Legal life in the slow lane

It’s almost enough to justify a trip to Luxembourg. On 26 November, the judges of the European Court of Justice are scheduled to deliver a judgment on whether their colleagues, the judges of the General Court of the ECJ, took too long to deliver a judgment.

More even than usual, this case is full of opportunities for lawyers to calculate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In 2005, the European Commission imposed fines totalling €290 million on makers of industrial bags, having found that they operated a cartel. Three companies, Groupe Gascogne, a French paper and packaging company, and its German subsidiary Gascogne Sack Deutschland, and Kendrion NV, a Dutch manufacturer of electromagnetic systems and components, appealed against the Commission’s decision in early 2006. It took until the end of 2011 for the General Court to rule on the appeals: the court sided with the Commission and upheld the fines.

The companies complained that the time taken to rule on the appeal was so long that it had infringed their rights. Less than two years later, the ECJ is to rule.

Eleanor Sharpston, an advocate general of the ECJ, has drafted a judgment recommending that the ECJ should find against the General Court. She calculates that the case dragged on for 20 months too long. She recommends that the ECJ make a statement to that effect, so that the companies can bring a case for damages against the General Court, to be heard at the General Court. In such a case, it would, she said, be for the European Commission, as defender of the EU’s interests (and of the EU’s budget), to represent the General Court. So the companies would be pitched against the Commission, eight years after the facts. On second thoughts, maybe that trip to Luxembourg could be delayed…