On discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget on the 2022 discharge: General budget of the EU - Court of Justice of the European Union

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SUGGESTIONS

The Committee on Legal Affairs calls on the Committee on Budgetary Control, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution:

1. Takes note of the institution's return to normal after two difficult years marked by the COVID-19 pandemic; in this respect, welcomes the continued use of technological tools put in place in response to the pandemic;

2. Appreciates the high rate of use of the final appropriations for 2022 (98.4 %), as in previous years (98.7% for 2021 and 99% for 2020);

3. Stresses that the budget of the CJEU is essentially administrative, with around 75% of the appropriations related to expenditure for Members and staff, and almost all of the rest related to expenditure for buildings and IT;

4. Notes that the average length of proceedings for cases completed before the Court of Justice remained similar to that of the previous year (16.4 months in 2022, 16.6 months in 2021);

5. Welcomes the fact that the average length of proceedings for cases completed before the General Court has decreased to 16.2 months in 2022 (17.3 months in 2021);

6 Notes that the number of cases brought before the two courts in 2022 is comparable to that of the previous year (1 710 cases in 2022, as against 1 720 in 2021) and underlines that, together, the Court of Justice and the General Court were able to complete 1 666 cases in 2022 ( 1 723 in 2021), which corresponds to the average in recent years (1 692 cases per year between 2018 and 2021); notes, however, that the total number of pending cases is increasing, with 2 585 cases pending in 2022 compared to 2 541 in 2021;

7. Notes that most of the cases pending at the Court of Justice relate to the area of freedom, security and justice, followed by approximation of laws, taxation, consumer protection and social policy;

8. Notes that most of the cases pending at the Court relate to intellectual and industrial property, state aid policy and economic and monetary policy;

9. Acknowledges the pursuit of the activities carried out by the Judicial Network of the European Union, which contributes to fostering and facilitating the cooperation between the CJEU and the national courts, particularly in the fields of judicial monitoring, legal research, multilingual terminology and emerging technologies, as well as to promoting the pooling of the most efficient practices in the administration of justice;

10. Welcomes the accelerating digitalisation of the CJEU by introduction of the electronic signature, used to sign judgments and orders of the General Court;

11. As the Court of Justice is increasingly required to rule on matters of a constitutional nature and related to human rights and the Charter of Fundamental rights, transparency and openness of the EU judicial process should be strengthened; to this regard, Welcomes the setting up of a streaming system for hearings of the Court of Justice which serves to strengthen the CJEU’s ‘Citizen Court’ dimension through increased accessibility for the general public, stresses in this regard, that the new streaming system, needs to be gradually supplemented by additional external means of communication, that will allow for greater visibility of the work of the institution;

12. Appreciates the makeover of the CJEU’s Annual Report with a view to improving transparency and its accessibility and giving better visibility of its activities;

13. Notes with satisfaction the advances in the development of the CJEU’s Integrated Case Management System (SIGA) which will replace a large number of applications currently in use, thus offering the possibility of greater optimisation and automation of the various stages of case processing;

14. Notes with satisfaction the upward trend of the use rate of e-Curia: in 2022, 94% of lodgements before the General Court were made via e-Curia (93% in 2021) and the use rate of e-Curia at the Court of Justice was approximately 87% of all lodgements made this way (compared to 85% in 2021);

15. Notes that, of the 2 254 officials and agents, 60% are women; welcomes the fact that the proportion of women in managerial posts remains at a high level (40% in 2022 as in 2021), confirming the global upward trend recorded since 2018 (41% in 2020, 39% in 2019 and 37.5% in 2018); notes, however, the still existing imbalanced situation in terms of women’s representation among the judges of both the Court of Justice and the General Court; exhorts, once again, the Members of the Council to address this situation by actively promoting gender parity in the appointment of judges, in line with the principles enshrined in Article 8 TFEU and Article 23 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, and with the commitments taken under Regulations 2015/2422 and 2019/629.

ANNEX: LIST OF ENTITIES OR PERSONS FROM WHOM THE RAPPORTEUR FOR THE OPINION HAS RECEIVED INPUT

The rapporteur declares under his exclusive responsibility that he did not receive input from any entity or person to be mentioned in this Annex pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure.

INFORMATION ON ADOPTION IN COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION

Date adopted

29.11.2023

Result of final vote

+:

–:

0:

22

0

0

Members present for the final vote

Pascal Arimont, Geoffroy Didier, Ibán García Del Blanco, Virginie Joron, Pierre Karleskind, Sergey Lagodinsky, Gilles Lebreton, Karen Melchior, Sabrina Pignedoli, Jiří Pospíšil, Raffaele Stancanelli, Adrián Vázquez Lázara, Axel Voss, Marion Walsmann, Tiemo Wölken, Javier Zarzalejos

Substitutes present for the final vote

Daniel Buda, Pascal Durand, Heidi Hautala

Substitutes under Rule 209(7) present for the final vote

Sylvie Guillaume, Pedro Marques, Anne-Sophie Pelletier

FINAL VOTE BY ROLL CALL IN COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION

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