Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

Prior to anything else, I want to address a very warm greeting to the representatives of the Portuguese judiciary system, wishing you all a New Year of great achievement, hope and success.

The success you will experience in your duties will be a success for Portugal. However, at the start, it is my wish to evidence my appreciation on how you have performed your demanding duties in the assertion of Justice at a particularly difficult time, overwhelmed with adversities and laborious sacrifices for all the Portuguese.

Through the years, this ceremony has been a privileged moment for those responsible for the judiciary system to jointly appraise and reflect over the Justice exerted in our Country.

Justice, as we are well aware, is essential for the assertion of Democracy and of the rule of Law. The Courts are the sovereign power that materializes as a whole and as the ultimate instance, citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms.

It is the Courts’ duty to express the statement – the decisive statement which must be respected by one and all – that determines legal disputes between private persons, or between these and the Administration, as well as the interpreting of the laws and the safeguard of civic and social rights,

2014 will witness the completion of the Programme of Financial Aid that, in 2011, the then Government subscribed with the international institutions that provided us with the indispensable means to face the imminent financial collapse then reached.

The end of the Programme of Financial Aid will oblige Portugal, already in 2014, to consider ultimate options, to choose future courses to be projected in the outline of many years to come.

What we will carry out, or not, in this year, will have lasting results, positive or negative, depending on how we will be able to face the responsibilities that the current time demands from us all.

Throughout a process that demanded heavy sacrifices from the Portuguese, we arrived at an evident finding: Portugal has to free itself, once and for all, from an unstable and unsustainable model, in which cycles of expansion, supported by the excess of public expenditure and private consumption, are followed by cycles of recession, with severe shrinking of public finance and of families’ available income.

We have reached the time when we have to choose extreme options. It is now, in this year of 2014, without any postponements or hesitations, that we must choose our future courses. Justice and all its players must not, neither can they, place themselves on the outskirts of these fundamental decisions.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As you all know, the performance of Justice has been, in the last decade, one of the main concerns of the public powers, due to the persistent crisis that affects it, reflected on citizens’ lives, in social equality of opportunities and in the Country’s economic development.

It has been widely recognized that Portugal faces a very serious sustainability issue. In addition to energy and environmental sustainability, an issue that is placed to all the countries in the world, we have to face complex challenges of economic and financial sustainability, as well as social political sustainability.

Portugal must be a credible and sustainable country. We must have a sustainable economy, a sustainable Administration and a sustainable model of governance.

Respecting the legitimacy resulting from the popular vote, democratic alternation and the area of action of each new government, medium term items of compromise must be searched for in several areas that guarantee sustainability.

Justice is one of the areas of the State’s activity in which the need of enlarged commitments within a medium term temporal horizon seems most important.

The measures to be adopted in the field of Justice must be the object of a wide political consensus, construed within a dialogue with the judicial operators. Changes in codes and in legislation must be based upon a consensus that ensures their stability, in order that alterations inserted are duly assessed and pondered as to the effects they aim to reach and not to cruise at the wish or whim of the economic or political cycle.

Juridical safety and the peoples’ trust in Justice take for granted the stability of the Law and this may only be achieved if there is a minimum status of understanding between the party-political forces, with the active involvement of the judiciary. Experience shows it: whenever Justice was an area of conflict, whenever Justice veered away from a spirit of compromise, everybody lost, mainly the people.

On another hand, the irregular operation of the administration of Justice, due to the continued delay in the resolution of conflicts and to the unpredictability of their decisions, transmits feelings of institutional insecurity which affect the credibility and the prestige of those who operate within the judicial system, bruising one of the main pillars of the democratic Rule of Law.

Generally, the crisis in Justice is being perceived by citizens and by the economic and social operators through the delay in decisions on processes pending in the district courts, especially in the civil, labour, administrative and tributary areas, and in the insufficient results attributable to the innumerable approved reforms, whether legislative, administrative and organizational, throughout the last decade.

Judicial operators and assessments carried out have pointed out the excess of legislative activity, with the complexity of substantive and pleading regimes, transforming the recourse to courts into an extremely grievous cost. Difficulties encountered by those legitimately requiring a timely reimbursement of their credits and compliance with contractual obligations is one of the most often mentioned features.

In this context, successive governments have recognized in their programmes the need to reform the justice system, putting forward several legislative and organizational measures aiming to combat pending procedures and delays in the resolution of legal disputes.

