Business in Portugal

It was recently published the law regulating the new Portuguese Judicial Organization. The purpose of the law is to extend the territorial base of specialized courts and implement a new management model for the district jurisdictions. For the purposes of judicial organization, the national territory will be divided into 23 district jurisdictions: Azores, Aveiro, Beja, Braga, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Évora, Faro, Guarda, Leiria, Lisboa, North, West Lisbon, Madeira, Portalegre, Porto, Porto Est, Santarém, Setúbal, Viana do Castelo, Vila Real and Viseu. The 23 d mentioned districts, will correspond to 23 major Courts, established in each district capitals. Of the 311 currently existing courts, 264 courts will converted to 218 sections and 290 to central first instance local sections.

The government forecasts the economy will grow 1.2 percent this year after contracting 1.4 percent last year. It targets a budget deficit of 4 percent of gross domestic product this year and forecasts the shortfall will drop below the EU’s 3 percent limit in 2015, when it aims for a 2.5 percent gap. Debt peaked at 129 percent of GDP in 2013 and the government projects it will fall to 126.8 percent in 2014.

The enforcement proceeding (debt recovery through the courts) has been considered one of the major problems in Portuguese justice and also one of the barriers to the development of the Portuguese economy. In 2013 the cases for legal collection amounted EUR 5.6 billion, regarding 201,000 enforcement proceedings lodged in the courts. Between January and April 9 this year, 38,924 cases were filed, valued at EUR. 1.6 billion. Portuguese courts have pending something like EUR 7.2 billion to collect, which corresponds to 4.3% of GDP.