COURT OF JUSTICE: COMMISSION CRITICISES DRAFT REFORM OF COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE.

The Commission has approved an increase in the number of judges at the CFI to enable to be able to judge cases quicker but does not buy the Court's argument that it needs more judges in order to deal with the expected surge in trade mark cases. As far as the Commission is concerned, simply raising the number of judges would not in itself be enough to deal with this type of dispute. The experts feel that the solution would be to reform the Office for the Harmonisation of the Internal Market in Alicante so that it could pass judgement in the first instance. Its decisions would be restricted to matters of law, which would be brought before the Court.The Commission's point of view essentially restates the position it adopted in its contribution to the Inter-Governmental Conference on the future of the EU's legal system. On 1 March, Romano Prodi expressed his desire for the CFI to have more judges to deal with the increasing number of cases but without making any reference to trademarks. The Commission believes that the Court's request to extend the jurisdiction of the CFI should be taken into account by the Inter-Governmental Conference.The Court's initial request was to create an exception to the current...