The Annual Report 2015 on the judicial activity of the Court of Justice, the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal has been published online. In the Netherlands, it was presented last week - on 27 May 2016 - at the Council of State in The Hague by justices Sacha Prechal and Marc van der Woude (Dutch version available here).
In his introduction to the Annual Report, justice Koen Lenaerts, president of the Court of Justice, observes that 2015 has seen the highest number of cases brought over the course of a year in the institution’s history, and that its annual productivity is at an unprecedented level. Earlier, it was reported that the most references for a preliminary ruling come from (1) Germany, (2) Italy, (3) the Netherlands, (4) Spain and (5) Belgium.
From the Annual Report it follows that there were 39 new references for a preliminary ruling with consumer protection as the subject matter of the action (on a total of 436) before the Court of Justice in 2015. Furthermore, 29 cases concerning consumer protection were completed by judgments, opinions or by orders involving a judicial determination (on a total of 554). Section XVIII of the report (pp. 59-60) is dedicated to consumer protection, and discusses the Court's judgments in the cases Unicaja Banco and Caixabank (see also our blog) and ERSTE Bank Hungary (blog). Both cases relate to Directive 93/13 on unfair terms.
