Chornique d'actualité/Current developments

The courts of the Community continued, in 1991, to dispose of a heavy workload. Some 345 new cases were brought before the Court of Justice, 288 cases were dealt with, and 204 judgments delivered. The Court of First Instance completed its second full year of operation in which 95 cases were brought, 67 were disposed of, and 41 judgments delivered. The number of cases dealt with, and of judgments delivered, were slightly lower than in 1990, but the number of cases pending, in both courts, has increased quite significantly: 640 cases were on the list of the Court of Justice at the end of 1991, and 173 on the list of the Court of First Instance, compared to 583 and 145 respectively at the end of 1990. One obvious consequence is that waiting periods, between initiation of proceedings and delivery of judgment, are getting longer. For example, requests from national courts for preliminary rulings under Article 177/EEC, which were taking 17.4 months on average to deal with in 1990, took 18.5 months in 1991. Thus, although it is clear that the establishment of the Court of First Instance has had a considerable effect in reducing the burden on the Court of Justice. that burden seems likely to continue to be excessive unless jurisdiction in other types of cases can be transferred to the Court of First Instance. Such a solution, however, is probably not as simple as at first sight it appears. As it is, of the 95 cases brought before the lower court, 81 were cases—that is to say actions concerning the rights and obligations of employees of the Community. All but one of the other cases were concerned with the rules on competition. Twelve cases were appealed from the Court of First Instance to the Court of Justice, or about 20 percent of the lower court's judgments. The figures suggest that staff cases are far less likely to be appealed than are competition cases, which is perhaps not surprising when one considers the amounts of money involved

Court of record · Economic Justice · High Court · Jurisdiction · Law of the case · Original jurisdiction · Political science · European and International Law Studies · Law