The new EU General Court Rules of Procedure were published in the Official Journal on 23 April 2015. The new Rules had previously been approved by the General Affairs Council on 10 February 2015.
According to the Preamble:
Full revision of the text is necessary in order to give this set of rules a new coherence, to promote consistency in the procedural provisions governing proceedings brought before the Courts of the European Union, to preserve the capacity of the General Court to rule on cases within a reasonable time, to clarify parties’ rights, to specify the General Court’s expectations regarding the parties’ representatives and to adjust a certain number of provisions to take account of certain changes, including technological changes, in relation to the lodging and service of procedural documents, and of difficulties encountered in their implementation.
In particular, key changes to the Rules are summarised as follows:
- In addition to the procedural provisions applicable to direct actions, intellectual property actions and appeals lodged against EU Civil Service Tribunal decisions have been made subject to particular procedural rules set out in special titles. For the benefit of litigants, the rules that apply to each procedure have been specified. Intellectual property proceedings have been streamlined with a view to reducing their duration.
- For clarity, requests and applications relating to judgments and orders, as well as procedures following referral by the Court of Justice have been gathered in two respective single titles.
- The adversarial principle governing proceedings has been expressly articulated in Article 64. Moreover, Article 103 sets out circumstances where the court may, exceptionally, keep certain information provided by a party confidential from the other party, where such information is necessary for the court to rule in the case.
- Provisions previously contained in practice directions to parties (for instance relating to the length of pleadings) or in instructions to the General Court registrar (for example the provision concerning anonymity and that specifying the circumstances in which a third party may be given access to thefile in the case) are intended to be elevated to the status of rules of procedure.
- At a general level across the Rules, those which are outdated or not applied have been removed, every paragraph of the articles has been numbered, a specific heading for each article has been added, and terminology has been harmonised.
Rules of Procedure of the General Court OJ L 105/1, 23 April 2015
