ALBERTO MUNNO, a judge in the southern Italian city of Taranto, believes he is being oppressed by his country’s justice system. He has a rather good case. “I produce 160 verdicts per year—and the European Convention on Human Rights bans slavery,” he complains. With a backlog of over 500 cases, the overworked judge recently postponed a civil hearing by three years. The owner of the firm involved, who filed a claim for €200,000 ($ 220,000) in 2014, will now have to wait until 2019 to have his case heard. It takes on average 1,210 days for Italy’s judges to resolve a typical commercial dispute.
Though notorious for their lethargy, Italy’s courts are not Europe’s worst offenders. Slovenia’s take even longer. Cyprus’s can take over three years, more than thrice the wait in Germany and France. Italy’s government has at least accepted that it has a problem. Matteo Renzi, the country’s energetic prime minister, has made judicial reform a priority.
The European Commission is anxious to speed up Europe’s courts. During the depths of the euro crisis, it introduced rules intended to harmonise the euro area’s economies. Those…