The working group of the Superior Council of the Judiciary created to analyze mega-processes and improve the speed of Justice proposed changes to the procedural law, the reformulation of the investigation phase and the “fight against delaying procedures” in processes.
According to a statement released by the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM), the working group presented today to the Council plenary the conclusions of the report on “the challenges and solutions for the processing of very complex criminal processes, the so-called ‘megaprocesses'” , explaining that the working group extended its study to criminal procedure in general.
The working group proposes “amending the criminal procedural law to avoid excessive delays in proceedings” and “reformulating the criminal investigation phase, promoting greater efficiency and speed”.
It also proposes the “strengthening of procedural management practices and promotion of a culture of efficiency in the courts”, the “provision of adequate technological and human resources to judges to face the complexity of mega-processes”, namely “technological tools, digital platforms and teams of specialized advice” and “combating delaying procedures”.
The so-called dilatory procedures have been highly criticized within the scope of Operation Marquês, the process whose main defendant is the former prime minister José Sócrates, and a ruling by the Lisbon Court of Appeal pointed out to this defendant successive dilatory acts in the process to try to avoid going to trial in a case that has been going on for more than a decade.
According to the CSM note, the final report of the working group “Megaprocesses and criminal proceedings: letter for speed and better justice”, after being fully informed to the Council plenary, will be sent to the Minister of Justice, the parliamentary groups and to the President of the Assembly of the Republic, “contributing to a broad debate on the modernization of criminal justice”.
The CSM states that the conclusions now known “are in line with the Major Options of the Plan for 2024-2028”, which “identify megaprocesses as one of the biggest challenges for criminal justice and reinforce the need for legislative changes to accelerate the action of courts” and adds that the government program “underlines the importance of reforming the criminal investigation phase and implementing measures that guarantee greater speed and efficiency, such as simplifying notifications and more effective procedural management”.
The working group was set up in October 2023 and had until the end of 2024 to present a report with proposals to make justice faster.
“The decision to create this group was taken to identify the main problems that delay mega-processes and propose solutions that promote faster, more effective and accessible criminal justice. The work carried out by the group, which includes judges and a prosecutor from the Public Ministry, focused on the analysis of procedural and extra-procedural constraints that affect the procedure and included the definition of strategies to overcome them”, says today’s note from the CSM.
In June last year, when presenting the measures on the Government’s anti-corruption agenda, the Minister of Justice, Rita Alarcão Júdice, had defended the review of the pre-trial phase of cases to prevent them from becoming pre-trials.
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
