Le droit belge dans le concert européen de la justice négociée

Abstract

The plea bargaining paridigme of la justice négociée has traversed the ocean to satisfy the necessities and to accelerate lighten the load of the ordinary criminal justice process and has taken its place, based on different or varying modalities, in most European countries. Thus, the pattegiamento italien consecrates its negotiated justice in the full sense of the term, while the French plaider coupable (guilty plea) retains an attenuated form supposing the simple adhesion of the suspect to the proposition of the prosecution to relie on a simplified process recognizing the acceptance of culpability. Belgian law is, nevertheless and still particularly impermeable to this general movement. This provides the opportunity to interrogate the motives and reasons for this reticence. Doing this will bring a certain clairity to the evolution of other European systems. Despite this reticence, one observes, nevertheless, that the penal transaction, for which the scope was considerably enlarged in 2011, opens in fact a space for informal negotiation between the prosecution and the defense, inducing the fact that the movement tending to introduce more consentualism into the criminal justice process inevitable. The increase in power and importance of la justice négociée still poses the quesiton with regard to the importance recognized for the confession, to the role of the ministère public and the judge, and more fundamentally, in relation to a model of justice that flows therefrom : a justice consecrated to the inequalities among parties to the process, a justice searching for a more formal and substantial truth. © ERES.