It happens that the judiciary area was, in itself, the object of specific regard in the Programme of financial aid, subscribed by the previous Government with the international institutions. The respective Memorandum of Understanding even comprises the number of objectives to be achieved, the material measures to be implemented in the legislative and organizational levels and the schedule established for their approval.

In prior external interventions, Justice was not identified as one of the areas demanding great action. On the contrary, in the current Aid Programme, the judicial system was considered as an especially relevant field for the Country’s development and economic recovery.

It is now a fact that it was possible to supply a positive reaction to this challenge as is fully recognized in the assessment reports of the international institutions.

In the latter years a complete survey of pending processes was carried out in the civil and tributary jurisdictions, as well as the setting out of extraordinary procedures aiming towards their decrease.

the review of the existing legislation in several fields was equally carried out, and outstanding features, due to their importance and impact in social and economic development, were the new legislation on Voluntary Arbitration, the changes to the Code of Bankruptcies and Company Recovery, the revision of the Penal and Penal Process Codes, and the approval of a new Code of Civil Procedure which, amongst others, comprised solutions that allowed decreasing of persistent delays in tens of thousands of executive actions.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As much or even more important than the reforms undertaken by the Country in the field of Justice in the latter three years, will be the assessment of the material results of such reforms, in their daily application by the several operators of the judiciary system.

Equally, a deep reflection is fully justified concerning the legal tools of recourse to protective custody, in order that its use does no lead, in practice, to results contradictive to its ends. The custodial means in the defence of rights aim to obtain a timely decision, and it is important to avoid that these may be systematically and abusively used to paralyze, for many years, the legitimate exercise of administrative functions.

A further field demanding special attention is the safeguard of investigation secrecy. As I stated in the opening of the Judicial Year, in 2010, “it is necessary that judiciary operators respect investigative secrecy, such as it is indispensable that the media understands that it cannot be a party to a situation that affects the essential principles of the Rule of Law, such as the principle of presumption of innocence. Criminal investigation must not be disturbed by leakage of information or external interference. Criminal investigation must proceed on its course until the very end, effectively and in peace. Controlling and disciplinary bodies have, in this field, to exercise a more attentive and vigilant action, a much stricter checking, which must be followed by the application of the required sanctions whenever it happens that the law was not respected”.

Four years later, I maintain what I stated then and I am still more than ever convinced of the need that investigative secrecy must be even more strictly safeguarded. We continue looking at grievous infringements in investigative secrecy, which seriously prejudice criminal investigation and irreparably compromise the people’s confidence in our justice system.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Programme of financial Aid which we established with the international institutions will be completed within a few months.

As I have been insisting for some time, it is essential that we immediately prepare for the post-troika period. Justice will certainly perform a relevant role in the growth of our economy which, as is recognized by all, the decisive component for the sustainability of the Country and for the future of the new generations.

Portugal will have materialized a demanding austerity programme without having witnessed social upheavals identical to those occurred in countries that equally required external support.

Simultaneously, it is generally shown that the crisis has not implied, at least directly, a significant increase in violence and criminality.

We cal also state the social Rule of Law, a structural principle of the Constitution of the Republic, was not threatened in its fundamental principles and bases.

The Constitution, fundamental matrix of our Republic, was not suspended. The Portuguese mirror themselves in the model of the social Rule of Law, and want this to be preserved in its essential bases. In order that this model can remain safeguarded, it is essential to balance the public accounts, control external indebtedness, guarantee the stability of the financial system and improve the competitiveness of our economy.

In effect, the effort the Country went through in the latter years will only produce fruitful results if viewed over a medium term basis. There is little advantage in obtaining positive results in a given environment if our main issues are not yet taken care of. We will quickly revert to a situation similar to that in which we found ourselves when we had to request external support.

I am certain that magistracies, as well as all juridical professions, are nowadays fully convinced that only through a spirit of understanding and dialogue will it be able to place Justice at the service of the people it services.

I thus hope that 2014 will be a year when compromise and consensus prevails amongst politicians and judicial operators. There will never be winners in a tense environment. On the contrary, in a climate of opening to dialogue, everyone will gain. Above all, the Portuguese will gain. Justice exists for them, and Justice is administered ion behalf of the people.

On behalf of the Portuguese and for the good of Portugal’s future, I wish you all an excellent 2014 Judiciary Year.