Speaking at the opening of the new judicial year, Abdennabaoui underlined that the lower courts recorded some 5,094,712 cases for the year 2022, i.e. 483,476 more compared to the previous year.
Thus, the magistrates have made significant efforts in the pursuit of their constitutional missions, ruling on 99.54% of the various cases in progress, i.e. 4,356,970 cases, with an increase of 13% compared to 2021, a- he says.
He pointed out that the 13.47% increase in the number of cases brought before the various courts of the Kingdom (4,377,033 in 2022 against 3,857,389 cases in 2021) caused a 2.8% increase in cases in instance compared to 2021, with 20,063 cases remaining pending in the various courtrooms in Morocco at the end of the judicial year.
For the judicial officer, if the urgency of increasing the number of magistrates is justified by the considerable lack of human resources in relation to the large number of cases (1,700 cases for each magistrate and 7 judgments for each working day) , other factors require the recruitment of new magistrates for the next few years, including the opening in perspective of 14 new courts, some of which are ready and the obligation to operationalize 23 resident judge centers and to replace more than 100 magistrates for end of mission or other reasons, also emphasizing the need to overcome the situation of lack of staff in the courts and to support the increase in the number of pending cases (nearly 10% each year).
In the same vein, he specified that the congestion of the courts by cases is not limited to the courts of first instance, given that the Court of Cassation also suffers severely from it, and that its situation has become untenable in relation to its objectives. , such as the unification of case law and the supervision of legal action in the courts in order to achieve judicial security.
Thus, the Court of Cassation recorded 52,676 new cases during the year 2022, with an increase of nearly 7.68% compared to 2021 (48,919 cases), i.e. 3,757 more cases, noted the judicial official. .
He noted that in addition to the cases still pending from previous years, the number of which amounts to 45,644, the cases dealt with before the Court of Cassation for the previous year were close to 98,320 cases, with an increase of 8 .25% compared to 2021 (7,497 cases), increasing the share of each judge to more than 550 files, i.e. more than double the maximum number of judgments that the magistrates of the court managed to render, which was close to an average of 230 decisions for each advisor.
Despite the significant efforts made by the judges of the Court of Cassation, who issued a total of 48,423 decisions, with an increase of 6.88% compared to 2021 and a percentage of nearly 92% of cases registered, these figures represent less than 50% of the cases before the court, he noted, adding that the efforts of the magistrates of the Court reached its peak during this year, since the average annual production of each counselor in the Court reached 230 decisions.