Case Law & Law Reports

The recommended services for online searching for EU case law are the specialised services:

Eur-Lex

Eur-Lex: free and official legal server of the European Union. It provides access to all secondary legislation of the European Union and all case law of the CJEU courts.  Online help and guidance is available. 

Curia

Curia: free and offical website of the CJEU. Online Help is available.

You can also search full text EU case law via Lexis and Westlaw.

A European Case-Law Identifier (ECLI) has been introduced to assist with citing the case law of the CJEU. The ECLI is composed of the following four mandatory elements, in addition to the prefix ‘ECLI’:

• the code corresponding to the Member State of the court or tribunal concerned or to the European Union where it is an EU Court;
• the abbreviation corresponding to the court or tribunal which delivered the decision;
• the year of the decision;
• an ordinal number of a maximum of 25 alphanumeric characters, in a format decided by each Member State or by the supranational court or tribunal concerned. 

For example, the ECLI of the judgment of the Court of Justice of 12 July 2005, Schempp (C‑403/03), is: EU:C:2005:446

This is broken down as follows:

• ‘EU’ indicates that it is a decision delivered by one of the Courts of the European Union (for decisions of national courts or tribunals, the code corresponding to the relevant Member State will appear instead of ‘EU’);
• ‘C’ indicates that this decision was delivered by the Court of Justice (decisions delivered by the General Court would be indicated by the letter ‘T’ and those of the Civil Service Tribunal by ‘F’);
• ‘2005’ indicates that the decision was delivered in 2005;
• ‘446’ indicates that it is the 446th ECLI assigned in respect of the year in question.

The method of citing the case-law adopted by the Court of Justice of the European Union combines the ECLI with the usual name of the decision and the case number in the register. It has gradually been brought into use by each EU Court/Tribunal since the first half of 2014, and was harmonised as between the Courts of the European Union in 2016.

The constituent elements of the reference are as follows:

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is the judicial authority of the European Union. It oversees the uniform application and interpretation of European Union Law in co-operation with the national judicial systems of the national states. The CJEU resolves legal disputes between national governments and EU institutions, and may also take action against EU institutions on behalf of individuals, companies or organisations whose rights have been infringed

The CJEU is based in Luxembourg and should not be confused with:

• The European Court of Human Rights, which is an arm of the Council of Europe, which enforces and interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights sits in Strasbourg.
• The Court of Auditors which is a separate EU body whose role is to examine the revenue and expenditure accounts of EU institutions, ensuring that EU funds are spent in accordance with budgetary rules.

The CJEU is divided into 2 courts:

• Court of Justice – deals with requests for preliminary rulings from national courts, certain actions for annulment and appeals.  Informally known as European Court of Justice (ECJ) 
• General Court – rules on actions for annulment brought by individuals, companies and, in some cases, EU governments. In practice, this means that this court deals mainly with competition law, State aid, trade, agriculture, trade marks.  Previously known as the Court of First instance.  

The European Union Civil Service Tribunal was a specialised court within the  CJEU from 2005-2016, and its role was to adjudicate in disputes between the European Union and its civil service. These cases are now heard by the General Court.