A Decree Published on Wednesday Reopens Promotions Inside Portugal's Court Registries, and the Union Says Nine in Ten Section Chiefs Are Only Acting

The decree that unblocks hiring and promotion inside Portugal's court registries was published in the Diário da República (Official Gazette) on Wednesday, two years into a revision of the profession's statute. Decreto-Lei n.º 181/2026, de 9 de setembro sets out how someone becomes a técnico de justiça, how a técnico becomes an escrivão, and how the two senior registry posts are filled. The Council of Ministers approved it on 23 July and President António José Seguro promulgated it on 2 September.

None of that opens a single competition. The Sindicato dos Funcionários Judiciais (Judicial Officers' Union) says a further portaria (ministerial order) is still needed to carry the requirements, the scoring formulas and the procedures, and that until it appears the promotions the decree authorises cannot be run. "Justice cannot go on acknowledging the problem on paper and postponing it in practice," the union's president, Regina Soares, said on the day of publication.

What the Decree Sets Out

Entry now runs through a competition with a general knowledge test and a psychological assessment, followed by a training course taken during probation. Candidates need a degree in law, public administration or management, and anyone who completes probation is bound to stay three years or repay the state.

Promotion to escrivão requires 12 years of effective service as a técnico de justiça and a positive performance rating in each of the last 10, plus a written examination. The union counts that 12-year threshold as a win, because the government had wanted 16. It counts a second win in article 11, which lets staff who moved into the técnico grade under the 2025 career reform without holding a degree compete for escrivão posts on the same terms as graduates.

Article 9 then formalises the acting regime: a post can be filled by substitution when the holder is away for more than 30 consecutive days or when it falls vacant, and a vacancy must enter the first staff movement held afterwards.

The Numbers Behind the Text

That last article is the one the union reads hardest. More than 90 percent of registry section chiefs, it says, are currently serving in the acting regime rather than as confirmed post holders. It puts the shortfall across the courts at between 1,900 and 2,000 staff, says one court officer retires per day on average, and has asked for a multi-year commitment to at least 500 to 600 entries before the end of this year.

The finance ministry is the constraint the decree writes in explicitly. Both the entry article and the promotion article leave the number of posts to be filled to a joint despacho of the ministers for finance, public administration and justice. The legal machinery is in place; the volume is a budget decision nobody has taken.

What This Means for You

• Case timetables: registry staff schedule hearings, issue citations and move a file between steps. A shortfall of this size shows up as waiting time in the proceedings foreign residents use most, from AIMA lawsuits to inheritance and divorce files.
• Nothing changes this month: no competition can open until the portaria is published, and no volume exists until the joint despacho does.
• Deadlines still run normally: civil time limits that froze over the judicial holidays have been running again since the start of September.

The union returns to the ministry on 21 September, with the performance-evaluation regime on the agenda. That is not a side issue: the promotion route this decree opens is gated on 10 years of positive appraisals, so the rules being argued over on the 21st decide who is eligible for competitions that have not been announced.