The Joint Joint Commission, gathered Thursday morning on the bill “for confidence in the judicial institution”, selected the version of the Senate providing exceptions to the protection of the lawyers’ secret
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The protection of the professional secrecy of lawyers will not be limitless. Thus decided on Thursday, October 21, the Joint Joint Committee (CMP) bringing together seven members and seven senators to develop a compromise on the bill “for confidence in the judicial institution”.
This CMP that has been conclusive, it remains at the two assemblies to vote the text, without the possibility of modifying it. The main disagreement between the National Assembly, which voted this bill at first reading on May 25, and the Senate, it voted on 29 September, focused on the protection of the lawyers’ professional secrecy. This is the more restrictive version of the Senate which has therefore been retained in a slightly amended form.
The Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, had enrolled in his bill the sacralization of the “Professional Secret Defense”. But the members voted unanimously of the amendments to go well beyond and inscribe the protection of professional secrecy for the counsel activities of lawyers, including tax matters. It was a strong demand from the profession to which the minister, himself, ex-lawyer, did not oppose parliamentary debates.
The lawyers heard
The bill as out of the Bourbon Palace has aroused very great concern among specialized investigative investigative services, international corruption and anti-competitive practices. The Senate had therefore modified the text by introducing exceptions to the protection of secrecy on counsel activities when judicial investigations deal with tax evidence, corruption, influence trafficking or money laundering.
The profession of lawyer has very mobilized in recent days to try to weigh on the arbitration of the CMP. “The Senate wishes to focus on investigating the fundamental freedoms, among which the essential law, for the litigants, not to self-incriminate”, thus still pleaded a Kyrielle of lawyers in a tribune published on the 20th October by Le Monde.
“We had a real wish to move on this important text with the senators. We found a compromise by taking over the prejudices of the Senate and the actors of anti-fraud, anti-corruption and anti-slip, which emphasized the risk. Too wide definition of professional secrecy made the investigation efficiency “, justifies with the world Yaël Braun-Pivet, President (the Republic on the Marche) of the Commission of the laws of the National Assembly, at the end of the CMP.
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