Portugal's Justice Directorate has released figures that show the number of court cases for debt collection have declined since a 2013 scheme came into force that allowed many cases to be archived by the State if the accused has no registered assets.
Debt collection cases have declined since 2013 to a current total of 963,439 proceedings as at June 30, 2015, although how this is good news remains unclear.
In the first quarter of 2013, when the 'extraordinary regime to combat pending cases' came into force, outstanding actions dropped from 1,210,244, to 1,148,839 in the second quarter. This did not represent an improvement in the court system, just the efficacy of the technical exercise to reduce the figures.
In the last three months of 2014, the number of actions for debts for the first time fell below the one million mark to 997,198.
This is being heralded as good news but the average time taken per case over the past three years has been an astoundingly slow 1,350 days i.e. just over three years and eight months.
Since the new laws came into place in 2013, then then Justice Minister Paula Teixeira da Cruz’s plan to free up court time has resulted in an overall decrease of 246,805 cases although it is not known how many of these were just scrapped.
The new Minister for Justice, Fernanda Van Dunem, is well aware of the high caseload and poorly functioning system that has been allowed to build up over years of underinvestment, the 'cases pending' figure remaining an embarassment to the State and a serious impediment to those needing to access the justice system.
Heralding the fact that there are just under a million debt cases still to be dealt with, just part of the overall backlog of nearly 4 million cases in Portugal to be resolved, the State makes a mockery of its own justice system but does highlight the need for effective action to deal with cases, rather than just write them off.
