Research and Documentation Directorate
The Research and Documentation Directorate provides comparative law expertise and high quality analysis of case-law to support the work of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It provides preliminary analysis of requests for preliminary rulings and appeals, drafts research notes and provides abstracts of the most important judgments. It maintains the data in the Court’s databases to make legal research easier. It also monitors developments in EU, national and human rights law and coordinates the Judicial Network of the EU.
The Research and Documentation Directorate has many key responsibilities.
The Directorate has around 70 lawyers, covering the legal systems of all EU Member States, and 25 archivist and linguistic assistants. It is organised into four different teams – three units that are each responsible for different fields of EU law, and a fourth team that maintains and develops the Court’s case-law databases.
Preliminary analysis of cases
The Directorate’s lawyers analyse all references for a preliminary ruling that arrive at the Court. A lawyer qualified in the national law of the Member State in question provides a summary of the case and the questions raised and identifies any potential issues such as whether the case is inadmissible. They also assess whether the case should be dealt with under the urgent preliminary ruling or accelerated procedures.
They also analyse certain appeals brought before the Court of Justice against decisions of the General Court, in order to assist the Court of Justice in determining which cases might be resolved through a reasoned order and whether certain types of cases are admissible.
Comparative law research
The Directorate can be asked by the Court of Justice or the General Court to prepare comparative research notes about specific legal issues relating to the cases pending before them. This comparative law approach is valuable for both Courts and aims to ensure that EU laws are interpreted and applied consistently.
Some of these research notes are made available on this website in the “Research Notes” section.
Analysing case-law and producing legal resources
The Directorate analyses all the Courts’ case-law and produces a number of legal resources for both the Institution and the public.
For the most important decisions the Directorate drafts an abstract. These are available in the case-law database. They are also published in the European Court Reports, in Monthly Case-law Digests and in the annual Selection of major judgments.
The Directorate also produces thematic fact sheets on specific areas of EU law. The number of subjects covered is constantly growing and existing fact sheets are regularly updated.
The Directorate compiles the Case-law Digest, which provides a systematic overview of the Courts’ case-law since 1954 through a series of keywords and abstracts that highlight the key points of law in the Courts’ decisions.
The Directorate also does much of the work of classifying the Court’s case-law for the purposes of the case-law database. It categorises each case according to subject matter and many other criteria, adds references to legislation cited, and adds key words for each case. It makes sure that each case has the correct information attributed to it to allow for easier searching.
Monitoring national case-law and links with national courts
The Directorate monitors developments in national case-law on EU law. It regularly produces documents summarising the relevant national judgments, including those following a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice. These documents are published in the Legal Monitoring section of this website.
The Directorate also coordinates the site and database of the Judicial Network of the European Union. Amongst other things, this site contains national case-law with an EU law dimension. Some of these decisions are published in the National case-law section of this site.
