bySebastian Leitner, AT
The last study visit of the ICANEPO project brought the project members to the majestic city of Madrid, Spain. Most participants already experienced a very interesting day on the topic of video conferencing for the SimpliVi project the day before. On 12 September 2025 they were again received at the premises of the Spanish Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Parliamentary Relations in the centre of Madrid. The day started with an overview into the ongoing judicial digitalization projects in Spain, including the Digital Immediacy Virtual Desk, to improve citizen’s access to the courts in particular on the countryside.
Afterwards, the project members learned valuable insights into the national payment order procedure of Spain. There are ongoing efforts to increase the levels of automation especially for the more simple and repetitive steps of this procedure, which are easy-to-automate. procedure. This results in significant reduction of the processing time, which has a big impact as the procedure represents 60 % of the filed cases in Spain.
One aspect of the Spanish civil procedure was particularly surprising: the limited scope of court fees. There are no court fees for private citizens – and therefore for the majority of the cases. Only for legal entities relativiely moderate court fees are imposed. This also applies to the EPO.
Next the participants discussed the European Payment Order procedure. Unlike the previously visited countries, Spain has a decentralized competence for the EPO. This means there are no heavy users who deal with this procedure daily who could report their experiences with the procedure. One of the issues identified was a lack of awareness about the procedure, both for justice users and other legal professionals. Therefore, lawyers often use the national payment procedure instead. Still, case numbers for the EPO procedure are among the highest seen so far (between ~9000 and ~29 000/year), even when taking into account the larger population of Spain.
Lawyers are obliged to communicate electronically with the courts, who handle the cases in the same CMS as national cases. Depending on the autonomous community, different CMS are used, of which some are already fully digital and others are still partly paper-based. Citizens can also use the national justice portal (Carpeta Justicia) to file cases electronically.
The visit was concluded by an informal lunch in a small tapas bar near the Ministry building where the participants not only enjoyed delicious delights, but also the relaxed atmosphere in such a typical venue.
Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Parliamentary Relations