Main novelties of the Organic Law draft on efficiency and consumer protection

Given its importance, we continue to await the development of the parliamentary processing of the draft organic law on measures for the efficiency of the public justice service and collective actions for the protection and defence of the rights and interests of consumers and users.

The draft organic law brings together very diverse and far-reaching matters in the field of the organisation, management and resolution of legal disputes, such as the organisational reform of the justice system, the regulation of appropriate means of non-judicial dispute resolution and collective actions for the protection and defence of the rights and interests of consumers and users, This affects numerous laws, including the Organic Law of the Judiciary, the Law on Civil Procedure, the Law on Criminal Procedure, the Law on Demarcation and Judicial Planning, the Law on Unfair Competition, the Mortgage Law, the revised text of the General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users, the Law on Voluntary Jurisdiction, etc.

Among the many matters regulated by the draft organic law, in the civil jurisdictional order, it will be a procedural requirement, in the majority of conflicts, to resort to some means of dispute resolution, carried out by the parties themselves or with the intervention of a neutral third party, in accordance with the requirements set out in Book II of the draft organic law.

The measure is in itself controversial since it will delay in time the possibility for plaintiffs to initiate legal action in defence of their legitimate interests, an effect contrary to that intended by the draft organic law, especially when Law 1/2000, of 7 January, on Civil Procedure, in its various reforms, has contemplated and encouraged the possibility for plaintiffs to initiate legal action in defence of their legitimate interests, an effect contrary to that intended by the draft organic law, for example, proceedings can be suspended if the parties wish to try to reach an agreement, and in the Preliminary Hearing procedure, Article 415 of the Law expressly provides for the attempt at conciliation or settlement and the approval and effectiveness of the agreement.

On the other hand, the procedural reforms, supposedly aimed at speeding up judicial proceedings, are included in Chapter II of Title II of the draft organic law. With regard to the civil jurisdictional order, it is proposed to modify several aspects of Law 1/2000, of 7 January, on Civil Procedure, including the following:

1.- With regard to oral proceedings, the possibility is introduced that the judge, in view of the parties' requests for evidence, may decide not to hold the hearing even when the parties have requested it. Currently, the regulation obliges this act to be convened when any of the parties request it, a circumstance that has led to delays due to the holding of a multitude of unnecessary hearings for the resolution of the lawsuit, as the documentary evidence provided with the claim and defence is sufficient.
2.- Another novelty is the possibility of judges being able to issue oral sentences in oral proceedings. This is a measure to speed up lawsuits and the sentences will be recorded on the spot with audiovisual means.
3.- It is also intended to clarify the effect of res judicata in eviction trials for non-payment or expiry of the term when the action for claiming rent or similar amounts is accumulated, establishing that the pronouncements of the judgement in relation to these accumulated actions will produce this effect, putting an end to the disparity of interpretative criteria in the matter.
4.- It is established that the payment of procedural costs in provisional executions will not be ordered when the provisions of the enforceable title are complied with within twenty days of notification of the enforcement order.
5.- Another of the measures included is the suppression of the sentence for costs in the incident of challenging the assessment of costs as excessive, except in cases of abuse of the public service of justice. A new regulation of costs is also introduced in the incident of accumulation of proceedings, eliminating the criterion of objective expiry for their imposition, giving way to a criterion based on good or bad procedural faith, in order to favour accumulations of proceedings that will favour the principle of procedural economy.
6.- Finally, important modifications are made to the electronic judicial auction in order to speed up its procedures and to allow the executing party to bid in the same way as other bidders.

On 19 June last, the Popular Group presented an amendment to the entirety with the return of the draft organic law, and the processing of the draft organic law is currently in the report phase of the Congressional Justice Committee.
The amendment in its entirety is justified on the grounds that in this draft organic law, three previously processed individual bills are merged, apart from the multiple modifications that are added to these reforms and that do not find their raison d'être in a single object of the law: the first part is based on the text of the draft organic law on organisational efficiency; the second part, relating to the regulation of ADR, comes from the draft law on procedural efficiency, both of which were processed during the last legislature and which fell during their parliamentary processing due to the early dissolution of the chambers; and, thirdly, cve: BOCG-15-A-16-2 BOLETÍN OFICIAL DE LAS CORTES GENERALES CONGRESO DE LOS DIPUTADOS Serie A Núm. 16-2 26 June 2024 from the preliminary draft law on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers.

It is reproached, that there is no reason to include in a single bill such disparate, heterogeneous and complex matters to be artificially integrated into a catch-all, as the Council of State stated in Opinion 1604/2022 on the regulatory technique of the bill, establishing that the homogeneity of the object of the legal and regulatory provisions is, however, an essential principle of regulatory technique that must necessarily be respected in its drafting.

We will continue to monitor the processing of this draft organic law which, as we have said, is very important due to the numerous aspects it regulates, and because it directly affects the user of the public justice service and its different professional operators.