The rule of law in Portugal
The European Union working document on the Portugal chapter of the 2022 Report on the Rule of Law in the European Union (SWD(2022) 522 final) was recently released. Despite the vision that the report conveys, the reality is that the rule of law in the country works very poorly, which should be a reason for our eyes.
The report begins by noting that “the Government is taking several measures to respond to the efficiency challenges of the Portuguese judicial system, especially in the administrative and tax courts, and the creation of rapid response equipment in these courts is producing rapid positive results. ” (page 1). The truth, however, is that unfortunately no improvement is seen in this region, with citizens continuing to wait more than a decade for a simple decision in the first instance. In fact, the report ends up recognizing the same when it says (pages 10-11) that the Government is interim reports, defining strategic objectives and proposing measures to overcome the identified challenges not concerning the efficiency of administrative and fiscal enemies”. But “the proposed measures have not yet been implemented.”
As for the country’s very serious issue is in our problem, it refers to “the National Anti-Corruption Strategy. The National Anti-Corruption Mechanism created in 2021 is in progress” (page 1), which is expected to come into operation only in the second half of 2022 (page 16). Since there was already a National Council for the Prevention of Corruption, which was functioning effectively, it is not understandable to replace it with a mechanism that is only in the process of being operational and which will only begin to function sometime this year. Likewise, it only mentions that “measures are in progress to deal with the fact that the Entity for Transparency, created in 2019 (…) is not yet operational”. Since the entity’s main problem resides in the funding of politicians, it is not understood what is expected for this entity to start functioning. No one will think that way, no one will come years to the fact that the fact breaks him into nothing.
Likewise, the document refers to “for the processes of managing measures in the justice system in order to improve its justice”. However, the document recognizes that the institution of the Bar Association nevertheless recognizes the presence of a de facto institution from August 13th to August 13th to August 13th, which recognizes the presence of the Bar Association, to control this distribution, was never regulated by the Government, although it was planned for a period of 30 days for this purpose. The transmission in the electronic distribution of processes continues to be a mirage.
Refers also to the current composition of the Superior Council for the Judiciary Portugal is not in accordance with the recommendation of the Council of Europe and the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), which states that more than half of the report of its members must be chosen by the peers, recommending that this composition be changed to obediently (p.7). It is good that this law is the same that is adopted and is also adopted so that the Parliament abandons once and for all its professional proposals for alteration in order to interfere in its internal autonomy.
All this is to demonstrate that the rule of law in Portugal continues to function very poorly. We believe that this situation may someday be reversed. Wait.