The CSM's ethics assistance and monitoring service (SAVD)

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The CSM's ethics assistance and monitoring service (SAVD)

The CSM's ethics assistance and monitoring service (SAVD)

Article 20-2 of Organic Law No. 94-100 of 5 February 1994 makes the High Council for the Judiciary responsible for drawing up and publishing a compendium of the Judiciary’s ethical obligations.

 In order to fully carry out this general ethical monitoring mission, it must have precise, concrete and up-to-date knowledge of the ethical issues and difficulties with which magistrates are faced. In recent years, judges have also expressed a need to be listened to and supported in this area.

Following in-depth consideration of these expectations by its successive members, on 1 June 2016 the High Council for the Judiciary set up an ethics assistance and monitoring service (its creation had been planned since 2012).

The two main missions of the SAVD are as follows:

  • offering practical assistance to judges, in the form of a hotline that provides them with rapid and appropriate information on the questions they have;
  • providing anonymous monitoring to feed the Council's thinking and enable it to update the compendium of the Judiciary’s ethical obligations.

Composition of the department

The department is made up of individuals chosen by the High Council for the Judiciary from among its former members, based on their knowledge of magistrates' ethics and their experience in this field, for the duration of the current term of office. These individuals are bound by a strict obligation of confidentiality.

ckerbec
Mme Kerbec
Mme Chantal Kerbec, Directrice honoraire des services du Sénat, ancien membre du CSM
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M. Robert
M. Henry Robert, premier président de la cour d’appel de Dijon, ancien membre du CSM
jean-olivier viout

M. Viout

 M. Jean-Olivier Viout, procureur général honoraire près la cour d’appel de Lyon, ancien membre du CSM 

Referral to the SAVD

Any member of the judiciary, whether in office or honorary, may refer any ethical issue concerning him or her personally to the department.

Methods of intervention

Members of the department provide assistance in the form of telephone interviews. It is not written.

The department regularly reports on the issues dealt with to three referral agents who are members of the current Council (a qualified, prominent citizen, a judge and a prosecutor), either on their own initiative or at their request, while ensuring that the situations raised are strictly anonymous.

Members work on a voluntary basis.