Posted Sep 27, 2022, 7:13 PM
The budgetary effort committed by the executive in favor of justice cannot be denied. “After the historic double of +8% in 2021 and 2022, the ministry will benefit, for the third consecutive year, again from +8% in 2023”, welcomed Eric Dupond-Moretti on Tuesday. A Keeper of the Seals was literally over the moon to announce, as he presented the main lines of his new budget to the press, “having obtained 2 billion euros in additional credits, thus going from 7.6 billion euros in 2020 to 9.6 billion euros in 2023”.
A record progression which none of his predecessors can boast of, if you read the explanatory document provided by his services, and which is intended to be commensurate with the action to “catch up on thirty years of abandonment of justice” pursued by the government.
An effort to revalorize the professions
Firstly in terms of human resources with the announcement of the creation of 2,253 jobs in 2023. This is three times more than last year and practically a quarter of the “hiring program” (10,000 additional staff”) , on which Emmanuel Macron committed during the last presidential campaign, after the 7,500 job creations carried out under his first mandate.
A wave of recruitments that will have to be carefully managed, said the minister, given its rather massive nature. Especially within the judicial justice system where 1,220 new staff, including 200 magistrates and 191 clerks, are due to arrive in 2023. The prison administration, for its part, will benefit from 809 recruitments.
Legal professions whose attractiveness needs to be enhanced by salary increases. This 2023 budget thus provides for a further increase in appropriations under categorical measures at the “unprecedented level”, of 80 million euros in 2023.
Catch-up for prisons
On the side of the magistrates, Eric Dupond-Moretti confirmed the “unprecedented revaluation” of 1,000 euros gross per month on average announced on September 12. The cost of this measure, which will come into effect on 1er October 2023, amounts to 177 million euros in the finance bill for next year. Among the clerks, the effort of salary convergence with the bodies of equivalent level, which must be finalized for 2024, will mobilize 10 million euros.
The government’s other major catch-up action concerns prisons, which have returned to their “pre-Covid” state of overcrowding. More than 441 million euros are included in the ministry’s 2023 draft budget for the continuation of the “15,000 places” program, launched under Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term. A project whose completion, scheduled for 2027, will increase the capacity of the prison park to 75,000 places, for a total cost estimated at 3.3 billion euros.
