The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled, on Thursday 25 June (Case C-92/18,) that the Union's annual budget could, where necessary for the proper conduct of the budgetary procedure, be debated and voted on at an additional plenary session in Brussels.
In 2017, the European Parliament put the debate and vote on the joint draft annual budget of the Union for the 2018 financial year on the agenda of a session in Brussels.
With MEPs approving the draft, the Parliament's then President Antonio Tajani, declared the annual budget for the 2018 financial year definitively adopted in a plenary session (see EUROPE 11916/24).
France, supported by Luxembourg, then criticised the Parliament on the ground that it infringed the Protocol concerning the seats of the institutions (see EUROPE 11913/17) - under which, in its view, MEPs are required to exercise the budgetary powers conferred on them by the TFEU during the ordinary plenary sessions in Strasbourg.
Second action. In February of 2018, the competent French authorities therefore brought an action for annulment before the CJEU, against, inter alia, the decision of the President of the Parliament by which the latter declared that the EU budget for the financial year 2018 had been adopted.
One year earlier, such an action had already been brought by France, challenging the adoption, under similar conditions, of the Union budget for the financial year 2017. The Court had dismissed this first action (see EUROPE 12108/15).
Referring to the judgment delivered at the time, it recalled, on Thursday, that the obligations of the Protocol on the seat of the EU institutions could not prevail over those arising under the TFEU, and vice versa.
The application of these obligations, it stressed, must therefore be carried out on a case-by-case basis. And, if imperatives linked to the smooth running of the procedure so require - calendar imperatives, for example - the obligation for the Parliament to exercise its budgetary powers in Strasbourg does not therefore prevent the annual budget from being debated and voted on at an additional plenary session in Brussels.
Power of discretion. Questioning the errors of assessment which the Parliament might have made, the Court states that, when the calendar of ordinary plenary sessions was drawn up, both recourse to the conciliation procedure and the date on which that procedure would be initiated and concluded were, as a matter of principle, uncertain.
According to the magistrates, the Parliament therefore remained within the limits of its discretion when, in October 2015, it set its calendar of ordinary plenary sessions for the year 2017.
France also criticised the Parliament for maintaining the calendar of ordinary plenary sessions for 2017, following the establishment in April of that year of the pragmatic timetable for the budgetary procedure. However, for the Court, “whether and on what date the conciliation committee might actually reach a conciliation agreement” remained uncertain at that time. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)