Medium-term budget plan

The Government is aiming to cut costs by a further 12 per cent in civil proceedings

Plans are also in the pipeline to reduce the backlog of disputes by 90 per cent

by Giovanni Negri

18 September 2026

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3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

New targets for reducing both the backlog and the duration of court cases. Admittedly, these may not have the binding force of the targets agreed with Europe and may also depend on future political dynamics; nevertheless, having achieved and improved upon the PNRR targets in civil matters and criminal matters, is attempting to relaunch the initiative.

The new targets

In the 2025–2029 Medium-Term Structural Budget Plan – a measure also necessitated by the need to comply with the new European constraints in force from 30 April 2024 – the Ministry of the Economy and Finance sets out in Table a further 12 per cent cut in the duration of civil proceedings, including in the commercial sector, and a 90 per cent reduction in the outstanding backlog, to be achieved by the end of 2028.

The measures

One way of attempting to consolidate and stabilise the results achieved under the NRRP, which have seen a 40 per cent reduction in the duration of criminal proceedings and around 50 per cent in the civil sector. All this has been accompanied by a very sharp reduction in the backlog. However, the key factor will be the investment programme, which the Deputy Minister of Justice, Francesco Paolo Sisto, confirmed on Thursday 17 September: ‘The injection of both financial and human resources is not a temporary measure. The investments are stable: recruitment and the conversion of temporary posts to permanent ones will continue; as regards magistrates, we have almost completed our staffing levels. There is no reason to think that we might backtrack, because these are investments made in the justice system’."

Investments

And there are at least two litmus tests to verify the credibility of these assurances. The first is the full implementation of the scheme, which the Plan envisages by the end of 2028 of the complete digitisation of civil, criminal, administrative, tax and accounting records, ‘through the creation of a single IT platform. Finally, by 2029, full interoperability will be ensured between the Ministry of Justice’s systems and databases and those of other ministries and agencies’.

‘These measures,’ the document emphasises, ‘will make a more significant contribution, on the part of Italy, to the implementation of the European process of digitising cross-border judicial cooperation and access to justice. It provides for the guarantee of both electronic communication to natural or legal persons via the European electronic access point, and the exchange of information between authorities in civil, commercial and criminal matters.”

Staff

Then there is the issue of staffing; the Plan confirms the permanent appointment of staff in the trial office, 6,000 in total, a process already finalised by the Ministry of Justice, with around 1,500 staff members excluded and, until the end of the month, assigned to the case clearance sections for international protection (the ANM has once again called for their recruitment, but the aim is to expand the scope of recruitment as much as possible and further still). However, given the generally lengthy timescales involved in judicial recruitment competitions, the current staffing levels are expected to reach capacity; today, the total number of posts of the ordinary judiciary stands at 10,656, with 1,217 vacant posts and a vacancy rate of 11.35 per cent.

Time-limited measures

There remains the uncertainty surrounding the conclusion of a series of extraordinary organisational measures which, particularly in recent months, have made it possible to exceed the PNRR targets – ranging from the extraordinary powers granted to heads of departments to the remotely by magistrates in the most critical locations.