The president of the Portuguese Bar Association regretted the absence of the Ministry of Justice at the Portuguese Lawyers Congress, which began today in Fátima, and accused the Ministry of Justice of not knowing justice.
“No one from the Ministry of Justice will be represented here, at least at the opening ceremony, which is absolutely extraordinary. Let’s wait if someone comes to the closing ceremony, because there is no memory of a lawyers’ congress not having the presence of the Ministry of Justice”, Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro told journalists, on the sidelines of the congress that started today in Fátima, Santarém.
Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro considered that the absence of the tutelage was perhaps due to not being able to “face the Portuguese legal profession and also the international legal profession eye to eye”, since the Council of European Bars and the Federation of European Bars are represented at the congress.
Regarding the changes to the statute of the Bar Association, she reiterated that the proposal “needs major revision in relation to several matters, but unfortunately the Government is not available for this revision”.
“He wants to impose his own revision, changing everything that we believe cannot and should not be changed, namely what concerns the acts of lawyers and solicitors, without taking into account what the Bar Association is telling him,” he said.
Reiterating that the changes that the Government is proposing “considerably reduce the rights, freedoms and guarantees of the populations, make it difficult for these same populations to access justice”, the staff member stressed that “they also hinder access to the profession”, since “the subsidy that may be necessary for this internship to be provided by lawyers is not properly taken care of”.
Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro admitted that there will be law graduates who have difficulty doing internships because lawyers, many of them, cannot pay them, noting that “it is an obligation of the State to finance law internships, since it wants to impose its remuneration”, agreeing with this imposition.
“But the truth is that the Government must be aware that the overwhelming majority of law practice is carried out in individual practice, it is carried out in small companies that are family and that do not, of course, have the financial capacity to be able to remunerate a trainee in these terms and with these obligations”, he said.
According to the staff member, these obligations are also “for a meal allowance, for work accident insurance, for payment of social security and social security which then the lawyer, the trainee, will not benefit from, because if he enters the profession he will lose all that money that was paid, either by the lawyer or by himself to social security”.
Recalling that lawyers have the Lawyers’ and Solicitors’ Pension Fund, Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro explained that “this is an issue, for example, that the Government does not want to resolve either”.
“The truth is that you also made a commitment to us that you would have a working group ready to look at these issues by May 31, but unfortunately they could not guarantee what year that May 31 was,” he added.
For the staff member, “all these issues have contributed to the lack of confidence in this guardianship, which does not know justice, which does not know the problems of justice and the few who speak of them do not solve them”, in addition to “making commitments that it then does not fulfill”.
More than 500 lawyers are taking part in the congress, which ends on Sunday, under the theme “For the Advocacy we want”.
There are 35,400 registered lawyers, according to the Bar Association.
Bar Association. Protest measures against the change in status are already in place
