magistrates, even members of the CJR, could seize and take cognizance of confidential documents apprehended indiscriminately, in the absence of any specific control? seeing it as a “risk of instrumentalization of legal proceedings” for political purposes.
As a reminder, the Chancellery had been searched for about fifteen hours by magistrates of the CJR (Court of Justice of the Republic) and around twenty gendarmes in July 2021. The Keeper of the Seals is accused of having taken advantage of his function of minister, a few weeks after his appointment, to order the general inspection of justice to carry out administrative inquiries against magistrates with whom he had been in opposition when he was a lawyer.
The Minister has lodged eight appeals in this procedure, and in particular against the decision rendered in October by the CJR ordering that he be tried. The Court of Cassation should examine them in the coming months.
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