Michal Ovadek, LLB student of International and European Law and BA student of International Relations at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands
Last November the Court of Justice of the EU decided a trio of breakthrough cases which concerned the choice of the appropriate remedy for reasonable time requirement breaches.[1] The reasonable time requirement finds its expression in a number of international treaties, not least in Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In essence, it requires the CJEU to decide cases without undue delay, while also requiring an effective remedy for any breaches of the procedural guarantee. On 12 June 2014 the CJEU has ruled on a more low-key appeal in Deltafina[2] which had been previously deferred until the case-law was clarified. The CJEU has used this opportunity to repeat the previously expounded approach without taking into account any criticism levied by commentators. This led in dismissing the plea and directing the litigants to recover their damages at the General Court; yet, once again, the CJEU did not leave the matter entirely in the hands of the General Court and instead itself established that the General Court has exceeded what can be considered reasonable time for the purpose of Article 47 of the Charter.