MEPs want more effective EU justice

Cases in areas such as taxes, customs and emissions trading to be transferred to the General Court

Court of Justice to decide when two times considered appeals should proceed

Public access to documents and more dialogue on EU law making

According to the new rules, the Court of Justice will adopt a series of new transparency measures and improve the efficiency of its proceedings.

The European Parliament approved with 600 votes against 13 and 12 abstentions reform strengthening transparency and improving the workload management of the Court of Justice of the European Union as agreed with the Council and the Court on 7 December 2023. According to the new rules, the Court of Justice will adopt a series of new transparency measures and improve the efficiency of its proceedings by making sure that requests for preliminary rulings in certain areas will be automatically transferred to the General Court and the mechanism filtering appeals against the decisions of the General Court will be extended and strengthened.

Guarantee the same quality of justice

Since requests for preliminary rulings in specific areas such as common VAT system, excise duties, Customs Code, compensation for passengers for delayed or cancelled transport services or scheme for greenhouse gas emission trading represent about 20% of all the requests, transferring them from the Court of Justice to the General Court will benefit efficiency and speed of the court proceedings. MEPs ensured that those requests for preliminary ruling raising questions of the primary law or general principles of EU law will continue to be dealt with by the Court, which will now be able to devote more time and resources to address the most sensitive and complex cases.

MEP also ensured that in order to guarantee the same quality of justice administration, judges of the General Court, and advocates general responsible for preparing the cases in particular, will act according to the same procedural rules as those of the Court of Justice.

Appeals based on reasoning

With the aim to improve the management of appeals, the mechanism determining whether an appeal should proceed will be strengthened. According to the new rules, the cases already considered twice - by an independent board of appeal and by the General Court and those on disputes relating to the performance of contracts with an arbitration clause will only proceed upon decision of the Court of Justice, which will have to be reasoned and published. The Court will also have to prepare a report assessing the implementation of this workload management reform.

Transparency and better EU law making

To improve transparency of decision-making, MEPs negotiated that future requests for statute changes will be subject to public and stakeholder consultation by the Commission. They also ensured public access to some documents held by the Court, such as written observations and strengthened the right of the European Parliament to submit statements or written observations with every new requests for preliminary rulings. Quality EU law making should be further strengthened by yearly constructive dialogue between the Parliament and the Court of Justice.

Next steps

The regulation will enter into force on the first day of the month following that of its publication in the EU Official Journal.

Background

To address the rising number of requests for a preliminary ruling and of appeals and to enable a more efficient management of the workload, the Court of Justice of the European Union submitted in December 2022 a request for amending the Protocol No 3 on its Statute. The aim of the reform is to improve effectiveness of Court proceedings while ensuring faster and better organised access to justice in the EU.