2023-12-19 16:37:00
The slowness of the Belgian judicial machine is regularly singled out, both by European courts and by Belgian courts. If it is regularly the Brussels Court of Appeal that is singled out for a significant backlog, La Libre recalled, at the end of September, that the family court also suffers from significant delays in processing cases.
To the point that in October 2022, the League of Families, the law firm specializing in family law KHK and around ten clients took the Belgian state to court. The plaintiffs argued that the legal backlog in the family court in Brussels is such that it is no longer possible to have a decision within a reasonable time. Their requirement? Provide courts and tribunals with more staff to eliminate delays and ultimately enable justice to be delivered more quickly.
Belgium infamous for legal cases that fail due to long delays
The case was brought on October 18, 2022 before the Brussels civil court. The serious things began on September 26 with the pleadings. The judgment fell on December 15, and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
Indeed, the civil court of Brussels condemned the Belgian State to publish all vacant places to fill 100% of the legal framework of magistrates, clerks and all the staff of the registries and to compensate both citizens and the lawyers who brought the case to court.
In the judgment that La Libre was able to consult, we can read that the Belgian State is ordered to publish, within three months from the date of notification of the judgment, all vacant places on December 26, 2023 “All this, under penalty of a penalty of 1,000 euros per day and per unoccupied place whose vacancy has not been published within this period or is not the subject of any call for applications within this period, with a maximum of 250,000 euros.”
“More than money, justice took me time that I will never be able to make up for with my children”
“Faults of the Belgian State”
Today, this decision rendered by the courts could therefore be synonymous with hope for many parents. But will this be enough to fill all the vacant places in the legal world? This is the wish of lawyers Me Audrey Despontin and Me Audrey Lackner. The lawyers also point out that “the judgment is added to the list of convictions against the Belgian State”. “It is unacceptable that the Minister of Justice has no regard for this and that his inertia remains total. It is high time that he tackles the problem, at the risk of seeing the number of actions for damages from prejudiced citizens, or even lawyers, multiply.”
Me Nadine Kalamian, from the law firm specializing in family law KHK – and also one of the lawyers behind the action -, specified that “the judgment also underlines that the faults of the Belgian State have a structural negative impact on the working conditions of lawyers themselves and that this harms the efficient exercise of the legal profession”.
The Belgian state sued for the slowness of the family court: “Uncertainty leads to psychological damage for parents and children”
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