CEE vibes

The Court can issue interim measures in infringement cases, an essential tool for avoiding further damage. Current practice forbids the Court from issuing interim measures in preliminary rulings. Therefore, the length of proceedings is more important in preliminary ruling than in infringement cases.

1️⃣ C-45/87 R, Commission v Ireland;
2️⃣ C-65/18 P(R)-R, Nexans v Commission;
3️⃣ C-320/03 R, Commission v Austria;
4️⃣ C-503/06 R, Commission v Italy;
5️⃣ C‑78/14 PR, Commission v ANKO AE.

‼️ It would be unfair to judge the Court solely by the length of these cases, as this is the area where the Court acts decisively and swiftly using interim measures – within days if necessary. Some cases where interim measures were issued within three to six days:

💥 However, the fastest infringement case was decided within 129 days: C-333/04, Commission v Luxembourg. It was not the most complex case, as Luxembourg did not deny the delayed transposition of the ATEX 153 Directive on workers at risk of explosive atmospheres.

But how fast are these cases? Court statistics show direct actions, including infringement cases as a subcategory, average over 21 months.

🇪🇺 Infringement proceedings are the primary tool for ensuring that EU Member States comply with EU law. If a country violates Union law, the European Commission—or, rarely, another Member State—can initiate proceedings that may ultimately lead to the Court, which rules on the alleged infringement.

🏃‍♂️ A preliminary ruling in 40 days – Have you ever wondered how fast the Court of Justice of the European Union can be? | G. Szabó Dániel 🏃‍♂️ A preliminary ruling in 40 days – Have you ever wondered how fast the Court of Justice of the European Union can be? Here are some numbers. Litigants often complain about the slowness of the Cou...

I have written about how fast the Court can be in preliminary ruling cases: lnkd.in/dr2sHMB7. Now it is time to analyse its performance in infringement cases.

An infringement ruling in 129 days – How fast can the Court of Justice of the European Union be?

University College Dublin has just been announced as the host of the next round of the world's biggest event in public law! The 2026 @icon-s.bsky.social conference will be hosted in Belfield in July 2026 by the UCD Centre for Constitutional Studies led by Prof Carolan & @ucdschooloflaw.bsky.social

💡 What can we learn from this? The European Parliament elections are vital to EU democratic legitimacy, and the CJEU should be the ultimate guardian of the election process. To do so, it requires a special procedure to resolve election cases within days, if necessary.

... "However, these processes often have lengthy deadlines, which do not allow for the resolution of disputes during the electoral process."

..."There are also review mechanisms at the EU level: a national court can decide to initiate the preliminary reference procedure with the CJEU when an issue of EU law or compatibility of national law with EU law is raised in a domestic case by one of the parties"....

The @odihr.pl election monitoring report for the 2024 European Parliament elections writes: ...

These timelines are extremely short, but elections require this. Virtually all national jurisdictions have special judicial procedures for elections. The Venice Commission recommends a timeframe of "a little more" than three to five days.

🏃‍♂️ A preliminary ruling in 40 days – Have you ever wondered how fast the Court of Justice of the European Union can be? | G. Szabó Dániel 🏃‍♂️ A preliminary ruling in 40 days – Have you ever wondered how fast the Court of Justice of the European Union can be? Here are some numbers. Litigants often complain about the slowness of the Cou...

🇪🇺 Court of Justice rulings take much longer. The fastest-ever preliminary ruling took 40 days. See my earlier post: lnkd.in/dr2sHMB7.

3 days, April 3-6, 2020: Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 589 U.S. ___, 140 S. Ct. 1205 (2020);
3: August 10-13, 2020: Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Common Cause R.I., 591 U.S. ___, 141 S. Ct. 206 (2020);
6: October 22-28, 2020: Wise v. Circosta, 592 U.S. ___, 141 S. Ct. 46 (2020).

This highly significant decision was made within 𝟒 days: the recount was ordered on 8 December, against which the SCOTUS granted a stay the next day. The case was argued on 11 December and decided a day later. There are even more SCOTUS cases decided this fast:

🇺🇸 The 2000 US presidential election was tight and controversial (by the time's standards). The presidency was at stake in the Florida recount, which was stopped by a Supreme Court order. This decision effectively awarded Florida's 25 Electoral College votes to George W. Bush, ensuring his victory.

🏃 If needed, the SCOTUS can decide within days, and the CJEU should adopt a similar emergency procedure. 🗳️ In some cases, for example, during elections, one can not wait for months.

A court ruling within days? Examples from the US Supreme Court, and the @eucourtofjustice.bsky.social.

📈 Data source: the IUROPA Database, a project coordinated by Daniel Naurin, Johan Lindholm, Urška Šadl and Anna Wallerman Ghavanini. It is a comprehensive, research-ready source of CJEU judgments from 1952 until 2023: www.iuropa.pol.gu.se/cjeu-databas....

‼️ What does it mean? Finding a balance between acting quickly and conducting a thorough review is not easy. But despite its immense translation duties, the Court can find ways to issue judgments rapidly when needed.

There are other cases in which the Court delivered a judgment within 70-80 days outside the urgent procedure: Melki and Abdeli (C-188/10), Wightman and Others (C-621/18), Jippes and Others (C-189/01), and others.

🚄 The fastest-ever preliminary ruling was issued in only 40 days—surprisingly swiftly—in the Santesteban Goicoechea (C-296/08 PPU) case, which concerned the extradition of a detained person from 🇫🇷 France to 🇪🇸 Spain. In 20121, the Court answered the Adil case (C‑278/12 PPU) in 41 days.

⚖️ A preliminary ruling—a primary procedure in EU law in which a national court can ask a question to the top EU court—lasted an average of 17.2 months in 2024. That is almost one and a half years! In urgent cases, the average is 3.3 months, which is still a quarter of a year.

Litigants often complain about the slowness of the Court, but sometimes, it can be exceptionally fast.

🏃‍♂️ A preliminary ruling in 40 days – Have you ever wondered how fast the @eucourtofjustice.bsky.social can be? Here are some numbers.

Hungary postpones vote on law to curb foreign-funded organisations Orbán’s ruling party delays vote on legislation allowing government to ban organisations with foreign funding

Postponing the final vote on the bill is not a retreat but merely a tactical delay. Protests by civic actors, media and businesses helped secure this temporary relief. The next months will be crucial to safeguard freedom of expression, association and assembly. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

What to do?
1️⃣ National courts should send election-related questions to the CJEU.
2️⃣ The CJEU should be fast in answering these questions, to meet the necessities of an election procedure.
3️⃣ The European Commission should launch infringement procedures to protect EP elections.