Reform of justice: implementing decrees approved

Reform of justice: implementing decrees approved

On Wednesday 28 September the Council of Ministers definitively approved three legislative decrees to implement the reform of civil and criminal justice and the trial office. Just after the last general elections, at the end of Mario Draghi’s government, the Cartabia reform has come to an end.

As far as the civil trial is concerned, the main features of the reform can be summarised as follows: 

• general obligation of telematic filing of introductory and endoprocedural briefs before all judicial offices, including Justice of the Peace and the Court of Cassation, unless there are specific reasons for the Judge to authorise paper filing or the digital system is not functioning and there is a reason of urgency;  
• exchange of pleadings for the identification of the scope of thema decidendum and probandum before the first hearing, thus allowing the judge to both make an assessment on the evidence required for the decision yet at the first hearing and fix the hearing schedule;   
• introduction of provisional orders granting or rejecting the claim, no longer challengeable if not appealed or in case the appeal is rejected; 
• increase of the general value limit of the jurisdiction of the Justice of the Peace; 
• strengthening of mediation and assisted negotiation; 
• immediate oral discussion of the case in the event that the second instance court finds the appeal inadmissible or manifestly unfounded; 
• establishment of the Court for persons, minors and families.

On the other hand, the operation of simplifying the ordinary procedure and reducing special proceedings has remained substantially unfinished.

The Italian Bar Association immediately reacted to the news of the approval of the decrees, expressing growing concern over the risk that the reform might go in the opposite direction to the need for simplification and effective allocation of economic resources identified by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and even fearing an extension of procedural times.

Unlike the Bar Association, the Supreme Judicial Council recently expressed an overall positive judgment on the reform, though raising some perplexities, especially with regard to the missed opportunity to carry out an exhaustive reconnaissance of the several special proceedings currently in force, with the aim of standardising and substantially reducing them. 

Nevertheless, the actual usefulness in achieving the objectives of modernisation and the efficiency of our judicial system will be assessed only once the reform will enter into force.