He cultivates contrast, plays on precarious balances, leaving his interlocutor on the edge of uncertainty. A presentation that undermines his image. He acknowledges this but doesn’t care. Eric de Montgolfier, Public Prosecutor in Nice for ten years, lives philosophically in this splendid isolation, strengthened by his power as a magistrate of the Prosecution. “Or the power that others are willing to attribute to me,” he corrects, preferring to speak of an “authority”. In a two-and-a-half-hour friendly interview, the dialogue swings between politics and religion, moving from people to ideas, rarely focusing on himself. Yet, asking him a direct question about his personality prompts an unambiguous response. The man is, so to speak, much more approachable than one might imagine.
Ten years as a magistrate in Nice, then. He hasn’t overlooked the “specificity” of the local customs and practices in the Bay of Angels: “We are not in the south of France but in the north of the Mediterranean,” he asserts, explaining these “peculiarities.” He also feels he lives among a population “weakened by its sociological structure”. Referring to a past discussion with the author in Tozeur about the concept of “psychic rape of the Niçois”: each season, hordes of tourists take over the city, multiplying demands in exchange for payment. The locals comply out of “economic necessity”, not necessarily pleasure. Eric de Montgolfier also “appreciates more the quiet months of the off-season, when Nice finally looks like itself.” “Can rape, even if consensual, be a source of enrichment?” Words of the “prosecution” or the philosopher?
The conversation turns to his role. The “prosecutor” insists on the necessary consideration of the environment, the surroundings, “before proceeding to judge.” A fine line between “social understanding” and “personal interpretation” that he knows is “subtle”. Faced with a fact, his first step is to “appeal to morality” and to ask himself “is it right?” or “is it wrong?”. From the answer proceeds the second mental operation: “if it’s not right, then it’s necessary to seek in the law a technical support”. This is how he has “required” in several recent cases involving local political leaders. “There is no true right unless it is in action”. But the law also has “educational virtues”, he further specifies regarding recent cases. An “understanding” that, in his view, should benefit those who sequester their corporate leaders. But not to the point of acceptance. “Unacceptable”, unless we accept that “everyone is judge of their own law”. Yet he shows clemency when a crisis affects the most disenfranchised: “how can I ignore that those who most often come before me are the most disadvantaged?” “Justice,” he explains, “often targets those who are scorned”. From this international crisis, which he thinks “the world has indeed sought,” the Nice magistrate nevertheless considers it a “chapter in the life of a nation”.
Eric de Montgolfier, who readily describes himself as a “convinced Christian”, “rich kid”, claims “that it his duty, in that respect, to give to those who have not received much”. Does he deserve his label as a left-wing judge? “A question from a right-wing person?”, he retorts with a smile. In the word “s’intégrer” (to integrate), he muses aloud, it seems that “the most important is the ‘s’, the reflexive form.” “Yet isn’t the essence to first integrate the other, in respect of their dignity?” If he rejects the widely used term “communities”, a word he “does not like although he cannot find another”, it is because he sees it as “contrary to the very idea of the republic”. An “unbearable division,” he asserts.
The exchange shifts to the case of Judge Burgaud. “In law, Eric de Montgolfier explains, I don’t think we can sanction him” while defending himself from “any corporatist reflexes”. “None of the control mechanisms, no safeguard, according to him, functioned”. Before clarifying his thought: “it’s less a problem of competence than of training”. The judge oversteps into the realm of the psychoanalyst by acknowledging the extraordinary dimension of child sex abuse cases. These, and others too, necessitate a psychological preparation: “the profession of judging is so psychologically demanding that it seems important to me that during the training of a young magistrate, a more experienced person should hold up a mirror”. A fine metaphor to remind that the worst of a human lies within themselves. “The only qualities of a magistrate,” he adds, “are ‘doubt’, ‘humility’, ‘the permanent conviction that we can be mistaken”. Does Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan allowing any aggrieved party to seize the High Council of the Judiciary seem like an adequate solution to him? “Yes,” replies the prosecutor, “provided the HJC is equipped with the resources currently lacking”. “But my dream would be to have a truly independent body to avoid any risk of corporatism, a sort of General Inspectorate of Services across administrations.” Message ultimately intended for a recipient.
Fueled by coffee, they discuss culture and society: Eric de Montgolfier mentions the Nice Opera which he “no longer attends” and ponders the pros and cons of cultural patronage. This man, who does not hesitate to talk about death, to wonder, even to chastise those who seem to fear it and oppose the very idea of finiteness, comments on the banning of the “Our Body” exhibition: “I didn’t see the interest in this exhibition and really didn’t understand the reason for its prohibition”. Justice denied or a “mirror” held up for the reader?
