General Secretary
At the 17th Plenary Session of the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries, held in Mexico City on 21 and 22 October 2010, D.Víctor Moreno Catena, Professor of Procedural Law at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Lawyer, was unanimously re-elected, under article 14 of the Constitutive Treaty, as General Secretary of the Conference.
D. Víctor Moreno Catena was first elected as General Secretary at the 15th Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries, held in the city of Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, on 28 and 29 September 2006. He was subsequently re-elected by acclamation at the 16th Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries, held in the city of San José in Costa Rica on 18 and 19 September 2008.
ProfessorMoreno Catena is also now a permanent member of the Spanish General Commission of Codification, and of the Special Section of the General Commission of Codification for the drafting of the new Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal (Criminal Justice Act), as well as a member of the Commission devoted to the study and preparation of the White Paper on Justice in Galicia. Similarly, since 2007 he has been one of the group of experts advising on the drawing up of the Annual Report of the National Observatory on Violence against Women.
Amongst his many posts of responsibility, most notable are those of Subsecretario General Técnico de Interiorbetween 1988 and 1993, Subsecretario de Interiorin 1993, and the position of Decano de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Sevilla(Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Seville)in 1988.
With regard to his academic activity, Dr. Moreno Catena is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Universidad Pablo Olavide de Sevilla, Director of the Master’s Degree in the Practice of Law and of the Alonso Martínez Justice and Litigation University Institute, both run by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; director of the doctorate “Justice and Law (Governability and Guarantees)” of the Universidad Pablo Olavide de Madrid and visiting professor at the University of Nanterre-Paris X since 1992.
He is a member of the Ibero-American Institute of Procedural Law, of the Pan-American Institute of Procedural Law and of the Spanish Foundation of Procedural Law.
Dr. Moreno Catena belongs to the Scientific Committee and the Editorial Board of various prestigious legal journals, such as Teoría&Derecho, Revista de Pensamiento Jurídico, Revista InDret, Revista para el Análisis del Derecho, Revista Penal, Tribunales de Justicia, El Consultor Inmobiliario, Revista de Ciencias Penales and Revista General de Derecho Procesal, as well as the Portal Iberoamericano de las Ciencias Penales.
Dr. Moreno Catena is the author of a number of papers and monographs, and has co-written various collective works. Of particular importance, amongst others, are “El proceso penal abreviado” [“Abbreviated criminal procedure”] (Tirant lo Blanch, 2004) and “La cooperación judicial en materia penal” [“Judicial cooperation in criminal matters”] (Tirant lo Blanch, 2000). He is also the co-author of the following manuals: “Introduction to Procedural Law” “Introduction to Civil Procedural Law” and “Introduction to Criminal Procedural Law”, republished in 2008.
Furthermore, he has directed twenty doctoral theses and several international seminars, and participated in a great many national and international events as a speaker on a variety of subjects. He has written over sixty articles on the following themes: Court Organization, the Efficacy of Justice, Criminal Proceedings, Civil Proceedings, and Contentious-administrative Proceedings.
As General Secretary, D. Víctor Moreno Catena has contributed to the consolidation of the activities of the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries by fostering the establishment, by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, of a voluntary contribution which made it possible to draw up the annual general plans for the years 2007 and 2008.