Who has the most and fewest judges in the EU?

The murder of an 11-year-old French schoolgirl has sparked outrage at the country’s judicial system after it emerged that authorities had failed to fully investigate the suspected killer about previous allegations of child sexual abuse.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The girl, named in the press only as Lyhanna, went missing on 29 May near the southwestern town of Fleurance after she was last seen getting into a man’s car.

After days of searching, investigators found the body of a child wearing the same clothes as Lyhanna in an abandoned silo in the nearby village of Puycasquier on 4 June.

A 41-year-old father of two, whose daughter was a school friend of Lyhanna, has been arrested as the main suspect. He had been named in four separate cases involving young girls in recent years, but they were never properly investigated, leading to public outcry and President Emmanuel Macron to blast the “unacceptable” lapses in the justice system.

The news has prompted criticism of under-investment and a lack of resources in the French judiciary.

According to the Council of Europe, France had around 11 professional judges per 100,000 people in 2022 — significantly less than the European average of 22.

How does the rest of Europe compare?

The EU has seen an almost 12% decrease in the number of professional judges between 2024 and 2019, with 2024 recording 70,348 professional judges, according to the latest Eurostat figures.

Eastern European countries traditionally have a high number of judges and non-judge staff per capita, which the Council of Europe attributes to their being largely influenced by Germanic law.

This type of law is highly inquisitorial, where judges actively direct proceedings, question witnesses and order evidence, meaning individual cases require more time and need a much larger bench.

Countries with Germanic law traditions also tend to have hyper-specialised courts, made up of different levels and comprised of panels of judges, rather than just a single person presiding.

In the EU, Croatia (42.4), Slovenia (40.7), and Greece (37.3) had the highest number of professional judges per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022.

When expanding to look at the whole of Europe, Monaco emerged as the country with the most professional judges, going by the same metric, at more than 102. Montenegro came next, tied with Croatia at 42.4.

In contrast, the countries of Western and Southern Europe, whose legal systems are based on Nordic law, common law, or Napoleonic law, have fewer professional judges per 100,000 inhabitants.

While Napoleonic law countries are also inquisitorial, they are not quite as divided into separate branches as Germanic courts traditionally have been, meaning less manpower is required.

Common law countries, meanwhile, use an adversarial system, where judges act more as passive umpires who rule on points of law and ensure fair play. As they do not direct the investigation themselves, fewer judges are needed.

Ireland (3.3), Denmark (6.5), and Malta (9) were the EU countries with the fewest judges per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022.

In wider Europe, this falls mostly to the countries of the UK: England and Wales have fewer than three judges, going by the same metric, followed by Scotland (3.6) and Northern Ireland (3.7).

The disparity in numbers can be explained to some extent by the diversity of European judicial organisations and legal systems. For instance, the low number of professional judges per inhabitant in the UK can be explained by the significant number of cases that fall under the jurisdiction of its Magistrates’ Courts, which are made up of non-professional judges, the Council of Europe said.

Furthermore, with judicial systems under severe strain across the continent, countries such as Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania have adopted measures to address the decline in the number of applicants to the judiciary observed in recent years by increasing wages or improving working conditions.

As for France, in the wake of the tragedy of Lyhanna, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has instructed all state prosecutors to review 70,000 ongoing cases of violence against minors by 14 July and to treat them as an “absolute priority”.