Brussels, 29/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 23 March, the governments of the member states of the EU appointed 15 judges to the General Court of the EU, eight of them in the framework of the partial renewal of the General Court, which occurs every three years, and seven linked to the reform of the General Court, which was approved by the Council of the EU in December 2015 (see EUROPE 11445).
The first eight judges appointed, whose mandate will run from 1 September 2016 to 31 August 2022, are: Krystyna Kowalik-Banczyk (Poland), Sten Frimodt Nielsen (Denmark), Dimitrios Gratsias (Greece), Marc Jaeger (Luxembourg), Viktor Kreuschitz (Austria), Paul Nihoul (Belgium), Savvas S. Papasavvas (Cyprus) and Marc Van der Woude (Netherlands). Only Kowalik-Banczyk and Nihoul are new judges at the General Court, with the others being reappointed to their existing positions.
Of the seven other judges appointed in the framework of the reform of the General Court, five have been appointed until 31 August 2016, but their term is expected to be extended. These are: Anna Marcoulli (Cyprus), Nina Poltorak (Poland), Dean Spielmann (Luxembourg), Konstantinos Iliopoulos (Greece) and Csehi Zoltan (Hungary). The term of office of the other two judges - Virgilijus Valancius (Lithuania) and Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo Ibáñez-Martin (Spain) - will run until 31 August 2019.
The reform of the status of the Court of Justice approved in late 2015 provides, amongst other things, for a doubling of the number of judges of the General Court to 56 (two for each member state) between now and 2019, in order to allow the Court to deal with a constantly increasing number of cases within reasonable timeframes. (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =