During the inauguration of the new president of the Bar Association, the Minister of Justice, Rita Alarcão Júdice, stated that any solution adopted for addressing the backlog of migrant regularization processes will be “tailored to what is necessary.”
“We will not implement any structure without justification, and therefore, if necessary, it will be implemented, and the forms will be designed accordingly, but for now, there is no process being finalized, it will not be finalized soon,” said the minister.
The government’s initiative began early in the term when the issue of thousands of unregularized migrant processes and long daily lines at the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) came to the fore. The Bar Association has since established a cooperation protocol with AIMA to expedite the resolution of these backlogs, which the minister noted “is producing results.”
“It is addressing the processing needs of ongoing cases, and therefore, it is a solution we view positively,” she said.
However, the creation of a new specialized court structure is still under consideration. An analysis of the figures from regular and administrative and fiscal jurisdictions is required, explained the Secretary of State for Justice, Maria Clara Figueiredo.
“The numbers presented from one of the jurisdictions did not justify the creation as we initially envisioned. (…) In the forms we envisioned, it would not be justified. This does not mean it cannot be justified by reformulating the solution, incorporating jurisdictions such as criminal, family and minor, and administrative courts, but for that, we would need to leverage another type of process, which I prefer not to specify now,” said the Secretary of State.
The new solution also aims to incorporate hearings for foreigners held at airports, although the hearings will still be conducted at the airports, as further explained.
