Luxembourg, 14/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Justice is to create a Fourth Chamber with five judges to settle important matters. The official decision will not be taken until after 6 October this year, when the new judges appointed by their government and the incumbent judges, whose term of office is either renewed or running, will take their place in Court.
To date, there have been three Chambers with five judges for matters considered too important to be given to one of the three-judge Chambers but not important enough to be entrusted to the Grand Chamber (where there are 13 or 11 judges depending on the case, the quorum being 9 judges).
The three current five-judge Chambers operate with eight magistrates, in rotation. The creation of a Fourth Chamber will mean that there will be only six judges in each Chamber, of which only one may replace a missing judge.
A president will be chosen for this new Chamber, the name of Belgian Judge Koen Lenaerts being often mentioned in this connection. Since the Treaty of Nice, all Chamber presidents sit in the Grand Chamber, which delivers the main judgements of the Court.