Luxembourg, 11/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - Frenchman Roger Grass, Registrar of the European Court of Justice since 1993, has had his six year term of office, due to expire in February 2006, extended until 2012. The Registrar is an official of the Court whose duties far overshoot the purely judicial tasks usually denoted by the term 'registrar' in national courts. The Registrar of the Court of Justice is Secretary General, Head of Administration, General Manager of the Court's expenditure and manager (answerable to the European Parliament) of the Court's budget of more than 250 million euros. He is also responsible for staff (all 2000 of them), translation departments and the Infrastructure Directorate, currently overseeing an extension to the Court's buildings, an ambitious project designed by Dominque Perrault (architect of a huge library in Paris) but behind schedule. The Court of Justice's Rules of Procedure set out the procedure for appointing the Registrar, similar to the procedures for appointing a new President of the Court.
Article 12 of the Rules of Procedure stipulate that two weeks before the date set for making the appointment, the President shall inform the 33 Members of the Court of the applications made for the post, who will elect the Registrar by an absolute majority in the first round, or by a relative majority in the second round. There have been four Registrars since the Court of Justice was set up in 1952. First Albert Van Hout (Belgium) until 1982, then Paul Heim (UK) until 1988, then Jean-Guy Giraud (France) until 2004, then Roger Grass for the 1994-2000 term of office. Grass was the only candidate for the post, and his term of office was renewed in 1999 for the 2000-2006 term of office.
On 4 July 2005, the Court of Justice published a press release - described by some commentators as laconic, by others as cryptic - explaining that the Court had renewed Roger Grass' term of office until 2012, adding that the Court of Justice's Registrar is elected by judges and advocates general for a six year term of office. Queries about how the election was organised, the Court's press and information department said Roger Grass' re-election had been organised in line with Article 12 of the Rules of Procedure but did not specify whether the election had directly concerned his re-election or whether it had covered another candidate for the post, Kurt Riechenberg of Germany, former Head of Cabinet of the former President of the European Court of Justice, Gil Rodrigues Iglesias.