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The European Judicial System – II part
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As far as concerns the jurisdiction of the European Union, an important place is left to the "Allocation of competences" within the structure of the community justice institutions. Since the constitution of the communities in 1951, to their effective operation, at the end of 1952, up to the end of the eighties, the judicial system has had only a body that dealt with justice, that is the Court of Justice. The increase in the disputes among the different states and the increase in the issues addressed to the national judges has led to the fact that by the mid of the eighties, the work burden of the Court of Justice was remarkable and this has engendered the need to give the private individual’s appeals a double degree of judgement. That is why, in September 1989, the Court of Justice begins to be supported by the trial Court, whose competences have more and more increased. By the end of this year, the community judicial system sees the birth of a new specific community Court, the Court of Community public function that was included in the Treaty of Nice in 2001. All the community judicial bodies are in Luxembourg. The Court of Justice has one judge per each member state and 8 general lawyers; the trial Court has one judge per each member state and the Court of public function only has 7 judges. It is clear that this structure includes one president for each judicial body and today the work of community justice is almost never performed in plenary meetings, but, above all, in big sessions composed of 11 judges and sessions composed of 5 and 3 judges (while the trial Court has had the possibility to work as a single judge since 1999). To understand the actual structure of the community system, we must refer to different judicial sources. Obviously, the fundamental rules are included in the constituting treaties of the community and of the Union, but a specific protocol of the Court of Justice is attached to the European Community treaty and then, of course, as in the national judicial systems, in which there are the procedure codes, in the community system too there is a procedure which is characteristic of the Court and of the Trial court. As far as concerns the internal structure of the jurisdictions, perhaps it is better to note that there has been a change with respect to the time when almost every cause was discussed in plenary meetings. This happened because the different states had more guarantees that there issue would have been taken into consideration also by the judge, that better knew its judicial system. Then we have begun to rely upon the community judge and as a consequence, even the simplest cases, substantially regulated by the same law, have been entrusted to a judge of section made up of three judges; the issues regulated by a certain law, but that must be adjusted according to each single case, are left to a section made up of 5 judges, while the most delicate matters are left to a big section made up of 11 judges, obviously chaired by the President of the Court together with the Presidents of the sections made up of 5 judges, besides some extra 5 judges that are part of the court. The plenary meeting of the Court is for political issues, such as the evaluation of the suitability of the functions of the Commission’s members and the dismissal of a court’s judge.
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