2023-09-27 10:35:00
Laurence Massart, the head of the Brussels Court of Appeal (and also the one who was president of the Assize Court responsible for judging the attacks of March 22, 2016), was refused the extension of her mandate by the Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD).
Due to a linguistic alternation, the position of head of the court of appeal must fall to a Dutch speaker at the end of the year, which is why the Minister of Justice refused Laurence Massart’s request.
Contesting this decision, the magistrate filed two appeals: one before the Council of State and another in civil proceedings, in summary proceedings, before the Brussels court of first instance where a hearing took place at the beginning of September.
La Libre learns that Madame Massart won her case in the court of first instance.
Contacted, the Van Quickenborne firm reacted briefly. “We are analyzing the consequences of this summary decision, according to the legal provisions applied by the FPS Justice and the procedure also brought before the Council of State.”
Cascading consequences?
Laurence Massart is the first president of the Brussels Court of Appeal since 2018. The mandate is 5 years and can be extended once. This is what Laurence Massart wanted, but his request for an extension was refused by the Minister of Justice for linguistic reasons.
In Brussels, the law requires that the attorney general and the first president of the court of appeal be perfectly bilingual, but also that one be Dutch-speaking and the other French-speaking. Furthermore, there must be linguistic alternation in the succession to this function.
For the moment, the situation is balanced. The public prosecutor of Brussels, Johan Delmulle, is Dutch-speaking. Except that the latter is at the end of his mandate and will have to give up his place to a French-speaker. And to maintain this balance, the next president of the Brussels Court of Appeal must be Dutch-speaking, which is not the case for Laurence Massart.
If the latter therefore wins her case definitively, this will therefore have consequences on the other appointments, in this case for the future replacement of Johan Delmulle. Currently, there are two candidates: the current federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw and the current president of the Brussels Enterprise Court, Paul Dhaeyer.
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