The Gazette 1975

provide for Rules of Procedure to be adopted by the Court subject to the approval of the Council. The Accession of the three new Member States naturally made it necessary for the Court to adopt new Rules of Procedure. But for most practical purposes the new Rules, which are dated 4th December 1974, do not differ materially from the old Pre-accession rules, sub- ject to obvious adaptations such as the use of Irish English or Danish as official languages, and subject also to minor modifications introduced at the British behest such as the direct examination of witnesses by lawyers. Time limits rigid In general, the procedure of the Court is much more flexible than that of an Irish Court. In some respects, it is almost informal. But I must warn you that there is one respect in which it is more rigid and that is in the matter of time limits for lodging pleadings and so forth. You just cannot let the date for lodging a pleading go by and then apply for an extension of time. And it is very difficult to get an adjournment of a hearing. The Court is hostile to any sort of threat of delay. It is a tradition at the Court for any practitioner in any Member State who is in a fix, or even in doubt, on a question of procedure to ring up, or write to, the Legal Secretary to the Judge of his nationality and ask for help. So any Irish Solicitor is free at any time to get in touch either with Judge Andreas O'Keeffe's Legal Secretary, who incidentally is French; he has also an Irish assistant at his office. The requisite Law Reports One of the important tools of the trade is the E.C.R., the European Court Reports. This is the version in English of the Official Reports of cases heard by the Court. Before accession these official reports were pub- hshed in the four original official languages of the Communities, Dutch, French, German and Italian. Now they are being published in English and Danish as well. No Irish version will appear. As regards post- accession cases, that is cases decided in and after 1973, Irish practitioners are expected to cite the E.C R. They contain the full text of the judgment and of the Advocate-General's opinion in all cases. For the time being, most pre-accession cases can be cited in English only in one of the unofficial translations appearing in for instance the Common Market Law Reports. However, as I have mentioned, the official reports of the years before accession are being translated into English. No Irish version will appear. Back volumes of the E C R. are published from time to time. The volumes published so far are those for 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966 The next to be published will be those for 1967 to 1972. The translators will then go back to the beginning and produce the volumes for 1954 to 1961. Subscription for the 18 volumes to 1972 if ordered in one lot is £150.00 and if purchased in individual volumes the price is £15.00 each. The sub- scription for 1973 is £10.00 and for 1974 is £14.20 1 hey are all available from Messrs. Greene & Co Book- sellers, 11 Clare Street, Dublin 2. ' Language adopted Under the rules of Procedure each case is conducted in one of the official languages, which is called the language of the case. In direct actions the language of the case is chosen by the Applicant, except where the defendant is a Member State, when it is the language

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of that State. In references for a preliminary ruling it is the language of the Court that makes the reference. This of course makes it much easier for practitioners, because it means they can generally conduct a case in their own language. Nonetheless, you may find it neces- sary at times at a hearing to whip on headphones and listen to the simultaneous translation, particularly if you do not understand French. This is because Mem- bers of the Court are entitled, and witnesses may be permitted, to use a language other than the language of the case In practice the President always speaks French and one or two of the other Judges sometimes do, even in cases where the language is English. One point of interest to practitioners appearing before this Court is that unlike the Irish accepted procedure of interjecting and interfering with the run of the evidence the Judges of this Court never question interject or interfere with a practitioner making submissions before them or conducting a case, and would consider it most improper to do so. The procedure itself is basically simple. It consists of a written part and an oral part. In practice the written part is by far the more important. This is for two reasons. One is the Continental tradition—particularly the Belgian and the German. It happens that in some of the superior Belgian Courts they do not have oral hearings at all and that in many German Courts, the oral hearing is a mere formality. The second reason is. again, the linguistic problem. This does not arise so much if the language of the case is French or English. But if it is for instance, Dutch, which only two members of the Court understand, it means that, at a hearing, everybody on the Bench, apart from those two, is listening, not to the solicitor, .308