Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-02-Speech-3-109"
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"en.20000202.8.3-109"2
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".
Mr President, there is no guarantee that the forthcoming revision of the Treaties at the IGC will clear the way for a revision of the Community’s judicial systems. The idea of including this issue on the agenda we are discussing today was still on the agenda of the Helsinki Summit, is still being advocated by various Member States and by the courts themselves, and is being kept alive in the European Parliament, whose Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market is preparing what I think will be a high-quality opinion on the nature and the extent of judicial reform.
Mr President, some people will call this a lightweight reform, but the fact is that it is an achievable reform, based on standards which make it permissible under the Treaty of Amsterdam. It is basically the reform envisaged and requested by the Court of the European Communities itself independently of the IGC and on the basis of the Treaty currently in force.
I believe, particularly because there was such considerable consensus within the committee, that Parliament will agree to these two proposals and that it will give the Court its vote. We can only hope that the Council will do the same. My last hope is that the Court will make the best possible use of its new powers, the new jurisdiction which this Parliament has, not a moment too soon, decided to grant it.
I have no doubt that Parliament’s next report on preparations for the Intergovernmental Conference will address this issue rigorously, for three reasons which are, to my mind, interlinked. These are that justice must be done more quickly, that we need to establish the legal bases for an area of freedom, security and justice, and, finally, that we need to move beyond a commercial and economic conception of Europe. This will convince the public that they are part of a legal community which is based on democratic law and on the courts, and which respects their fundamental ethical and legal values and protects their interests, even when the force of national law is not sufficient to guarantee them full citizenship.
The truth is that these fundamental reasons for a thorough reform of the entire Community judicial system also explain the possible reform of the Court of First Instance which we are discussing today, although that has a different legal basis, namely the Treaty of Amsterdam.
These reasons do, however, justify such a reform, particularly two or three of them, which I shall now mention. The first is the imbalance between the increasing volume of cases, the technical and human capacity of the courts in Luxembourg and the strict obligation to adhere to multilingual proceedings, which is the natural consequence of respect for each country’s language and legal traditions. The last reason is that this court, the Court of First Instance, is the only instance to which individuals and companies have recourse on economic disputes with regard to decisions by the bodies which affect them. Therefore, the proposed increase to 21 judges is fully justified because, ultimately, it is a matter of increasing the Court’s efficiency and it will enable two additional chambers to be established, in each of which three judges will sit.
The second reform proposed concerns an increase in the jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance, which, at present, only covers actions for annulment by private individuals but which will then also cover actions brought by Member States. I am talking here about potential actions by the Member States concerning transport policy, competition rules applicable to undertakings, state aids, trade protection measures, the application of funds, and other action programmes under which the Community grants financial assistance, particularly concerning proceedings relating to fraud against the Community budget.
When Member States accept the possibility of an appeal to the Court of First Instance involving proceedings on the same matter as an action already brought by a private individual, the Court will be able to establish what appeals a Member State has lodged. This will put Member States and private individuals on an equal footing in the way the Court functions."@en1
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