Vers la mort annoncée du juge d’instruction en France

• Autores: Elisabeth Schneider
• Localización: Eucrim: the European Criminal Law Associations' fórum, ISSN 1862-6947, Nº. 1-2, 2009 (Ejemplar dedicado a: The Development of European Criminal Procedure Law), págs. 49-57
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article deals with the reform proposals in France pertaining to the replacement of the investigative judge (juge d’instruction) by a new authority (juge de l’instruction) with the mandate to control the investigations carried out under the responsibility of the prosecution. In the first part, the article highlights the different points of criticism expressed over the past decades concerning the concept of the investigative judge (I.). The first part also shows the current competences of the investigative judge in the criminal procedure law of France. The article further illustrates the converging points between the two different proposals relating to the reform of the investigative judge, which are, on the one hand, the proposals made by President Sarkozy in his speech of 7 January 2009 and, on the other hand, the report of the Léger Commission, which was mandated with elaborating proposals regarding the reform of the criminal law and criminal procedure (II.). In a third part, the article presents arguments made in favor or against the suppression of the investigative judge (III.). The article concludes that a suppression of the investigative judge implies a reorganisation of the prosecution office in order to be in conformity with the requirements of European law, namely in order to implement the findings of the Medvedyev case of the European Court of Human Rights stating that the public prosecutor in France cannot be considered a judge in the sense of Article 5 para. 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (IV.).