Justice and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR): faster trials – processing times down by 28.8%

The Italian justice system is reducing case processing times, but in civil cases the target set by the NRRP remains a long way off. Between 2019 and 2025, the average time taken to resolve cases has fallen in both the civil and criminal sectors. In the civil justice system, the target of a 40% reduction has not yet been achieved: as at 31 December 2025, the reduction stands at 28.8%. However, this figure does not take into account the new NRRP target set for 30 June this year.

This is what emerges from the Istat report on the justice system and the NRRP, which measures trends in ‘Disposition Time’, the indicator used to assess the theoretical duration of pending proceedings. For civil litigation, the NRRP target stipulates that a case set to go through all levels of the court system – the District Court, the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation – should last less than 1,507 days. In 2019, the average duration was 2,512 days. By the end of 2025, this will fall to 1,789 days: a significant improvement, but not enough to meet the European target.

The best result comes from the Court of Cassation, where the civil case processing time has fallen from 1,302 to 863 days, a reduction of 33.8 per cent. This is the sharpest reduction across the various levels of the court system.

The improvement was more modest in the district courts, where the reduction stood at 21.8 per cent and the average processing time in 2025 was 435 days. In the courts of appeal, the reduction was 24.8 per cent, with a disposition time of 492 days.

The picture, therefore, is two-sided. The civil justice system is moving more quickly than in 2019, but not quickly enough to meet the PNRR target. There has been some improvement, particularly in the Court of Cassation. However, the gap from -40 per cent still needs to be closed.