About the Court of Justice

Who works at the Court?

The Judges

The Court has 27 Judges, one from each EU Member State.

Each Member State nominates its own Judge. There are no rules as to how a Judge must be chosen and each Member State can follow its own procedure. However, the person chosen must be independent and either be qualified to hold the highest judicial office in the Member State nominating them or be a recognised expert in EU law. A special committee examines the candidates to ensure that they are suitable for the role of Judge or Advocate General. This is known as the 255 Committee, named after Article 255 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which created it. Judges are then officially appointed by all the Member States acting together.

Judges are appointed for a six-year period. This can be renewed.

Did you know?

The longest-serving Judge at the Court is the current president, Koen Lenaerts, who was first appointed in 2003.

The Judges elect a President and a Vice-President for a three-year period.

The current President, Koen Lenaerts, was first elected in 2015.

How many Judges hear a case?

Not all Judges hear every case. Each case is allocated to a Chamber. The number of Judges reflects how important or complicated the case is.

The Court has Chambers of

• 15 Judges, known as the Grand Chamber
• 5 Judges
• 3 Judges

The Court can also sit as a full court of 27 Judges. This only happens for exceptionally important cases.

The Grand Chamber is presided by the Court’s President. The Vice-President also sits, along with 3 Presidents of the Chambers of 5 Judges. The remaining 10 Judges are then chosen following a well-defined rotation system to ensure an even distribution of cases.

The Grand Chamber is used in particularly complex or important cases for the development of EU law, or when a Member State or an EU institution requests it.   

Other cases are heard by Chambers of three or five Judges. The Presidents of the Chambers of five Judges are elected for three years, and those of the Chambers of three Judges for one year.

Around 45% of the cases are heard by chambers of 3 Judges. Around 40% of cases are heard by a Chamber of 5 Judges and around 10% of cases are heard by the Grand Chamber.

The Advocates General

The Court is also assisted by 11 Advocates General. They are appointed in the same way as the Judges.

Did you know?

Because there are fewer Advocates General than Member States, not every country can appoint an Advocate General at the same time. The five largest Member States – Spain, Germany, France, Italy and Poland – each have a permanent right to appoint an Advocate General. The remaining six posts rotate amongst the 22 other Member States. Each Member State appoints an Advocate General for a single six-year period. The right to appoint an Advocate General then passes to the next Member State on the list. This order is determined by the alphabetical order of the name of the Member State in its own language.

The Advocates General have a very special role. Unlike Judges, they do not decide the case.

Before the Judges decide a case, the Advocate General presents an independent “Opinion” to the Judges. This Opinion examines the case and proposes how the problems raised by the case could be solved.

Advocates General do not sit on every case. They are only involved when a case raises new points of law and an Opinion would be useful.

The Judges are free to decide the case how they wish – they do not have to follow the Opinion of the Advocate General.

Either way, the Advocate General’s Opinion will have helped the Court’s decision-making process by giving it the benefit of another, independent, point of view.

The Registrar

The Registrar has a dual role. He is responsible for the smooth running of the proceedings, but he also serves as the institution’s Secretary-General.

As Secretary-General, the Registrar is responsible for a variety of areas, under the authority of the President.

The Registrar is also responsible for preparing and negotiating the Court's annual budget and ensuring funds are spent correctly.

He represents the institution in its cooperation with various EU institutions and bodies and interacts with a range of other external stakeholders.

The Registrar is elected by the Judges and Advocates-General for a renewable six-year period.

Did you know?

The longest serving Registrar of the Court was Albert van Houtte, the very first Registrar, who served for nearly 29 years, from March 1953 to February 1982. In the early days, when the institution was still relatively small, judicial support was the Registrar’s main focus. As the institution grew, the Registrar’s role also evolved, gradually taking on more responsibilities as Secretary-General.

The current Registrar of the Court is Alfredo Calot Escobar, who has been in this position since 2010.

The Staff

The Court currently employs just over 2 300 members of staff.

Most of these staff are EU civil servants, chosen through a rigorous selection procedure. The Court has members of staff from every EU Member State.

Around half of the all the Court’s staff work in the Directorate-General for Multilingualism, dedicated to ensuring that the Court’s work is available in all 24 official EU languages.

To find out more about the work of the Court’s staff, visit our pages dedicated to each of the Court’s departments.

To find out more about how you could apply to work at the Court, visit our jobs pages.

What kind of cases does the Court hear?

The Court’s mission is to make sure that EU law is interpreted and applied in the same way across the EU. It does this by hearing cases where the parties have differing views on what the law means or how it should be applied. Most of its cases are referred to the Court of Justice by national courts. These cases are called references for preliminary rulings. However, some cases come directly to the Court, these are called “direct actions”.

References for preliminary rulings

EU law forms part of the national law of every EU Member State. This means that EU law can be used directly in front of national courts in the EU. National judges are therefore able to apply EU law directly. This is something called the “direct effect” of EU law.

If it is unclear precisely how EU law should be interpreted in a case, national judges can ask the Court of Justice questions. This way they can clarify what a provision of EU law means or even whether it is valid. This then allows them to apply EU law and to decide if national legislation and practices are in line with EU law.

Any independent court or tribunal in the EU can ask these questions if necessary.

National courts whose decisions cannot be appealed must ask these questions if the answer isn’t clear and the answer is needed to decide the case.

The Court of Justice then examines these questions.

