Advocate General

The Generalänwalte at the European Court of Justice will assist the judges of the European Court in its decision making. There are currently nine advocates-general.

Legal basis

Article 252 of the TFEU before saw that the European Court of Justice shall be assisted by eight Advocates-General, whose number can be increased by the Council by a unanimous decision. At the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon, Member States declared that the number of Advocates-General should be increased to 11, as requested by the Court. In June 2013 it was decided to increase the number of Advocates-General as soon as possible to nine and from October 2015 to 11.

Task

The Advocate General has the task to provide a proposal for a judgment in the form of a reasoned Opinion publicly and with complete impartiality and independence after the hearing, to the extent his participation is required by the Statute of the Court. Its task is therefore not comparable with that of a prosecutor. To this end, he summarizes the existing case law of the ECJ in similar cases, and uses this to justify his ideas with regard to the assessment of this case. The Advocate General is not representative of either party, but to develop its proposal independently and neutrally. The ECJ is not bound by these suggestions, in fact he follows, however, in about three-quarters of all cases, the proposals of the Advocate General.

Oral proceedings and opinion in proceedings

The Court shall decide on the report of the Judge-Rapporteur and after hearing the Advocate General considers whether the case of inquiry requires, is assigned the case to which Chamber and whether an oral hearing is held. At the hearing before the Court, the parties to bear their submissions to the Chamber and the Advocate General. The judges and the Advocate General may the parties ask the questions that they deem appropriate. A few weeks later, again in open court, the Advocate General takes account of the Court 's Opinion. In it he dealt more specifically with the legal issues of the dispute and shall propose to the Court, in complete independence of the decision before that should be rendered in the case of his opinion. Thus, the oral procedure is completed. Throws a case no new legal issues, the Court may decide, after hearing the Advocate General, to judgment without an Opinion.

List of Advocates

The Advocates-General shall be appointed by a unanimous decision of the Governments of the Member States, after consultation in accordance with Article 255 of the TFEU formed expert committee, which de facto corresponds to one of the Council of the European Union unanimous decision. Here are the five ( six in the future ) large Member States, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (in future also Poland) a permanent Advocate-General. The remaining three ( future five) Advocates-General are filled on a rotating basis with representatives of small Member States. Currently, the following sequence must be provided: Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania.

The following list includes all persons who were members of the Advocates-General at the European Court as of January 2014 or are. The names of the nine current reigning Advocates-General are highlighted in bold type.

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