A few days from the final vote of the bill for trust in justice, the tension rises between the custody of the seals and the profession: the bar of Paris calls to demonstrate Tuesday.
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The representatives of the lawyers managed to exasperate their former confrere Eric Dupond-Moretti, Minister of Justice. The discord focuses on the professional secrecy of the lawyer, whose guarantees are specified in the bill for confidence in the judicial institution. Despite “a tense hand” by the custody of the seals, which received, on October 25, on his initiative, the National Council of Bars (NBC), the Paris Bâtonnier and the Conference of Rugs, their “obstruction position” ended up annoying, according to his entourage.
The bill has been compromised between deputies and senators in Joint Joint Committee (CMP) on 21 October and can not, in principle, be more modified. Unless the Government tabled an amendment and that it is voted in the same terms when the text definitive reading at the Bourbon Palace, Tuesday, November 16, then to the Senate two days later.
m. Dupond-Moretti has thus initiated a multi-stakeholder dialogue with the Chairmen of the National Assembly law commissions, Yaël Braun-Pivet (the Republic in March), and the Senate, François-Noël Buffet (Republicans, LR), and the Representatives of lawyers to try to get out of the impasse. We are far away. The Paris Bar has already called upon to protest, Tuesday, before the National Assembly, while many law firms call on the President of the Republic. For the time being, telephone exchanges continue intensely, but without result.
A proposal too greedy
Initially, the government’s text proposed to guarantee the professional secrecy of the Defense. At first reading, the members unanimously extended this guarantee to the counsel activities of the lawyers, without the Minister of Justice opposed. Faced with the surveys of the National Financial Public Prosecutor’s Office and Bercy, concerned about the consequences for the work of investigators in tax evidence, the Senate has imposed limits. He voted the guarantee of the “professional secret of defense and the council”, but excludes that covering the consulting activity in the event of a judicial investigation for tax evasion, corruption, trading of influence and whitening these offenses.
Despite the advances of this text from the current law and the initial bill, lawyers attempted to convince Parliament to return to the version of the members. According to our information, the custody of the seals, however, suggested their representatives to propose a compromise before the meeting of the CMP. What they did not do, despite what would have been agreed.
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