The Superior Council of Administrative and Tax Courts (CSTAF) has announced the “opening of an urgent national tender” to reinforce the Lisbon district, which has more than 124,000 pending cases related to immigrants.
In a statement released today, CSTAF explains the “urgent national tender for the temporary accumulation of judicial functions, under the Regulation of Mobility and Procedural Management Instruments” will have a total of 50 vacancies.
The objective of this “exceptional procedural management measure” is “to provide an urgent response to the high backlog of injunction proceedings for the protection of rights, freedoms and guarantees relating to the entry and stay of foreign citizens in national territory” at Lisbon Administrative Court (TAC).
On January 7, “there were approximately 124,793 cases pending in the court – a situation that CSTAF considers critical, and “without an immediate solution through legislative or executive means”.
The 50 vacancies are available “for an initial period of three months, renewable once for an equal period, with the definition of monthly decision objectives, objective selection criteria and performance monitoring mechanisms,” states CSTAF.
“Each selected judge will be responsible, on a cumulative basis, for a significant number of cases, with minimum decision targets, and the involvement of the organic units of the administrative and tax courts on a supplementary work basis is also foreseen, as well as occasional support from the Supreme Administrative Court.”
The focus is to “resolve a chronic backlog, strengthen the responsiveness of the administrative and tax jurisdiction, and ensure faster and more effective protection of citizens’ fundamental rights.”
Many of these pending issues are related to delays in regularisation due to the well-documented lack of response from AIMA – the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum – to processes still largely related to ‘expressions of interest’, the legal mechanism, now no longer valid, that allowed thousands of foreigners, who arrived ostensibly for ‘holidays’, to enter the country’s immigration system.
source: LUSA
