Annual overview of activities

• Author: Court of Justice of the European Union
• Pages: 7-53

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Annual manage ment report - 2018

II. ANNUAL OVERVIEW OF ACTIVITIES

A. ACTIVITIES DIRECTLY RELATED TO JUDICIAL ACTIVITIES

1. COURT REGISTRIES

(a) MISSI ON

The activ ity of the registries of t he Court of Justice and of the Gene ral Court is marked by their dual role,

which derive s from the tasks assigned to t hem:

XX an external role, in so far as the registries are the natu ral interlocutors of the parties th roughout the

court p roceedings, from the lodging of the document in stituting the proceedings at t he registry of

the court conce rned until service of th e decision which closes the proce edings;

XXan internal role, in so far as the registries assis t the Members of the courts in the daily administrati on

of justice.

n the light of the fac t that they share the same mission, the regis tries of the two courts face the same

risks that are likely to hinder their activitie s. They are nevertheless required to perform tasks specic to

them due, inter alia , to the dierent nature of the proce edings brought before them.

(b) RESULT OF OPERATIONS IN RELATION TO THE OBJECTIV ES SET, CONTAINMENT OF

ASSOCATED RSKS AND FUNCTONNG OF THE NTER NAL CONTROL S YSTEM

n their d ay-to-da y operations , the registr ies strive t o take the nece ssary ste ps to ensure tha t each stage

of t he j udic ial pro cess is o pti mise d, w hil e ens uri ng t hat t he f und ame nta l gua ran tee s of a fai r tr ial a re ne ver

undermined. W ithout being exhausti ve, the present contribut ion indicates some of the resul ts achieved

by th e regist ries co mpared w ith the object ives wh ich the y had set t hemsel ves for the nan cial yea r 2018.

(1) Results of operations in relation to the main obje ctives

yExternal aspec ts of the activities of the registries of the courts

As gateway of their court , the registries play an intermediary r ole between the part ies and the court in

the context of proc essing cases brought b efore it.  n tha t reg ard , the r egi st ri es en sur e t ha t p ro cee di ngs

run smooth ly and case -les are kept in good order. T hat mission requ ires them in particular to carry o ut

the follow ing tasks:

XXcommunication with the national courts, the parties and their representatives and correspondence

with the par ties and with third par ties in connection with p ending or closed cases;

XXkeeping a record of the procedural document s of each court and managing case- les in cases before

the court;

XX

receipt, f orwarding and keep ing of all documen ts and noticat ions required under the Rules of

Procedure;

XX

management and updating of the elec tronic procedural document storage system (either directly,

using the e-Curia applica tion, or by sc anning all other p rocedural documents) and updating the

procedural data bases of the registries;

XXmanagement of the translations of procedural document s into the language of deliberation and their

forwarding to M embers of the court;

XX

ensuring t he presence of a session regist rar during oral hearings and the delivery of Opinions and

judgments, and preparing the minutes of the h earings;

XXmanaging the cour ts publications;

XXarchiving ca se les, and

XXproduction o f court statistic s.

To carry out those variou s tasks, the registries work together with t he Directorate for nformation

Technologies to improve common T applications in o rder to optimise and ensure the se curity of the

processing of cases, taking into account the speci c requirements resulting from the implementation of

the rules of proce dure of their courts and the na ture of the cases brought before them.

One of the most tangib le results of this cooperation ha s been the e- Curia application , which allows

secure lodging and ser vice of procedural documen ts by exclusively electronic means. The succes s of that

application , launched in November 2011, has remained un abated, given that th e procedural documents

being lodge d via this chan nel represented mo re than 75% of t he total documen ts lodged at t he Court

of Justi ce in 2018 and 85% of the total of documents lodged before the Ge neral Court duri ng the rst

11 months of that year.

Pursuing the process of digit alisation of court proceedings in order to avail of all of the intended ben ets

thereof, the Cour t of Justice and the General Cou rt carried out reforms to e nhance the use of e-Curia:

XXat the General Cour t, e-Curia has become the only me thod of lodging documents and of noti cation

of pleadings in the context of ac tions brought before t he court since 1 Decemb er 2018. ndeed, use

of this applicat ion has been made obligator y for all parties (applicant s, defendants and inter veners)

and for all ty pes of procedures. Cert ain exceptions have however bee n foreseen in accordance with

the principl e of access to the cour ts (in particul ar where the use of e -Curia is technicall y impossible

8Annual manage ment report - 2018

or where legal aid is re quested by an applicant who is not represented by a lawyer). The specic

objectiv e which the Regis try of the G eneral Court set itself in the context of the nancial year 2018

has thus been achie ved;

XXat the Court of Justice, all of the Member States already use e-Curia since 2016 in the context of direct

actions brou ght before the court. n ord er to widen the eld of users and, t herefore, strengthe n the

celerity and ecienc y of justice, work is in progress in order to also make e-Curia available to national

courts in th e context of requests for p reliminary rulings which t hey transfer to the Court .

The extensive (and, a fortiori, exclusi ve) use of the application thus allows the work involved in digitalising

documents lodged in paper format to be b rought to an end while drasticall y reducing the constraints

linked to th e management of a p lurality of forma ts  which leads , for example, in the case of lodg ing in

paper forma t preceded by lodgin g by fax, to a du plicate entry in the database and to the verication of

the conformit y of the document lodged in paper form at. Those developments have inter alia allowed the

General Court to simp lify the rules on the present ation of procedural documents, sin ce the obligation to

lodge certi ed copies of the original has been d iscontinued.

n line with the nstitutions reections over the past several years and following its observations on the

Special Repor t of the European Court of Audit ors adopted in September 2017 4, preparatory work for the

design of an i ntegrated T sys tem to support the m anagement of cases also b egan in the spring of 2018

and the re gistries of the Co urt of Justice and the General Cour t have already t aken a very act ive part in

this work.

Finally, th e registries re ceive numerous req uests for infor mation and access to documents, which they

process, either alone or together with t he Communication D irectorate. More ge nerally, the regist ries

reply to a wide range of questions, wheth er from representati ves of parties involve d in legal proceedings,

cabinet st a, department sta or t hird parties.

yInternal aspects of th e activities of the re gistries of the courts

The registrie s of the Court of Justice and of the General Cour t also have the role of providing active legal

assistance to Me mbers and their s ta in the managem ent of proceedings.

The degree of procedural management as sistance given varies according to the court s and according to

the t ype of proceedings invo lved. Assis tance granted to Member s and thei r sta takes the form, inter

alia, of mak ing information of a procedural nature a vailable, either on line or in other for mats, sustain ed

eorts being made by the reg istries to encourage uniform application of the Rules of Procedure by the

various chamb ers.

4| Special Repo rt No 19 (20 17) of the Eur opean Court of Auditor s: Examinat ion of per formance in the managemen t of cases at the

Court of Jus tice of the Europe an Union.

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Annual manage ment report - 2018