Portugal Pledges Faster Tax and Administrative Courts for Expats

Government Labels Administrative and Tax Courts as Portugal’s “Weakest Link”

The Portuguese executive has fired the starting pistol on a sweeping reform of the country’s administrative and tax court system after the Minister in charge of State Modernisation, Gonçalo Saraiva Matias, blasted the current performance as “embarrassingly slow.” He delivered the assessment during a parliamentary hearing on the 2026 budget proposal, arguing that no other branch of justice in Europe takes longer to conclude cases.

Four-Year Average, Cases That Linger a Decade

• First-instance administrative and tax courts currently need an average of 31 months to finish a case; administrative lawsuits alone take about 41 months.• Some proceedings last 10 to 15 years, the minister told MPs, a timeframe he considers unacceptable for citizens and businesses alike.• At the close of 2024, court statistics showed 91,120 pending files, of which immigration and asylum petitions in Lisbon accounted for roughly half.

The backlog has eased slightly in 2025—immigration-related claims fell from 70,000 to about 55,000 by June—but fresh consolidated figures for the full year are still pending.

Judiciary Pushes Back: “Chronic Under-funding to Blame”

The Superior Council for Administrative and Tax Courts (CSTAF) rejected suggestions that judges are responsible for the drag. Spokes-judge Eliana de Almeida Pinto said decades of “shameful under-investment” in staffing, IT and courthouse infrastructure explain the sluggish pace. According to the council, Portugal employs too few judges for the volume of incoming cases, and recent software migrations have even paralysed some procedural steps.

Their criticism was echoed by the opposition Socialist Party, which last week demanded that the Justice Minister clarify why a new electronic case-management platform went live before it was fully stable, causing what the party called a “complete stand-still” in certain tribunals.

Reform Blueprint on the Table

Minister Saraiva Matias insists the overhaul will not erode procedural guarantees. Key elements he sketched out include:

Speeding Up Workflows – Adopting best practices from EU peers, revising appeal routes and capping certain procedural delays.

New Audit Model – A fundamental review of the Court of Auditors, whose rules have barely changed in four decades.

Full Digital Filing – October’s Ordinance 350-A/2025/1 mandates a single electronic interface for civil, administrative and tax courts and extends e-filing to every stage of litigation, financed through the Recovery and Resilience Plan.

Business Digital Wallet – A pilot slated for January 2026 will allow firms to store certificates such as tax-clearance documents on a smartphone app. The cabinet wants Portugal to be the EU’s first mover in this area.

How Portugal Compares in Europe

Data from the Council of Europe’s CEPEJ report underline the mountain still to climb:

• In 2022, administrative cases in Portugal took 747 days in first instance, versus an EU average of 288 days.• Second-instance delays were even starker: 1,064 days compared with 325 days in the bloc.• Despite the long duration, Portugal posted a first-instance clearance rate of 111 %, meaning more cases were resolved than filed that year.

On the fiscal side, Portugal’s tax framework remains one of the least competitive in the OECD, ranking 33rd out of 38 in the 2025 Tax Foundation index, dragged down by complex rules and high marginal rates.

Why It Matters for Investment

The OECD warned in a 2024 study that protracted court battles deter foreign capital and hamper economic growth. Investors prize legal certainty; waiting four years—or, in worst-case scenarios, a decade—for a judgment on a government contract or a tax dispute is a cost few can afford.

Paulo Rodrigues, who heads the Portuguese Foreign Investment Association, said multinational executives routinely raise the issue during due-diligence calls. “They love our workforce and location but get nervous when they hear horror stories about endless litigation,” he noted.

Next Steps

Parliament will debate the first package of procedural changes during the winter session. Meanwhile, a multi-stakeholder task force—including judges, prosecutors, bar associations and IT specialists—has been set up to draft the more technical rules. The government hopes to see tangible reductions in average case duration by the end of 2026.

For now, both the executive and the judiciary agree on one point: delivering faster, more predictable decisions is critical if Portugal wants to remain attractive to citizens, entrepreneurs and international investors alike.