Urgent Procedure Adopted for Preliminary Rulings in the Area of Freedom, Security & Justice

The excellent EU Law Blog has noted the adoption of an urgent procedure for preliminary rulings in the area of freedom, security and justice. Their post, in part, states,

Some time ago we posted a note about future amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice to provide for an urgent procedure for preliminary rulings in the areas of freedom, security and justice.

Those amendments have now been adopted and published.

The Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice is now amended by Council Decision 2008/79, published today, which allows for the possibility of an urgent procedure in the areas covered by Title VI of the EU Treaty and Title IV of the EC Treaty.

The Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice are amended accordingly by inserting a new Article 104b that sets out the new urgent procedure. The referring national court may request that the urgent procedure be applied or the Court of Justice may decide to apply it of its own motion in exceptional cases.

Hop over to the EU Law Blog to read the full post. The statement by the Court of Justice on how the new procedure will be implemented can be found here. Readers may also be interested in our recent Guest Editorial by Andrew Dickinson, which highlights (amongst other things) some of the ECJ’s current procedural deficiencies.