The Minister of Justice, Rita Alarcão Júdice, publicly acknowledged the serious problems affecting administrative justice in Portugal. During the presentation of the reform, she identified three priority issues: an acute problem in administrative matters, a critical problem in urgent injunction proceedings, and an urgent problem in Lisbon. Faced with this diagnosis, the executive presented a set of measures to make the judicial system more efficient and reduce pressure on the courts.
The reform provides for the creation of specialized courts in immigration matters, which will have jurisdiction to adjudicate cases related to this area throughout the national territory. The underlying idea is to decentralize and distribute the cases that are currently mainly concentrated in Lisbon's courts.
According to the minister, this reorganization will allow for relieving the workload at the capital's courts, transferring part of that pressure to other regions of the country. However, critics of the measure warn that this solution may simply displace the problem to other jurisdictions, without truly resolving the structural causes of court congestion.
The reform is part of a broader context of the need for modernization and efficiency in the Portuguese justice system, which has faced significant challenges of speed and responsiveness, particularly in the most saturated areas such as the capital.
