Portugal's Parliament has approved a contentious judicial reform that excludes lawyers from direct fines for delaying court proceedings, following a proposal approved in specialization on June 3, 2025. The changes to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPP) and the Procedural Costs Regulation will impose penalties of up to €10,200 on defendants, claimants, and other parties who file frivolous motions—but not their legal counsel—once promulgated by the President of the Republic. This represents a change welcomed by the Ordem dos Advogados (OA), though questions remain about what constitutes a "dilatory tactic."
Why This Matters
• Lawyers shielded from fines: Attorneys will no longer face direct financial penalties for procedural delays, though they remain subject to disciplinary investigation by the OA if a client is fined twice for dilatory tactics.
• Who pays instead: Defendants, civil parties, assistants, and others in criminal proceedings now bear the full risk of fines for "manifestly unfounded or dilatory acts."
• Vague definitions persist: Neither Parliament nor the Justice Ministry has clarified what constitutes a dilatory act, leaving judges to decide case by case.
• Pending presidential approval: Once the President of the Republic signs the bill — a formality expected within weeks — courts can begin levying fines under the new rules.
How the Law Changed
The original draft, approved by the Council of Ministers on December 11, 2025, targeted anyone who slowed down criminal trials with baseless filings or procedural maneuvers — including defense lawyers. That set off alarms at the OA, which warned that threatening attorneys with fines would chill the exercise of robust defense, a right guaranteed under Article 32 of the Portuguese Constitution. The bar association argued that a lawyer's duty to exhaust all legal avenues for a client cannot be retrofitted as obstruction, especially in an adversarial system built on the presumption of innocence.
A proposal tabled by the Social Democrats (PSD) in the specialization phase, approved on June 3, removed lawyers from the list of potential targets. Instead, the penalty falls squarely on the procedural party — the defendant, assistant, civil claimant, or affected person. If a second fine is triggered through the same attorney's conduct, the OA can open a disciplinary file against that lawyer, but no direct court-imposed fine will follow.
The final global vote has been scheduled with expected support from PSD, Chega, IL, and CDS-PP. Opposition parties PS, Livre, PCP, BE, PAN, and JPP have maintained their objections, citing risks to the constitutional right of defense and the principle of material truth that underpins criminal proceedings.
What Counts as a Dilatory Act?
Here lies the thorniest problem: the law does not define "manifestly unfounded or dilatory act" with any precision. The statute borrows language from civil litigation, where bad-faith filings can draw sanctions, and grafts it onto criminal procedure — a fundamentally different arena. In civil cases, litigants are adversaries with symmetric duties to cooperate. In criminal cases, defendants enjoy the right to silence, bear no obligation to assist the prosecution, and benefit from the presumption of innocence. Importing civil-law concepts into this framework risks punishing legitimate defensive strategy as obstruction.
The OA has pressed Parliament to "define with clarity what constitutes a manifestly unfounded or dilatory act, given that the subjectivity of this concept may undermine the rights of those involved in proceedings." Without bright-line rules, judges will rely on subjective assessments, opening the door to inconsistent enforcement and possible constitutional challenges.
Impact on Residents and Legal Practice
For anyone facing criminal charges in Portugal, the new regime means greater financial exposure if your lawyer files motions a judge later deems frivolous. The €10,200 maximum fine is roughly equivalent to two months of gross median salary, a steep penalty that could deter defendants from pursuing appeals, evidentiary challenges, or procedural objections — even when those moves are legally permissible.
Defense attorneys now face a delicate calculus: push too hard, and your client pays; hold back, and you may fail in your duty to mount a full defense. The threat of a second fine triggering a disciplinary inquiry adds a layer of professional risk, though the OA has yet to publish guidance on how it will weigh such cases.
For foreign residents and expats navigating Portugal's criminal justice system — whether as defendants, victims, or witnesses — the practical takeaway is straightforward: expect judges to scrutinize every procedural request more closely. Motions for continuances, requests for additional expert testimony, and challenges to evidence admissibility will all face heightened skepticism. If you are represented by counsel, discuss upfront the risk profile of each strategic choice; if you are self-represented, understand that Portuguese courts now have a financial cudgel to discourage what they perceive as stalling.
Constitutional Doubts and European Context
José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, President of the Assembleia da República, publicly voiced constitutional concerns during the February general-debate vote, warning that punishing defensive tactics could collide with the adversarial structure guaranteed under Article 32(5) of the Constitution. Legal scholars have echoed this, noting that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) mandates a "reasonable time" standard under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights — but also insists that speed cannot trump fair-trial rights.
Across Europe, systems vary. The United Kingdom maintains "vexatious litigant" lists and can bar serial filers from court without judicial permission. Germany follows a "loser pays" rule for costs, deterring speculative claims but rarely fines defendants directly for delay. Italy's Article 96 of the Civil Procedure Code allows fines between €500 and €5,000 for gross negligence or bad faith, while France introduced expedited rejection procedures for patently frivolous claims in 2025. Portugal's approach — direct fines on criminal defendants rather than cost-shifting — is more aggressive than most continental models.
What Happens Next
Once the President signs the law — expected in the coming weeks — the Justice Ministry will need to issue interpretive guidance or risk a flood of appeals. The first batch of fines will test whether judges apply the standard consistently or whether regional courts diverge. Constitutional challenges are likely; the Tribunal Constitucional may eventually rule on whether vague "dilatory act" language violates the legality principle or chills the right of defense.
For now, the message from Lisbon is clear: the government prioritizes speed in court proceedings, and the burden of that choice falls on defendants rather than their lawyers. Whether that trade-off survives judicial scrutiny — or simply shifts delay into the appellate docket — remains to be seen.
Broader Implications for Justice Reform
Justice Minister Rita Alarcão Júdice defended the package throughout the legislative process, insisting the measures are constitutional and serve the public interest by unclogging a backlogged court system. Portugal ranks among the slower jurisdictions in the European Union for case resolution, and the government argues that without deterrents, procedural abuse will continue to drain resources and erode public confidence in the judiciary.
Critics counter that the real bottleneck lies not in frivolous filings but in chronic underfunding, outdated case-management systems, and a shortage of judges and clerks. Penalizing defendants for exercising procedural rights, they argue, treats the symptom rather than the disease — and risks turning the courtroom into a place where only the wealthy can afford to mount a vigorous defense.
The reform also includes a separate provision allowing judges to accept confessions as sufficient proof in certain serious crimes without requiring corroborating evidence at trial — a measure that drew even sharper constitutional objections. Together, these changes signal a shift toward efficiency that may redraw the line between expediency and fairness in Portuguese criminal justice.
For residents, the advice is pragmatic: if you are involved in a criminal case, consult your lawyer early about the new rules, document the factual basis for every procedural request, and be prepared for courts to challenge delays more aggressively than in the past. The era of unlimited procedural maneuvering — if it ever existed — is over.
