Plan to speed up court rulings welcomed

Date: 30/03/2000

By Simon Taylor

EU GOVERNMENTS have thrown their weight behind proposals aimed at significantly reducing the time it takes the Union's courts to deliver verdicts on cases.

The move is designed to address growing concern that the EU's two highest legal bodies are failing to enforce Union law effectively because of delays in issuing judgements.

National experts involved in the EU treaty reform negotiations which got under way last month have given their enthusiastic support to a range of measures proposed by the Commission designed to help the Courts speed up their work rate.

"I would definitely say that this is a flyer. All member states agree on the need for reform and the issue has been given extra urgency because of the additional powers the Courts have been given by the Amsterdam treaty," said one diplomat.

A massive increase in the workloads of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Court of First Instance (CFI) has dramatically slowed the two bodies' ability to process legal disputes. The Commission points out in its submission to the Intergovernmental Conference that cases take an average of 21 months to come before the ECJ and 30 months to reach the CFI.

These delays can make effective enforcement of EU law almost impossible. The ECJ is, for example, expected to take two years to rule on whether France's refusal to lift its ban on imports of British beef is illegal under single-market rules, given that the Union as a whole decided to end the embargo last year. But there is a strong chance that Paris will have lifted the ban by then because the number of BSE cases in the UK is likely to fall so far over the next two years that it will make such measures redundant.

The Commission has suggested a three-pronged approach to enable the courts to work more quickly. Warning that "the effectiveness of the Community's judicial system and the uniform application of Community law need to be safeguarded, notably with an eye to enlargement", it has proposed giving national courts "greater responsibility" for preliminary rulings so that fewer cases are referred to the Luxembourg institutions.

Secondly, it argues that the ECJ should only deal with key rulings involving Union law, saying: "Questions that are essential to the sound operation of the Community would be reserved for the ECJ."

The Commission also recommends that the CFI should in future hear direct legal challenges from member states and other EU institutions, in addition to cases brought by companies and individuals allowed under current rules.

To ease the burden posed by the CFI's heavy workload, the Commission suggests either increasing the number of judges from the current 15 or creating specialist tribunals to deal with highly technical cases such as those involving intellectual property rights.

EU governments have thrown their weight behind proposals aimed at significantly reducing the time it takes the Union's courts to deliver verdicts on cases. National experts involved in the EU treaty reform negotiations which got under way in February have given their enthusiastic support to a range of measures designed to help the courts speed up their work rate.