Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-07-04-Speech-3-531-000"
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"en.20120704.30.3-531-000"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg is overstretched. Tomorrow’s decision may seem technical and non-political at first glance, relating to the internal reorganisation of the three courts that comprise the Court of Justice of the European Union; however there is more to it than that.
The European Union has been, and continues to be, invested with more and more powers and responsibilities, most recently through the Treaty of Lisbon. Accordingly, the responsibilities of the Court of Justice of the European Union have also gradually expanded. Thus, the excessive workload cannot be attributed solely to the increasing number of cases – in common with many Member States – quite apart from the accession of 12 new Member States. In fact, the number of cases concluded has lagged behind the number of newly received cases for many years. In this context, it becomes clear that the reform of the internal organisation of the Court of Justice will have a major impact on the functioning or the European Union as a whole and, in the final analysis, on the lives of Europe’s citizens.
For this reason it was important for me that all of the participating legislative bodies – including the Court of Justice, which we included in the trilogue negotiations – should cooperate from the start and find practical compromises. We have only partly succeeded in doing this. Let me begin with the part for which we have actually found reasonable compromises, which make the work of the Court more efficient and which will reduce the length of court proceedings.
The key points are as follows: the office of Vice-President is to be established at the suggestion of the Court itself. In future, the Vice-President will relieve the President of some of the burden involved in representing and administering the Court and will attend all Grand Chamber sessions. In addition, personnel structures are to be changed in the Chambers and in the Grand Chamber, which is to consist of 15 judges, so that the Presidents of the Chambers with five judges will also have their workload reduced and it will be possible to share the workload of all judges more evenly.
The proposals in relation to the Civil Service Tribunal are also easy to explain. This Tribunal has always had seven judges. The small number of judges means that, in the event that a judge is absent, for example, due to lengthy illness, the Tribunal as a whole is seriously impaired in its judicial functions. In order to prevent this, an option is to be established whereby judges can be appointed to this technical tribunal on an interim basis. The judges in question are former members of the Court of Justice and they are to be appointed from a list in a particular order, so as to satisfy the requirements in relation to legally eligible judges. These judges can then replace individual judges should they be unable to fulfil their duties. So much for the positive and rational compromises which we have hammered out together and for which I wish to thank all those involved.
As was stated at the outset, however, we have not been able to bring all the necessary proposals to a conclusion. I wish to emphasise clearly that the reason for this lies not with the European Parliament, but with the Council and the national vanity of the individual Member States. It was suggested that the number of judges in the Court of First Instance should be increased by 12, rising from 27 to 39 judges. This is the right decision in view of the increasing workload of the judges, although the precise number of additional judges required might be open to debate. Parliament is certainly convinced that increasing the number of judges will, in the final analysis, contribute to better jurisprudence for individual citizens and businesses alike.
From which the Member States the additional judges are drawn should not really matter and appointments should be made solely on the basis of qualifications. After all, the principle of impartiality among judges also applies in the European Union. This, however, is something for the future. We have proposed a fair system for the appointment of judges, with numerous suggestions for how they could be selected. The Member States however, were unwilling and unable to agree to any of these solutions in the Council, which is why we shall not have an agreement to increase the number of judges for the foreseeable future. The motives behind this are purely national in character and cannot be justified in objective terms. I find this extremely unsatisfactory.
In the future too it will be necessary to ensure that European jurisprudence follows a reasonable timescale. Our citizens and businesses are entitled to that. Excessively long cases, sometimes lasting over five-and-a-half years, represent a violation of our Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. That is why it is vital that, in view of the present, well-balanced proposals in relation to the selection of additional judges, Member States should finally consider their position and avoid any loss of confidence in the European legal system."@en1
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