Gérald Darmanin renounced on Wednesday the flagship measure of his bill on criminal justice, the “guilty plea” for the most serious offenses, although the text had been rejected a few hours earlier by the deputies in committee at the National Assembly.
“This is not the time (to make this reform) in the political context,” the entourage of the Minister of Justice, in turmoil since the Lyhanna affair, during which he alienated a number of magistrates, told AFP.
The criminal “guilty plea” consisted in particular, at the end of a classic investigation, of proposing to all the parties – including the victim – to use this simplified procedure, with a negotiated sentence accepted by all, which had to be approved by a judge during a public hearing without witnesses or experts, lasting approximately half a day, compared to at least four times for an assize trial. Objective: speed up the processing of cases and fight against court congestion.
Although it had defenders among the judges, this procedure was on the other hand criticized by a large part of the lawyers. As a prelude to this symbolic burial, the entire text of the law was rejected on Wednesday morning by 18 votes to 16 in the Law Committee of the Assembly, the entire left having voted against and the RN having abstained, according to parliamentary sources.
LAW EXPEDITING TIMES FOR OBTAINING A CRIMINAL TRIAL
After the Senate vote, the Law Committee of the National Assembly did not adopt this morning the bill “Criminal justice and respect for victims”, although it was amended and improved in the same…
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) June 10, 2026
I manage my choices I authorize
“This is bad news for the victims,” initially estimated the entourage of the Minister of Justice, deploring a low number of voters and “an under-mobilization of Renaissance deputies”. The bill was to be debated in the chamber at the end of the month in its version as adopted by the Senate two months ago. It will finally be expunged from the criminal “guilty plea”.
Gérald Darmanin on the front line
“In a spirit of responsibility and in order to respond to the urgent need to improve our criminal justice, it seems necessary to me to propose to the national representation the withdrawal of this provision, for lack of consensus,” explained Gérald Darmanin in a message published on
Despite everything, the decline illustrates the bad situation into which the man who was until then the most popular minister in the government is finding himself, but who must now face calls for resignation from LFI and a white-hot legal world.
The Lyhanna affair put him on the front line, responsible for some for a systemic dysfunction of justice, guilty for others of having delivered to the media and popular vindictiveness of the magistrates who would have been guilty of not having applied his instructions, without waiting for the conclusions of the administrative investigations.
Gérald Darmanin presents texts “to exist in the public debate” and has “reaped what he had sown”, judged the former president of the Laws Commission Sacha Houlié (related to PS) to AFP on Wednesday morning. During the debates, he considered that the text amounted to “terminating an entire part of defense rights”.
Christophe Bayle, president of the Conference of Bar Associations which represents the 163 provincial bars, for his part was pleased that the commission had “heard the legitimate fears put forward by the profession and by victims’ associations”, by asking for the total withdrawal of the project.
Criminal courts
Faced with the disapproval of lawyers and feminist figures, Gérald Darmanin had already withdrawn sexual crimes from his scope, restricting this new procedure to marginal cases, notably fatal beatings. This precaution was ultimately not enough.
“The main thing is the hearing (the trial schedule, Editor’s note), and other articles of the bill, in particular the creation of a hundred new criminal courts, deal with this problem,” whispers in the minister’s entourage to justify this withdrawal.
In committee, the deputies have in fact adopted other key measures of the text, in particular those relating to the modification of the composition of these courts, and the extension of their jurisdiction to repeat offenders. To the detriment of the assize courts and the popular jury, castigated the left.
Another aspect concerns genetic genealogy, intended to help solve certain cases. The text also plans to authorize consultation of the databases of private companies, generally American, offering recreational genetic tests prohibited in France. Another controversial article provides for the shortening of the deadlines imposed on lawyers for their requests for nullity.
The tide had finally turned on Wednesday morning at the end of the examination: several articles were successively deleted. One of them, for example, concerned the anonymization of the identity of magistrates in decisions published in open data. And the vote on the entire text was finally final, “within two votes”, regretted the minister’s entourage.
