Luxembourg, 28/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - The procedure for appointing European judges continues and Member State governments will have to, through written procedure, definitively nominate twenty new European judges by 1 May.
The recent meeting of Member State representatives focused ultimately on one of the stages of this appointment procedure: selecting by sorting through the countries for which a judge could have a shortened mandate. The aim is to enable the twenty new members to integrate into the partial renewal system of judges which takes place every three years. The complete mandate is for 6 years.
Court of Justice: The five judges whose mandate expires in October 2006 are: Jiri Malenovsky (Czech République), Georges Arestis (Cyprus), Egils Levits (Latvia), Pranas Küris (Lithuania) and Anthony Borg Barthet (Malta).
The five other judges whose mandate expires at the Court in October 2009 are: Uno Lohmus (Estonia), Endre Juhasz (Hungary), Jerzy Makarczyk (Poland), Jan Klucka (Slovakia) and Marco Ilesic (Slovenia)
Court of First Instance: The five judges whose mandate expires on 31 August 2004 are: Küllike Jürimae (Estonia), Savvas Papasavvas (Cyprus), Otto Czucz (Hungary), Irena Wiszniewska-Bialecka (Poland) and Daniel Svaby (Slovakia).
The five other judges who will see their mandate expire on 31 August 2007, are: Irena Pelikanova (Czech Republic), Ingrida Labucka (Latvia), Vilenas Vadapalas (Lithuania), Ena Cremona (Malta) and the Slovene judge who has not yet been chosen by his government.
The selection procedure granted very short mandates to the two Cypriots and none for the Slovenians who will remain respectively at the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance until 2009 and 2007.
According to observers, the judges selected for a short mandate are not necessarily the "losers". Their appointment is political and the political context in which they are chosen stands a good chance of being extended in the near future rather than in the distant future. In this perspective, in 2004 at the Court of Justice and in 2007 at the Court of First Instance the guarantee of seeing their mandate renewed for a second time for a period of six years.
Political appointments
The treaty mentions the appointment by common agreement of the Member States. Experts point out that the choice of a judge at the Court by a Member State has always been, since the creation of the Court fifty years ago, a political choice. Germany, for example, at least, until recently, alternated magistrates according to their belonging to one or other of the two main German political parties, CDU-CSU and the SPD.
Experts also point out that the practice consists in agreeing to the political choice that other Member States give to each Member State and the certainty that its own choice will not be opposed. This practice is consistent: no Member State has ever criticised it. On this basis, these same experts expect that the twenty new judges, who have already been in place in Luxembourg in recognition, will be appointed on 1 May in order to be able to begin work on 11 and 12 may.
Although the choice is political, the over-riding selection procedures for judges are not. Some, however, consider that they lack coherence: Article 223 of the EC Treaty says that judges are chosen from persons who can guarantee total independence and who, in their respective countries, unite high legal functions or who are working in a juriconsult environment whose competencies are well-known. The draft European constitution wants judges to go through a consultation committee consisting of judges and legal experts (one of whom would be selected by the European Parliament) before they are chosen by their governments.