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In the near future the European Union is going to expand from fifteen to twenty-one members with at least another six applicants waiting in the wings. The European Court of Justice, which is becoming more and more important in deciding cases originating in the United Kingdom, is concerned to stop its procedures becoming too unwieldy.
Last year the Court of Justice sent the Council of Ministers a document containing proposals and reflections on 'The Future of the Judicial System of the European Union'. After summarising the difficulties with which the Community Courts are already faced, that document identifies the consequences which both developments in Community law and enlargement will entail for the exercise of the judicial function in the Union. It lists a series of specific measures for dealing with them. Some of them consist in amendments to the Rules of Procedure which can be adopted immediately by the Council without waiting for Treaty amendment.
The object of these amendments is to introduce a greater degree of flexibility in the application of the Rules of Procedure in order to extend the ways in which it can be adapted to the degree of complexity and urgency of the case. These amendments are necessary to enable the Court of Justice to cope not only with an ever-increasing number of cases but also with the intensification of its judicial tasks which will result from the new areas of jurisdiction provided for by the conventions adopted in the context of the third pillar of the European Union (Justice and Home Affairs) and by the Treaty of Amsterdam. Such measures as fast-tracking urgent cases, not holding oral hearings where the written procedure is adequate and using simple orders when a case referred by a Member State has an answer in existing case law, are intended to cut down the time it takes for a case to be completed.
When dealing with the specific question of enlargement the Court draws a distinction between acting as a 'collegiate' body or as a 'deliberative assembly'. If the number of judges (currently one from each country) greatly exceeds fifteen after enlargement the ECJ feels that this line would have been crossed, changing the nature of the Court, and its organisation would have to be changed to reduce the number. As regards the long-term future of the preliminary ruling system, the Court emphasises that all national courts, regardless of their status, should retain the power to refer questions to it for a preliminary ruling. However, it suggests the introduction of a filtering system which would enable it to decide the questions which need to be answered at Community level on the basis of their complexity or importance. Finally the ECJ floats the idea of a series of outposts of the Court in each Member State. In this system of decentralisation the new bodies would have the responsibility of dealing with references for preliminary rulings from courts in their own country.
The Court has ruled that an employer can refuse to pay a Christmas bonus to those on parental leave as long as the bonus is an 'exceptional allowance'. If however the bonus is viewed as payment for work done in the previous year or an incentive for work in the coming year it cannot be refused to parental leave takers. The bonus may also be reduced pro rata according to length of parental leave taken during the year.
Recently the ECJ had a case referred to it from the Munich labour court which concerned a Ms. Krüger who had been a full time nurse but had switched to part time after the birth of her child. She was then denied a special annual bonus which she had previously received. The principle which was raised in the Seymour-Smith case (see Issue 5) was also used here. Because those working less than 15 hours per week were disproportionately women, to deny them the special bonus was held to be discriminatory and to infringe the principle of equal pay for equal work.
The Court has denied a claim by male staff working at Renault in France that a lump sum of €1,143 payed to women taking maternity leave was discriminatory. It ruled that the money was to offset a number of occupational disadvantages which women suffered through taking time off for maternity. These included lack of opportunity for promotion, training and performance-related pay.
The Royal Marines are allowed to only employ male chefs according to a recent judgement of the court. Ms. Angela Sirdar had brought a case alleging that the UK Army Board had broken the EU directive on equal treatment at work when they had reversed an offer of employment in the Marines on finding out that she was female. Although the armed forces fall within the scope of the directive, because the Marines require all its members to be able to serve in the front line the ECJ ruled that the bar was justified.
In a related case the ECJ has preliminarily ruled that the German government cannot ban women from all units except the medical corps or military bands and that a Ms. Tanja Kreil should not have been barred from being a weapons technician.
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