French Code of Criminal Procedure
In forceThe automated national order office for legal proceedings is an automated application, placed under the control of a magistrate, containing nominative information relating to complaints and denunciations received by public prosecutors or investigating judges and the action taken on them, and which is intended to facilitate the management and monitoring of legal proceedings by the competent courts, the provision of information to victims and reciprocal knowledge between courts of proceedings concerning the same facts or involving the same persons, in order in particular to avoid duplicate prosecutions.
This application is also intended to use the information gathered for statistical research purposes.
The data recorded in the automated national registry concerns in particular:
1° The date, place and legal classification of the acts;
2° Where known, the surname, first names, date and place of birth or company name of the accused persons and victims;
3° Information relating to decisions on the public prosecution, the course of the investigation, the trial procedure and the arrangements for the enforcement of sentences;
4° Information relating to the judicial situation, during the proceedings, of the accused, prosecuted or convicted person.
The information contained in the automated national registry is kept, from the date of its last recorded update, for a period of ten years or, if longer, for a period equal to the period of prescription of the public prosecution or, where a conviction has been handed down, the period of prescription of the sentence.
Information relating to proceedings in each court of first and second instance is recorded under the responsibility, depending on the case, of the public prosecutor, the public prosecutor or the judges exercising criminal functions in the territorially competent court, by the court clerks or authorised persons assisting these judges.
This information may be accessed directly, for the sole purpose of dealing with the offences or proceedings referred to them, by public prosecutors and judges performing criminal duties in all courts, as well as by their clerks or authorised persons assisting these judges. They are also directly accessible to the registry agents of the single reception service for litigants provided for in article L. 123-3 du code de l'organisation judiciaire, for the sole purpose of running this service, provided that these agents have been authorised for this purpose under conditions laid down by decree in the Conseil d'Etat.
They are also directly accessible to public prosecutors and judges exercising criminal functions in the courts mentioned in articles 704,706-2,706-17,706-75,706-107 and 706-108 of this code for the handling of all proceedings likely to fall within their extended territorial jurisdiction.
They are likewise directly accessible to public prosecutors for the application of the provisions of Articles 35 and 37.
They shall also be directly accessible, for the performance of their duties, to magistrates charged by legislative or regulatory provision with the supervision of judicial police files, the national automated genetic fingerprint file and the automated fingerprint file, as well as to authorised persons assisting them.
Except in the case of non-nominative data used for statistical purposes, information covered by article 11-1 or nominative data used for statistical purposes by public statistics departments under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, the information contained in the automated national register may only be accessed by the judicial authorities. Where it relates to an ongoing investigation or enquiry, the provisions of Article 11 shall apply.
A decree in the Conseil d'Etat, issued after consultation with the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés, shall determine the terms of application of this article and in particular shall specify the conditions under which interested persons may exercise their right of access.
