# Parliament Bill Would End Lisbon's Monopoly on AIMA Court Cases

> A justice reform before Portugal's parliament would let foreigners sue AIMA in their local court instead of only in Lisbon, easing a massive case backlog.

- Source: https://www.growinportugal.com/news/parliament-moves-to-take-aima-legal-cases-out-of-lisbon-only-2026-09-20
- Publisher: GrowIN Portugal (https://www.growinportugal.com)
- Published: 2026-09-20
- Last reviewed: 2026-09-20
- Language: en

> **Key figures — as of 2026-09-20:** Lisbon's Administrative Circuit Court closed 2024 with **46,824** pending AIMA-related cases — **80 times** more than in 2023 — after receiving 54,222 new filings in a single year; a Council of Ministers bill (Proposta de Lei n.º 98/XVII), debated in parliament on 16 September 2026, would let foreigners sue AIMA in the administrative court closest to where they live instead of only in Lisbon; a similar bill from the Iniciativa Liberal party was rejected by parliament in February 2026.

## A court built for hundreds, drowning in tens of thousands

For nearly two years, any foreigner who wanted a Portuguese court to force AIMA to act — schedule an interview, decide a residency file, respond at all — had to file in exactly one place: the Tribunal Administrativo de Círculo de Lisboa. That's because Portuguese procedural law sends cases to the court where the defendant is headquartered, and AIMA's headquarters is in Lisbon. The AIMA agency has its headquarters in Lisbon, so even someone living in Porto, Coimbra or Braga could only file against it in Lisbon.

The result was a pile-up almost nobody anticipated at that scale. The Lisbon court closed 2024 with 46,824 pending immigration and asylum cases, 80 times more than in 2023, after 54,222 so-called "6th kind" AIMA-related cases entered that year, when only 575 were pending at the end of 2023. Delays with a court's own filing showed it starkly: in Lisbon, cases delayed by more than a year jumped from roughly 3,600 in 2023 to roughly 49,600 in 2024.

## What the bill actually changes

The Council of Ministers approved the reform proposal on 23 July 2026, and it reached the floor of the Assembleia da República for a general debate on 16 September. Under the proposal discussed that Wednesday in parliament, AIMA lawsuits would be distributed according to the residence or headquarters of whoever brought the case, ending the exclusive concentration in Lisbon. Justice Minister Rita Alarcão Júdice framed it plainly: "We're going to define a new territorial jurisdiction criterion for injunctions against AIMA," she announced, specifying these would follow "the seat or residence of the applicant."

Crucially, this isn't a brand-new court network. According to the minister, the measure doesn't create new specialised courts, but rather specialised divisions built into courts that already exist — a design choice aimed squarely at avoiding a constitutional challenge, since Portugal's judicial map can't easily be redrawn by ordinary legislation. The new divisions would handle cases on entry, residence, exit and removal of foreign nationals, plus asylum, subsidiary protection and temporary protection matters falling under the administrative courts.

The bill also gives the Conselho Superior dos Tribunais Administrativos e Fiscais (CSTAF) more muscle to manage the load. It grants CSTAF new powers to manage case distribution and respond to backlogs, including the ability to set an annual maximum caseload per judge and reference values for different courts to identify and correct workload imbalances. A parallel measure targets the small claims that clog the system: Júdice noted that cases up to €15,000 represent 23% of the total, and a simplified procedure is planned for them.

This isn't the government's first attempt. In February 2026, parliament rejected a similar Iniciativa Liberal bill proposing the same deconcentration, after CSTAF issued an unfavourable opinion warning it could spread the problem nationwide, with PSD and CDS-PP — parties that support the government — voting it down. The government has now brought forward its own version of the same idea, though the minister declined to explain the reversal when asked directly.

## GrowIN's read: why Lisbon alone couldn't cope

Do the arithmetic on 2024 and the scale of the mismatch becomes obvious. Lisbon's dedicated team started with just six judges handling 54,222 new AIMA filings in a single year — over 9,000 cases per judge, against a national backdrop where every other Portuguese court region was actually reducing its backlog. No single court, however well staffed, absorbs that volume without years of delay. Spreading filings to wherever the applicant actually lives doesn't just relieve Lisbon — it aligns caseload with the population foreigners are already distributed across, from the Algarve to Braga.

**"Moving the filing address doesn't fix AIMA's own delays — it just gives foreigners a court that isn't already drowning before their case even starts,"** says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.

## Not everyone is convinced

The reform has critics inside the judiciary itself. Nuno Matos, president of the Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses, warned that a specialised immigration court could end up with just one or two judges swamped by cases from a high-immigration area, effectively transferring Lisbon's congestion elsewhere in the country. His deeper point cuts closer to the root cause: "If AIMA worked properly, most of these cases wouldn't exist," he said, since people go to court "because AIMA doesn't respond, whether on time or not at all." A jurist from the Jesuit Refugee Service's legal office was more measured, telling reporters that specialised divisions could bring more consistent, qualified rulings to an area of law she called genuinely complex — but only if AIMA's own administrative performance improves alongside the courts.

## What happens next

The bill still needs to clear committee stages and a final vote before it becomes law, and no implementation date has been set yet — the government has said timing depends on parliamentary approval. Meanwhile, CSTAF's national task force, formed to chip away at the backlog with judges pulled from across the country, resumes work after the judicial recess with an expanded roster of 23 magistrates.

Foreigners currently waiting on an AIMA court injunction should assume no immediate change to where they file — the Lisbon-only rule stays in force until the reform is formally enacted. For background on residence permit routes and what to do if AIMA delays are affecting your case, see our [visas](/visas/) hub. Anyone with a pending or upcoming AIMA dispute should track the bill's progress through the Assembleia da República and consult a Portuguese immigration lawyer before assuming which court will have jurisdiction over their case.

## Sources

- [Diário de Notícias](https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/governo-vai-distribuir-processos-contra-a-aima-para-tribunais-de-todo-o-pas)
- [ECO](https://eco.sapo.pt/2026/09/16/processos-contra-a-aima-deixam-de-estar-concentrados-em-lisboa/)
- [Público](https://www.publico.pt/2025/02/08/sociedade/noticia/tribunal-fecha-2024-46824-processos-aima-pendentes-contraria-tendencia-reducao-2121802)
- [Observador](https://observador.pt/2026/07/23/governo-quer-redistribuir-processos-da-aima-por-tribunais-de-todo-o-pais-apos-chumbar-proposta-igual-da-il-em-fevereiro/)

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© GrowIN Portugal. Cite as: GrowIN Portugal, "Parliament Bill Would End Lisbon's Monopoly on AIMA Court Cases", https://www.growinportugal.com/news/parliament-moves-to-take-aima-legal-cases-out-of-lisbon-only-2026-09-20