Introduction

First Stage: Constitutional Reforms

Second Stage: Increasing the Efficiency of Justice

Third stage: Overall Planning
a) The Administration of Justice Must be Perceived as a Public Service
b) Judicial Reforms Must be Implemented in an Integrated Plan
c) Judicial Reforms Must Be Based on Consensus

Third stage: Overall Planning
Only in the last few years have new reforms been projected, largely at the initiative of the General Council of the Judiciary, based on coordinated plans and on the conviction that to achieve an efficient justice system from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective, there must be an integrated project which reflects the lessons learned from the successes and failures of previous reforms. A result of this new policy is the “Pact for Justice” signed in May, 2001 by the principal parliamentary groups including the Government and opposition parties, to implement an overall reform of the administration of justice based on the conclusions obtained from the experience of the previous years, and requiring joint action and heavy investments over the next few years.

The lessons derived from past experience which seem to be widely accepted by those responsible for the present judicial policies, are threefold:

• the administration of justice must be perceived as a public service,
• the problems of the justice system must be approached from a global perspective, and
• the reforms implemented must be the result of a consensus on the part of the sectors involved.