Portugal's new ‘judicial map’ pushed through by government to streamline the country’s court system, while reducing the number of courts and employees, is in danger of stalling.
The plan is due to go live on September 1st but Jorge Fernando, President of the Union of Judicial Officers, said today that there will not be enough staff to run the system so his members are going on strike for an as yet undefined period before launch date.
The Ministry of Justice says it is waiting for the say-so for the funding so it can sign up of 893 court clerks to run the scheme but is leaving it rather late.
Fernando says the lack of staff is "unacceptable" and that we are to expect strikes before 1st September. He has tried to get a meeting with the Ministry of Justice but no luck there, a familiar tale.
A potential good move, though as it involves IT it is one with risks, is the start today of the electronic distribution of millions of cases.
Two million paper-based cases will be digitalised and moved to an appropriate court before September so that everything is working smoothly come the September 1 start date. The target is to get all 3.5 million outstanding cases computerised.
If the new court system and associated IT project do start to shift the vast backlog of cases in Portugal's legal system then all well and good as the judicial system and access to justice in Portugal continues to score low in surveys among EC countries.
