Public Prosecutor accused of violating Constitution

The Portuguese Association of Women Jurists (APMJ) accused the Superior Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office (CSMP) of violating the Constitution and women's rights in the notice of movement of magistrates, in a note sent on Monday to the Attorney General of the Republic.

In the note made public this Tuesday, signed by its president, Maria Teresa Féria de Almeida, the association asks the Attorney General of the Republic, Amadeu Guerra, who presides over the CSMP and is responsible for “promoting the defense of democratic legality”, to “reconsider his decision in order to respect and comply with international and constitutional regulations”.

Regarding the notice, the APMJ states that it “ has caused it the deepest astonishment, dismay and repudiation ”, calls for the annulment of the rules “that reverse the path of specialization in the fight against violence against women and the protection of children” and urges the Government and the Assembly of the Republic to “urgently reinforce” the resources of the Public Prosecutor's Office, “under penalty of being jointly responsible for the ineffectiveness in combating violence that so disproportionately affects Portuguese women”.

The association's position is justified by the fact that “that notice constitutes an instrument to reverse professional achievements in the fight against violence against women and violates, in a notorious, clear and blatant manner, the rules relating to protection in maternity, illness, assistance to third parties, equality in access to positions and reconciliation of professional, personal and family life”.

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As the Public Prosecutor's Office Magistrates' Union (SMMP) had already stated, Women Jurists also understand that this movement, and the rules for aggregating magistrates' competences that it determines, represents " a huge setback in specialization ", putting at risk investigations and specialization in jurisdictions in which violence against women and children represents "a large portion of the cases", such as the jurisdiction of family courts.

For the APMJ, the provisions of the magistrates' movement, which the CSMP justified with a lack of human resources, contradict international conventions and regulations on women's rights and gender discrimination, as well as the Portuguese Constitution and the Statute of the Public Prosecutor's Office.

The association stated that the rules of the notice that exclude applications from magistrates who foresee that they may be prevented from serving for a period of more than 60 days between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026 mainly affect women, who are the majority in the Public Prosecutor's Office, whose current staff is made up of 1,183 women and 539 men.

The APMJ criticizes the decision that would lead female judges to have to “make a commitment, valid for twelve months, that they will not get pregnant, will not fall ill, will not take on informal caregiver roles for family members, and will not undergo fertility treatments.”

“Instead of the feminization of the profession being accompanied by structural reforms in terms of reconciling work and personal life and responding to absences from work due to maternity and children's illness, tasks that still fall to women, the CSMP decided to restrict female judges' access to certain positions, excluding them and penalizing them for being women,” accused the APMJ.

The APMJ stated that it “cannot accept, therefore, that the lack of human resources results in the lack of specialization of Public Prosecutor's Office magistrates in the criminal investigation of violence against women and in the jurisdiction of family and children”, nor that, “under the fallacy that the increase in the number of female magistrates is the cause of the slowness of justice, women are prevented from accessing positions”.

In a parliamentary hearing in September 2024, in one of her last acts as Attorney General of the Republic, Amadeu Guerra's predecessor, Lucília Gago, caused controversy by referring to the high proportion of women in the judiciary and the prolonged absences due to childbirth when she pointed out the lack of resources in the Public Prosecutor's Office.

Regarding the movement of magistrates, the Attorney General's Office has already rejected the idea that the specialization of magistrates is at stake, stating that the objective is to optimize resources.