Speaking to Lusa, the parliamentary leader of IL, Mariana Leitão, explained that the bill, submitted to parliament, aims to change the procedural code in administrative courts to resolve the problem of the “exponential increase” in cases filed with the Administrative Court of the District (TAC) against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) and which generate “successive delays” in its decision.

“This has to do with the fact that the competence to decide on these matters, namely residence permits, lies with the Board of Directors of AIMA, which has its headquarters in Lisbon and, according to the rules of competence, this will all fall to the administrative court of the Lisbon district”, she explained.

Long delays

According to Mariana Leitão, “decision deadlines are around four to five months” and these are urgent processes “that should be decided within a month at the most”, taking into account that they are related “to people’s rights, freedoms and guarantees”.

“Our solution is to change the rules of territorial jurisdiction for presenting these intimidations and what we want is for them to be able to be presented on the site where the author started the reception and integration process or where it was distributed, in the case of it having been started in Lisbon”, she explained.

This proposal, according to the parliamentary leader of IL, makes it possible to distribute the processes and ensure that everything is not centralised in Lisbon, which is what currently happens and “has led to these successive delays in the processing of processes”.

“We are trying to alleviate this in some way so that everything is not centralised in Lisbon and thus help these decisions to be made more quickly,” she added.

Mariana Leitão pointed out a “major constraint” in this court in Lisbon “due to this exponential increase in the number of cases in which, even at the end of last year, the Portuguese Bar Association estimated that around 52 cases were received every working day”.

“We intend to alleviate this burden and distribute it to other territorial areas, thereby allowing decisions to be made more quickly,” she explained.

When asked about the expectation of approval of this bill by other political forces, the liberal leader said she hoped it would be given the green light in parliament given the recognition of the problem and the “objectivity of the solution” which involves distribution to other courts in other districts.