Angered by government plans to cut their pensions, Belgian magistrates will send 4,000 people who received short jail sentences to prison.
Their reaction went against a request by Belgium’s Justice Minister, who had asked not to send people with short sentences to jail because they were overcrowded.
Belgian prisons currently hold around 11,000 inmates despite having a capacity for only 9,000. Rather than expanding prison infrastructure, the government has opted to ease overcrowding by releasing individuals serving short sentences or not sending them to jail to begin with.
Most recently, the current government announced an emergency measure granting early release to undocumented migrants to create more room.
On top of sending 4,000 people to the already overcrowded prison system, the angry magistrates will no longer reply to parliamentary questions or advise the government or parliament.
Frédéric Van Leeuw, the Attorney General of Brussels, speaking on behalf of the College of Public Prosecutors, said their actions come because “the government has simply gone too far. At a certain point, the bucket overflows.”
He told on radio show De Ochtend that the government reforms did not alleviate the already high workload and instead introduced cuts in their pensions, even of some magistrates who were already on retirement, without any consultation with the sector.
Van Leeuw said that the government policies were “disproportional”.
He added that the magistrates only decided to send the 4,000 people to the prisons, but that it was up to the prison directors, who fall under the Minister of Justice, to decide if they would take them in.
Van Leeuw said people should not compare the wages and pensions of magistrates to those of people in the private sector, stressing the need for them to be independent.
He said that most magistrates in Belgium received the maximum pension, more than €8,000 gross per month, the highest possible, but that 30 per cent of it was under threat of being taken away.
This would make jobs in the magistrate unattractive in the future, he claimed.
He said most magistrates had many qualifications and were highly capable people. He said there was a consensus about their pensions being deferred salary.
In the end, he warned, lowering their pensions would threaten their independence. Making the comparison with politicians, he pointed out that people who know they won’t receive a high pension would start to look for other opportunities.
“If magistrates start to do that [look for cushy end-of-career jobs like politicians], it would be a big problem.”
They would go to companies to get a decent pension, just like what many former European Commissioners did, leading to cooling-off period rules, preventing them from paid lobbying or advocacy, for a specified period to avoid conflicts of interest and guarantee their independence.
For magistrates not to fall into the same trap, Van Leeuw argued, they should be able to keep their standard of living intact.
Kathleen Van De Vijver, spokesperson of the prison system, was displeased with the magistrates’ actions, having not been informed in advance and instead learning about the decision through the media.
She said the magistrates’ decision endangered their workers and society as a whole, calling it “totally incomprehensible”.
In Belgium, an employee receives an average pension of €1,634 per month and a self-employed person €1,197.
Magistrates weren’t the only ones taking action in Belgium. The railways have been affected by a wave of strikes in response to reforms and pension changes, including plans to phase out their privileged early retirement scheme, which allowed some workers to retire as early as 55.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/belgian-judges-protest-by-sending-4000-criminals-to-jail/