Luxembourg, 28/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - An editorial by Judge Hubert Legal, which appeared in a French review, caused an outburst at the Court of First Instance. Hubert Legal writes that the Court of First Instance should simply carry out a judicial review of the Commission's “competition” decisions to impose fines on companies (compliance with procedure to respect rights of parties, etc.) and not completely recast these decisions to the extent that even the fines are changed. He also writes that the judges were at the hands of their Court staff (referendaires), young persons with brilliant minds but ambitious and opportunistic who act like “ayatollahs of free enterprise”.
It all began when readers had before them issue number two of the review “Competition”, which presents itself on its website as “conceived by a team of magistrates, academics and lawyers, all recognised specialists in competition law”. The lead writer is Hubert Legal, who signs in his capacity as President of the Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the European Communities. In his editorial, he explains that, in competition matters where the Commission imposes heavy fines on companies, the Court of First Instance should simply exercise judicial review of the European Commission's decision and not cast judgement in “full jurisdiction”, replacing the Commission's assessment of the case with its own. Nothing, he said, is more upsetting that to see the evaluation reached by members (of the Commission) who have an in-depth knowledge of the question in hand being replaced by another evaluation - “not necessarily any better” - reached by persons (from the Court of First Instance) who, allowing for exceptions (sic), are not familiar with the dossiers. He added that, since they had discovered that the European Court of Justice had given them increased prerogatives in its Tetra Laval ruling, the European judges of the Court of First Instance “driven by the zeal of the freshly converted, sometimes feel the pull of pedagogical censorship and seek, for every case brought before them, to review everything from A to Z to write a definitive ruling, for example, on what is appropriate in matters of agreements or abuse of dominant position”.
Hubert Legal's comment that caused particular annoyance was that when he considers the decisions by the European Court of First Instance are worked out by referendaires who are “collaborators with the judges, fresh-faced and straight out of European colleges, and devoid of any experience in matters of jurisdiction, administration or diplomacy”. He went on to add that they are: “Brilliant minds wishing to assert their grip, certainly with Community ambitions” but who “see public interest as an abstract if not suspect notion and believe it is their duty to behave toward their judge, who is sometimes handicapped by a limited knowledge (of the French language), as if they were ayatollahs of free enterprise”.