In a discussion during a plenary session regarding a new set of proposed laws relating to the Courts of Justice, Minister for Justice, Equality, and Governance Edward Zammit Lewis said that the Courts of Justice need to be more efficient.
Reducing the time between when an appeal is made and when it is heard in court can help for justice to be served faster, he said.
“Although we have addressed certain issues, we have a lot more things to do with the Courts of Justice,” Minister Edward Zammit Lewis said.
A recent report by the Council of Europe based on 2018 data also noted that Malta’s court cases take too long to conclude and that it is way above the EU average.
“You can have a case where one won a case, and the other party appeals. We need to see that we reduce this time so that people receive their due justice,” Zammit Lewis said. “It can’t be that we have delays in these things.”
“We need to be more efficient so that Maltese people will have an efficient way to justice.”
PN MP Jason Azzopardi said that the PN agrees with the introduction of such laws to increase efficiency
“It will reduce the delay of justice being served due to the backlog of cases that there are … the Opposition agrees with it,” Azzopardi said.
“The reality is that before Covid-19, the difference when one appeals to when one appears in court, there is 4 years. After covid-19, we are saying that it takes 6 years to appear in court,” he noted.
Azzopardi, however, said that there needs to be more judges to increase efficiency.
“We need more judges. We need to make a reform in magisterial inquiries, as the magistrates would be dealing with other works.”
If the courts had to continue like this, it is bound to have delayed court cases.
“The system, as it is, is an absolute guarantee that there is going to be a failure due to backlog,” he said.
“We need to have a pool of magistrates that deal with magisterial inquiries only … justice delayed is justice denied.”
The government needs to look more at the effect Covid-19 had in the court rooms, Azzopardi said.