Belgium’s Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD) has proposed a law that would see the country’s judges undergo a screening process in an attempt to combat potential corruption, La Libre reports.
Van Quickenborne’s proposal would see compulsory security checks for Belgian judges and their staff carried out by the National Security Authority (NSA). The agency will be able to consult confidential information from various databases before handing out its security opinion, which would be in effect for up to five years. If the NSA’s opinion is negative, the judge or judiciary staff may be dismissed.
The bill aims to pre-emptively combat any attempts by organised crime outfits to corrupt or bribe judges in exchange for information regarding an ongoing investigation. This is also the latest measure in Belgian authorities’ fight against the recent rise of drug trafficking and the resulting violence, as the minister hopes to avoid cases similar to the infiltration of traffickers within the Port of Antwerp's staff.
However, there has been no public evidence of a judge or a member of the judiciary staff having been corrupted in recent years. Furthermore, the proposed law has not got done well among judges who have compared it to “what is happening in Hungary and Poland.”
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Contacted by La Libre, multiple judges explained that they agreed with the screenings in principle but held various reservations. Their biggest concern was how these screenings would be carried out and how susceptible to political pressure would they be.
One judge asked that the body in charge of conducting these checks also be subjected to controls as “I refuse to allow the controllers to be potentially corrupt themselves.” Another judge agreed and stated that the proposal, in its present form, “leaves the door open to all kinds of totalitarian excesses.” He argued that “a judge could then be sacked for being too right-wing, too left-wing.”
Nonetheless, the Justice Ministry intends to apply the law as Van Quickenborne’s cabinet told La Libre that “we should not be naive,” arguing that “screening will help us avoid these infiltration attempts.”
