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Preliminary Rulings in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Urgent Procedure Adopted

By Bartolus

Some time ago we posted a note about future amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice to provide for an urgent procedure for preliminary rulings in the areas of freedom, security and justice.

Those amendments have now been adopted and published.

The Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice is now amended by Council Decision 2008/79, published today, which allows for the possibility of an urgent procedure in the areas covered by Title VI of the EU Treaty and Title IV of the EC Treaty.

The Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice are amended accordingly by inserting a new Article 104b that sets out the new urgent procedure. The referring national court may request that the urgent procedure be applied or the Court of Justice may decide to apply it of its own motion in exceptional cases. The parties to the national proceedings, the member State of the court making the reference (but not all member States) and the EC institutions may submit written observations within the time fixed by the Court of Justice. That deadline may be quite short.

Article 9 of the Rules of Procedure is also amended to the effect that a special chamber of five judges will be designated to deal with these new urgent references.

The new procedure enters into force on March 1st 2008.

The Council has made an interesting "Statement" on how it thinks the new urgent procedure should operate.

Full post as published by EU Law Blog on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).