The Minister of Justice, Local Administration, and Public Function, José Antonio Nieto, expressed in the Parliament Plenary the concern of the Andalusian Government about the «overload» that will mean for the courts dealing with Violence against Women taking on the responsibilities for sexual offenses without the State providing resources to reinforce these bodies. «The Gender Violence judges are alerting about this overload, and it worries us because we do not want the attention to victims to decrease in the slightest,» he pointed out.
The Minister regretted in Parliament that the central Government does not provide the necessary means for these courts to face these new responsibilities, outlined in the Law of Efficiency of the Public Justice Service published last January. In order to address this situation, Nieto indicated, «we need the Government to do justice; what we don’t need is for it to commit injustices like the one carried out in the bilateral commission with Catalonia, where the contribution of 60 new judges was agreed upon, sacrificing those committed for Andalusia, requested at the time,» which would mean almost 80 more positions in our community, including judges and magistrates.
In this sense, José Antonio Nieto recalled that the Ministry of Justice, in agreement with the Andalusian Superior Court of Justice (TSJA), established a list of urgent needs for new judicial units in the community for this year, amounting to 56 new courts and 15 magistrate positions. The Ministry of Justice refused their creation, citing budget constraints and the implementation of the Efficiency Law, which, in addition to granting more powers to the courts dealing with Violence against Women, will transform single-judge courts into collegiate bodies.
Therefore, this is a significant reform that, according to the Minister, does not have financial resources from the State to assist the regions in deploying the transferred powers, nor a very demanding implementation schedule, as it has not been agreed upon with them. In fact, in Andalusia, 70 out of the 85 judicial districts must be adapted to the new regulation by July 1, which involves reorganizing physical spaces in judicial offices and staff: by October 31, three more judicial districts will be adapted, and before December 31, the 12 largest, including those of the eight provincial capitals.
