This is the judicial arm of the EU. It adjudicates disputes that arise under any of the EU treaties. This includes cases from the national courts of the member states, cases involving the limits of the powers of the organs of the EU, requests for preliminary rulings (advisory opinions) from other organs of the EU, cases involving the legality of international agreements under the EU Treaties, and cases involving the staff of the EU. At the heart of the Court’s jurisdiction is judicial review of EU treaties, legislation, and administrative acts and review of member states’ adherence to their rules. The Court has 27 Judges and 8 Advocates General. The Judges are appointed for renewable terms of six years and elect the President of the Court from among their number. “The Court of Justice may sit as a full Court, in a Grand Chamber (13 Judges) or in chambers of three or five Judges.” The Court of Justice has a lower court, the General Court, which has its own judges and its own areas of jurisdiction. The two courts interact as needed. A decision may be appealed from the General Court to the Court of Justice and it may affirm, overturn, or remand that decision back to the General Court. The two Courts may have separate cases that have the same parties and depend on the same facts, but deal with different legal issues. The Court of Justice may refer a case that was originally, but mistakenly, brought to it to the General Court.
Reports of Cases before the Court by Established by the European Convention of Human Rights, this Court hears applications from individuals alleging that a contracting state has breached one or more of the human rights provisions concerning civil and political rights in the Convention.
The EFTA performs a function similar to that of the EU for the states that were left out of the EU: Iceland, Norway, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland. Its Court performs functions similar to that of the ECJ. It began its work, which is the interpretation and application of the European Economic Area Agreement, in 1994. Within their website, the section on the Court includes an introduction, ESA/Court Agreement, members – staff, procedures, and publications. The ESA is the European Surveillance Authority. It appears to be something like a department of justice and acts in some ways as an administrative agency that can issue decisions and guidelines, make recommendations, and encourage cooperation and the sharing of information.
The Court of Conciliation and Arbitration provides a mechanism for the peaceful settlement of disputes between States. The Court was established by the Convention on Conciliation and Arbitration within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. (OSCE). The OSCE has 57 participating States from Europe, Central Asia and North America.
The Official Journal of the EU is the source of most documents in EUR-Lex, which contains legislation, international agreements, preparatory acts and parliamentary questions as well as the judgments of the European Court of Justice and of the Court of First Instance, the opinions of the Advocates-General, the Commission documents, the collection of consolidated legislative texts and the texts of the Treaties of the European Communities and later the European Union. EUR-Lex’s “...includes some 467000 references in several languages,[and] 2815000 texts in total.” The oldest documents go back to the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951.
