Editorial: The cité judiciaire, an idea from the past?

This article is provided to you free of charge. If you want to support our team and promote quality journalism, subscribe now.

Bringing together all the players in the judicial world on a single site was the ambition that guided the founders of the Judiciary City in the 1990s. The idea was as much to encourage contact and dialogue between the various bodies, from the Magistrate's Court to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Superior Court of Justice, as it was to offer citizens an identifiable, recognisable and reassuring point of contact. Anyone who turns up at the Magistrate's Court when he or she is expected at the District Court will only have to walk a few dozen metres to get to the right place. The cité judiciaire is the one-stop justice centre perched on the edge of the Ville-Haute.

The cité judiciaire was already feeling cramped when it was inaugurated in 2008, and this has not improved over the years as its activity has increased in proportion to the population of the Grand Duchy. More magistrates and referendaries are needed to support the judges – but where are they to be placed? The Public Prosecutor's Office, which is responsible for managing the premises of the judicial system, has become an expert in the art of creating more space: dividing up a meeting room to accommodate three offices, and soon offices for two people will accommodate three or four. Judicial overcrowding. The time for tricks is over, and relocation has already begun with the European Public Prosecutor's Office, the Public Prosecutor's Department for the Execution of Sentences, and soon the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Criminal Records Office and the Family Court Judges (Jaf).