In France, the ministère public (in the person of an Attorney-general, a procureur de la République or one of his substituts or representatives) is designated as "le parquet" in legal jargon.
[2] The location of the ministère public has been called the "parquet" because in the Great Chamber (la Grand-Chambre) of Paris the enclosure delimited on three sides by the seats of judges and on the fourth by a barre or handrail, this heart of the room, a closed and dedicated space,(sacré), a small parc or parquet, that the people of the king (les gens du roi) crossed to take their places and where the gens d'armes, gendarmes, came forward to relate the findings of their investigations, to erect (en dresser) the procès-verbal.
The parquet modeled itself little by little with procureurs, prosecutors, avocats, lawyers and substituts, designations which remain in contemporary French justice.
The question of whether to keep the ministère public arose at the time of the Revolution, but this was resolved in the affirmative by the law of the 16th and 24 August 1790, notably in article 8 of title II.
Article 3 of law no 70-613, the law of the 10th of July 1970, authorised the prosecutor of the Republic to exercise public action before all first degree jurisdictions[2] The drive to install a ministère public before administrative jurisdictions other than the Cour des comptes was translated by the ordinances of February 2 and March 12, 1831, which created the function of "government commissioner" before the Conseil d'État.
Personal faults tied to public service can on the other hand be prosecuted by virtue of the State's power of recourse, but only in front of the civil chamber of the Cour de cassation.
He represents the interests of society and to do so he exercises an action publique (in other words prosecution as the plaintiff, intervening in the trial as a principal party).
In common law administrative jurisdictions (i.e. as opposed to specialised administrative jurisdictions), commissaires du gouvernement (government commissioners) existed, and were loosely related to the judiciary's ministère public, albeit their functions were closer to giving a general opinion on legal matters pertaining a case rather than actively defending the interests of society of the government, despite their name.
[11] At the same time the European Court of Human Rights confirmed in a new verdict on June 27, 2013, Vassis et al vs France,[12] that the French parquet cannot be considered a judicial authority in the sense of article 5§3 of the Convention.