Several working groups, under the supervision of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary, work on a series of proposals for the Ministry of Justice to prepare the Plan to streamline judicial activity, which is expected to be implemented after the end of the state of alarm according to the provisions of Royal Decree Law 11/2020.
The measures contemplated in this document that affect the Civil and Commercial specialty are, in summary, the following:
- The full authorization of the month of August for processing and ordinary resolution of judicial processes
- Reinforcement mechanisms in organs that are overloaded
- The establishment of norms of distribution and specialization of the Courts in the civil order, exceeding the territorial scope of the judicial party
- Commercially, streamlining of work in judicial offices to give priority to bankruptcy procedures over other less important procedures
- Enable a new negotiation to those who are fulfilling an agreement, an out-of-court payment agreement or a refinancing agreement
- Unification of criteria in the application of second chance mechanisms
In addition to the aforementioned document, lawyers also professionally use social networks to disseminate other possible measures that may be adopted by the Ministry of Justice to speed up justice, such as:
- Establish simple and standardized forms
- Avoid holding hearings in certain cases
- Resolve matters through Judgments declared “in voce”
- Elimination of procedural formalities, being able to start the calculation of time limits from the transfer of copies between the parties without the need for intervention by the Court, or transferring the processing of appeals before the Superior Court
- Implementation of telework for officials of the administration of justice
Although many of these measures could be very useful to speed up justice, caution should be exercised so as not to sacrifice procedural rights and guarantees, or even adequate defense preparation, in order to unclog the tremendous plug that threatens to totally paralyze the Justice administration. The best omens announce, at least, months of traffic jam and complications, which will have repercussions for years on the accumulation of affairs and the normal march of the Courts (not to mention those who were already overwhelmed).
Any citizen would be terrified if a complex matter in which they were involved had to be presented in a standardized model, limited in its extension, without the possibility of giving a sufficient explanation or argument due to time limits or reduction of procedural acts, or that an essential witness cannot provide decisive data for the understanding of what happened, and that the judge - usually without enough time to study the cases with the necessary advance and depth -, resolves the procedure in the same act of the hearing, however agile and prepared as it may be.
It is evident that many of these measures would fit perfectly into many of the issues that are presented to us on a daily basis, and that belated justice is not justice. But a justice that sacrifices guarantees for agility may not be desirable for anyone. much less for the administered in justice.
