HIBAPRESS – w.m.a.
The House of Representatives, in a legislative session held today, Tuesday, approved by a majority vote draft law No. 16.22 concerning the regulation of the profession of Adouls.
The draft law received the approval of 82 parliamentarians, while 36 others opposed it. In a presentation of this project, the Minister of Justice, Abdelatif Wehbe, confirmed that in the legislation of this text, care was taken to respect the principle of participatory approach by involving the National Council of Adouls, noting that the profession of Adouls plays a pivotal role in the justice system. The minister highlighted that the profession of Adouls is one of the legal and judicial professions practiced within the framework of judicial assistants, whose primary goal is to preserve the rights, reputations, and lineage of people. He noted that the amendments included in this project focused on upgrading the profession by reviewing some of the conditions for accessing it, qualifying it, and strengthening its role within the justice system, and supporting the professional capacities of its members through the establishment of training institutes, in addition to the mandatory continuous training, and strengthening the profession with qualitative competencies by opening the field for some professional categories to access it. The new provisions also stipulate, the minister adds, providing legal protection for members of the profession through the enactment of new legal provisions, organizing the profession within the framework of a national body with legal personality instead of the professional association, and strengthening the supervisory bodies through expanding its representative competencies, as well as legitimizing the decisions emanating from it in its field of competence, and achieving female representation within the bodies of the National Council. In its interaction with the provisions of this project, the majority groups positively noted the participatory methodology adopted by the ministry in preparing this text, through a "responsible dialogue with the National Council of Adouls, consultation with the Supreme Scientific Council, and seeking the opinion of the Supreme Council of the Judicial Authority", considering that it is "a methodology that grants the text its constitutional and institutional legitimacy". The majority considered that this involvement was embodied in a real legislative dynamic, translated by submitting approximately 366 amendments by the majority and opposition groups, which included various aspects related to the profession, from access and training to governance, responsibility, and digitalization, noting that the project establishes the integration of the profession of Adouls within the modern system of legal professions assisting the judiciary. It also highlighted that the diagnosis of the practice revealed that "the old legal framework is no longer able, with its philosophy and tools, to keep pace with the economic, social, and digital transformations that Morocco is experiencing", noting that the current text "goes beyond mere changes in wording towards a comprehensive reconstruction of the legal framework of the profession, by redefining the Adoul as a practitioner of a free and legal profession assisting the judiciary, with the explicit provision that what is issued by him falls within the framework of the Adouls documentation". For its part, the opposition considered that not naming the profession of Adouls as "Adouls documentation" is a "weakening of a historic profession that has been linked to Moroccan identity and has contributed for decades to achieving contractual security, especially since the work of the Adoul is carried out under the supervision of a documentation judge and ends with the issuance of a clear-cut Adouls document", pointing to the importance of the profession's role in documenting transactions and preserving rights. It noted that "this law, although an important step in the framework of implementing the recommendations contained in the justice reform charter, has not brought about the deep transformation that professionals and community components in general were expecting", indicating that it "raises the problem of equality and equal opportunities between Adouls documentation and modern documentation, especially in documenting transactions of high financial value". The opposition considered that "despite government commitments and the recommendations of the justice reform charter to enable Adouls to document subsidized housing, the text came below expectations, as it did not establish clear mechanisms for financial deposit, whether through the Deposit and Management Fund or through the establishment of a special deposit fund, which missed the opportunity to strengthen trust and qualify the profession to play its full role within a modern and balanced justice system".
