A brief overview of the main statistical trends in 2024 – An ‘extra’ordinary year

by Marc-André Gaudissart

Deputy Registrar of the Court of Justice

As is the case every year, I have the pleasure of putting pen to paper to comment briefly on the judicial statistics for the past year and to provide the reader with some keys to reading and understanding the data relating to the cases brought before, and closed by, the Court of Justice.

While this is not always an easy exercise as the variations from one year to the next are sometimes scarcely significant and do not therefore always allow light to be shed on the notable developments or recurring trends to be detected, 2024 is clearly the exception to the rule. In many respects, the past year may indeed be classed as an extraordinary year, in the original meaning of the word, both in terms of the number of cases brought before the Court of Justice in 2024 and the number of cases closed by it. Both figures call to mind the historic heights reached in 2019 and give real meaning to the legislative reform which entered into force on 1 September 2024 and led to the Court of Justice sharing its jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings with the General Court, which from now on has exclusive jurisdiction to answer questions referred by the courts and tribunals of the EU Member States in the specific areas referred to in Article 50b of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘the Statute’). [1]

A brief overview of the main statistical trends in 2023

By Marc-André Gaudissart, Deputy Registrar of the Court of Justice

This contribution, which was previously included in the body of the Institution’s Annual Report, is intended, as it is every year, to provide a brief overview of the main trends that emerge from a reading of the judicial statistics for the past year. It looks at the subject matter, origin and nature of the cases brought before the Court in 2023 and provides some keys to understanding the data relating to the cases closed by the Court in the course of that year.

A brief overview of the main statistical trends over the past year

By Marc-André Gaudissart Deputy Registrar of the Court of Justice

his contribution, which was previously included in the body of the Annual Report of the Court of Justice of the European Union – Judicial Activity, is intended, as it is every year, to provide a brief overview of the main trends that emerge from a reading of the judicial statistics for the past year. This article looks at the subject matter, origin and nature of the cases brought before the Court in 2022 and provides some guidance on the data relating to the cases closed by the Court.

Although the past year ended on a somewhat positive note in that respect, with the number of cases closed exceeding the number of cases brought, with a slight decrease compared with the previous year, it was also marked by an increase in the average time taken to deal with preliminary ruling cases, which raise increasingly complex and sometimes very sensitive issues. It is in that context that a legislative request was made by the Court on 30 November 2022 to extend the material scope of the mechanism to determine whether an appeal should be allowed and to effect a partial transfer of the preliminary ruling jurisdiction of the Court of Justice to the General Court in order to enable the latter to rule on questions referred by the national courts under Article 267 TFEU in specific matters determined by the Statute.