Lawyers’ strike: implications for ongoing court cases
Around 50 bar associations in France, including those in Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin, voted on Tuesday 31 March to go on strike in protest against the Minister for Justice’s ‘Sure’ bill. By refusing to appear in court last Wednesday and Thursday, they forced the courts to postpone a large number of hearings.
The SURE Bill (Sanction Utile, Rapide et Effective) is a judicial reform aimed at speeding up proceedings and reducing the backlog in the courts, notably by introducing a ‘plea bargain’ system which allows offenders to receive a more lenient sentence if they admit to the charges. During last Thursday’s criminal hearing, Maître Veyrac, representing the President of the Bar of Basse-Terre, took the floor to denounce what lawyers consider to be a rush-through justice system that undermines the rights of the defence. Gérald
Darmanin’s bill will be examined in a public session in the Senate on 13 April. The strike action launched on Wednesday may well continue, Maître Veyrac indicated.
It has resulted in the adjournment of several cases; only defendants who had not engaged a lawyer were able to be tried.
UNI.T 978 sued for psychological harassment
Albert Blake and Francilene Lewis, of the UNI.T 978 union, were due to appear in court on Thursday on charges of psychological harassment, allegedly committed between 1 January 2023 and 22 October 2025, against five officials of the Collectivité, including the President’s chief of staff, the deputy financial director and the former director-general of services. Unrelated to the strike action, the case was adjourned after the court was informed at the last minute that one of its assessors was involved in the case of one of the defendants. As the assessor had to recuse himself and there was no possibility of replacing him, the court was unable to rule on the merits of the case, which has been adjourned until the hearing on 18 June.
Air Antilles: uncertainty remains
The decision regarding the takeover by Pierre Sainte-Luce or, if necessary, the liquidation of the company, should have been handed down on 2 April by the Commercial Court of Pointe-à-Pitre, two months after it was placed in administration. The company’s employees will have to wait until 23 April to find out what their fate will be… subject to change, as the president of the court indicated during Thursday’s hearing that, had the case been heard as scheduled, the decision itself would not have been handed down until 23 April.
It remains to be seen whether the same will apply to the next hearing; if so, it will not be until May that we will know what will become of Air Antilles.
