Does this mean that in France the defence cannot ask the witness any questions?
No just “anonymous witness” (witness protection), you can still get questioned by the judge in a court or by suspect defence but you can have your identity protected: face & voice masked and no identity questions, judges can authorise witness to use a dummy name & police adresse
The system acts as a filter. Basically only offences that need to go to court actually go there.
Eg A van overtakes a car on the motorway cuts in front too early and causes an accident.
The van driver claims the collision was the fault of the car driver. The car driver is on the way to hospital.
Police on the scene interview the car passenger and some witnesses. One witness says that he saw the van pull in too sharply and hit the car.
(I have deliberately kept away from the BEA here but the process is similar but usually longer and more technical)
The van driver will be taken to the police station and will write his version of events and then will be told that there are witnesses or a witness telling a different story. The preliminary police investigation findings may also be declared here. The van driver will then be asked if s/he wants to challenge the evidence. If s/he is not sure or says what of I don’t the gendarme will get in contact with the prosecutor’s office there and the sentence will be passed (a bit like plea bargaining in the USA). The van driver then has the option to accept that or go to the next stage. If s/he wants to challenge the judicial police will then collect all the evidence and put it before a judge at which time the van driver can have an Avocat present. All the evidence against her/him will be revealed and s/he has the right to accept guilt or tale it to a court which is basically as Ibra describes but in front of more than one judge and avocats for the defence and prosecution will rely on affadavits if necessary. The defence team can challenge the affadavits if necessary but not the witnesses if they do not wish to be challenged. It is not an adversarial court.
If the defence challenges the judges can ask questions at the time or stop the proceedings in order to put the challenges to the witness or seek clarification from the police accident investigation team.
This is of course just a brief and simplified version of what happens and will be different depending on the infraction.
Coming back to the original question:
Obviously even in the biggest GA community in Europe it is difficult to find cases of pilots who really paid more than a few hrs. worth of flight time (beyond very few and very extreme cases of people running commercial operations and/or other illegal businesses) beyond hearsay.
We might even consider the idea, that although many pilots complain about disproportional fines, in reality this is not an issue at all…
Peter wrote:
Is there a reference to a real report by a real person?
Just heard the 10k figure, I think someone got asked 20ke but he settled for 1e & 6 months prison
There are few with 500e-1000e ranges
Sounds like 100% hearsay to me. If it were true one would want to know the circumstances. Would something of that magnitude not end up in the French REX database?
He only paid 1e at the end but did 1 month prison…
Can’t find 10k ones for ZIT/P but there are few with 0.5k/1k
So, if I read this right, it was a microlight pilot 
and Deauville told him to get out of there, so he turned off his transponder and carried on, got intercepted by two Mirages, and then it took 9 years to bring the case, perhaps because he was in Italy.
How do you intercept a microlight with a Mirage?
Seriously. I have a friend who inter alia flies a PA28 to give the (French) fighter pilots intercept practice (her day job is flying 777s for AF). She says it’s fun to watch them trying to keep their speed down to stay with her. How can they intercept something with a Vne of maybe 60 knots?