It hears the views of

• the parties involved in the national case
• any EU Member State that wants to be involved in the case – often, for example, the country where the case has come from
• the Commission and other EU institutions that want to give an opinion

The Court then delivers a ruling. The ruling provides the national judge with answers to the questions that they have posed. This then allows the national judge to make a final decision on the case.

The Court’s ruling on EU law is final and binding. The national court must follow the answer given by the Court of Justice. Other national courts across the EU also have to follow this ruling if they have similar cases.

In this way the Court of Justice and national courts work together to ensure that there is only one interpretation of EU law being applied in the EU.

Many of the most important principles of EU law have been decided through this type of case. Most of the cases heard by the Court of Justice (over 60%) are references for a preliminary ruling.

Most of these cases are heard by the Court of Justice. However, cases involving VAT, the greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme, customs, excise or the tariff classification of goods, and air passenger compensation are heard by the General Court.

Direct Actions

Direct actions are cases that arrive directly at the Court of Justice. Only EU institutions and Member States can bring these cases directly to the Court.

In some circumstances, it is possible for citizens or companies to bring cases before the General Court. For more information on this, see our page on the General Court.

There are different kinds of direct actions. The most common are actions for failure to fulfil obligations and actions for annulment.

Actions for failure to fulfil obligations

Also commonly called infringement proceedings, these cases are brought against an EU Member State for failing to comply with EU law.

It is possible for one Member State to take action against another, but such cases are rare.

Most of these cases are brought by the Commission.

The Commission regularly monitors whether Member States are complying with EU law. It does this directly itself, but also follows up on complaints that it receives from citizens.

If the Commission considers that a Member State is failing to respect the law, it starts an official procedure against that Member State. This procedure has three stages. In the first two stages, the Member State is warned of the potential problem and given a chance to correct it. If the Member State fails to do so, or the Commission does not agree with the response, then it brings the case to the Court.

The Court then decides whether the Member State is in breach of the law.

In recent years, these cases account for less than 5% of all cases brought to the Court.

In some cases, where a Member State has failed to enact national legislation to implement certain EU laws, known as Directives, this can lead to a fine immediately.

In other cases, if the Court finds that a Member State has breached EU law, that Member State must take action to respect the Court’s ruling.

If a Member State ignores the Court’s judgment, the Commission can bring a second case. If the Court rules against a Member State a second time, it can impose fines. These can be both a fixed amount for past behaviour, and a fine that accumulates periodically until the Member State complies.

Actions for annulment

These are cases brought to ask for an EU law or decision to be annulled. The case is taken against the institution, agency or other EU body that took the decision or enacted the law.

If the case is brought by a Member State against laws adopted by the European Parliament and/or the Council, it is the Court of Justice that hears the case. An exception to this rule is when a Member State is challenging a decision by the Council concerning State aid, anti-dumping and implementing powers. These cases must be brought before the General Court.

The Court of Justice also hears cases brought by one institution against another.

All other cases, in particular those brought by citizens, companies or other organisations, are heard by the General Court. For more information on this, see our page on the General Court.

Actions for failure to act

These cases are similar to actions for annulment. However, instead of being brought when an institution has taken a decision, they are brought when an institution, agency or body has failed to take a decision. These cases can only be brought when the institution has been asked to act and is under an obligation to do so.

These cases are very rare.

Like with actions for annulment, the Court of Justice is responsible for cases brought by Member States and institutions. The General Court is responsible for cases brought by individuals.

Please note that whilst citizens may bring a potential breach of EU law by a Member State to the attention of the Commission, the Commission is not obliged to bring a case against the Member State. It is not possible to bring a case for failure to act against the Commission in such circumstances.

Appeals

As in all legal systems, there is a mechanism for some decisions of the General Court to be appealed to the Court of Justice.

Appeals can only be made on questions of law, not on how the General Court established and evaluated the facts of the case.

In some types of cases, the General Court is already acting like a court of appeal. Many EU agencies and bodies that take decisions, for example the EU intellectual Property Office or the EU Chemicals Agency, have an independent board of appeal. In such instances, the Agency’s own Board of Appeal will have already examined the initial decision before the case is brought to the General Court. These decisions of the General Court can therefore only be appealed if the Court of Justice grants permission through a special procedure. The appeal is allowed to proceed when it raises an issue that is significant for the unity, consistency or development of EU law.

All appeals must be brought within two months of the General Court decision.

If the Court of Justice agrees with the appeal, it can either decide the case itself or send the case back for the General Court to reassess. The appeal is upheld in around 25% of cases.

Around one quarter of all cases at the Court of Justice are appeals.

How does the procedure work?

The Court’s procedure is governed by the Statute of the Court and its Rules of Procedure.

The Court’s procedure has two basic parts, known as the written phase and the oral phase.

The parties submit their arguments to the Court in writing. EU Member States and institutions can also submit written observations to the Court. This is the written phase of the procedure.

Many cases also have a hearing. Hearings are public, and the most important ones are streamed on our website. For more information on watching hearings, see our pages on streaming and how to attend a hearing. A few months after the hearing, the Advocate General delivers their Opinion if one has been requested. This is the oral phase of the procedure.

Once the oral phase is completed, the Judges deliberate and come to their decision.

The judgment is then delivered in open court.

On average, cases take between 16 and 18 months from start to finish.

For more information, see our page on the Procedure before the Court of Justice.