Portugal administrative and tax justice caseload analysis

A critique of recent claims regarding the backlog in Portugal's administrative and tax justice systems challenges the narrative of a thirty-year delay. While the president of the Center for Administrative Arbitration and Dispute Resolution (CAAD) suggested that the judicial backlog would be significantly higher without CAAD's intervention, data indicates that state courts reduced their pending caseload by 13,671 cases during the same period CAAD handled 10,000 processes.

Analysis shows that the high number of pending cases is largely driven by a specific factor: approximately 133,000 out of 152,000 pending processes are summons against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) within a single court. In 2024, 71% of the 76,999 entries in the first instance were AIMA-related processes at the Lisbon Administrative and Tax Court (TAC). Excluding these specific cases, the volume of standard legal demand has remained consistent with levels seen in 2022 and 2023.