France - The French National School for the Judiciary - EJTN

The French National School for the Judiciary school has two locations, one in Bordeaux for initial training, and one in Paris for permanent training and international direction.

Judges (magistrats du siège) and public prosecutors (magistrats du parquet) are members of the same professional body.

The court system is made up of 185 “Tribunaux de Grande Instance” (TGI). There are specialised jurisdictions: “Tribunal pour Enfants” (children); “Conseil des Prud’hommes” (labour matters); “Tribunal de Commerce” (commercial matters); 35 regional Courts of Appeal and the Court of Cassation (highest court). The highest administrative court is the Conseil d’Etat.

The criminal justice system has three levels: “Tribunal de Police” deals with faults and contraventions; the Criminal court (Tribunal Correctionnel) with crimes (délits); and the court of Assizes (cour d’assises), a tribunal composed of three professional judges sitting together with nine lay members as jurors, which deals with most serious crimes.

The Constitutional Council (Conseil Constitutionnel), composed of nine members, ensures electoral processes are fair and transparent, and controls the constitutionality of law submitted to his scrutiny.

The ENM is responsible for the organisation of the competition entry examinations, the initial and ongoing training of the judges and prosecutors, and international co-operation concerning magistrates’ training.

Each year the school trains more than 200 new “auditeurs de justice” (future magistrates) as part of the initial training (31 months – 11 months at school and 20 months in the courts, in lawyers’ offices, with investigators, private companies, public administrations etc).

The school trains more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors as part of the ongoing training. The aim of this ongoing training is to follow legislative and judicial evolutions and the modernisation of the judicial institution. The ongoing training is a right for each professional magistrate, who can attend at least five days training each year. The ongoing programme proposes more than 500 different actions, which can be either training periods in some institutions or companies, or deepening seminars about professional practices.

The ENM employs 140 people, including 32 judges or prosecutors working full time for the school, 23 of whom are “Maitre de Conférence”. They work for initial or permanent training programs. The school also uses more than 1,000 outside contributors who include magistrates, lawyers and experts.

The school’s budget for 2000 was 187 million francs (28.5 million euros), most of which was for the wages of permanent personnel and the “auditeurs de justice”. The intervention budget is around 40 million francs (6.1 million euros).