number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

112
Christian Pennera
The Court's deliberations shall be and shall remain secret –,the papers and
documents relating to cases coming before the Court are not open to public scrutiny
3 . However the judgments, comprising the statement of the facts, the summary
of the arguments by both sides, the judgment proper and also the opinions of the
Advocates General are published and easy to consult in all the official languages 4 .
This complete public access to the decisions and the reasons on which they are
based make a major contribution towards the spread of Community law and, as
such, are a factor making for integration.
The Court of Justice, from its Origins to the Start of its Operations
The Court in the Minds of the Founding Fathers
Although, as we know, neither the Assembly nor the Council of Ministers appeared
anywhere in the institutional structure designed by the authors of the Schuman
Plan, there was a Court of Justice, or at least an independent control body, supposed
from the start to watch over and make sure that what the High Authority did
was legal. And so, on 9 May 1950, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs mentioned
first the High Authority's autonomy of operations and then went on to say:
"There shall be suitable provisions guaranteeing the necessary channels for any
appeals against the High Authority's decisions".
It is quite true that thinking on the subject was not yet very clear. It was not
clear what the functions of such a body should be, its nature, its composition, the
scope of its decisions or the procedures applicable ... Should it be an arbitration
committee or a court?
As the negotiations wore on it soon became apparent that, institutionally, the
concern of a number of delegations was to add to the guarantees against the powers,
considered to be excessive, that it was intended to grant the High Authority.
Hence, by way of a counterweight, there appeared on the scene an Assembly
with a watchdog function and then a Council of Ministers as a mouthpiece for the
governments and, finally, a court in order to protect, first and foremost, the interests
of the Member States and private individuals affected by the doings of the High
Authority 5 .
3. Article 32 of the Court's Statute and Article 3 of the ECSC and EEC decisions of 1 February 1983 on
the subject of the Communities' historical archives, OJ L 43 of 15 February 1983, pp. 1 and 14.
4. In addition to the Reports of Cases before the Court the reader may consult, for example, the work
by BOULOUIS-CHEVALLIER, Grands arrêts de la Cour de justice des Communautés européennes,
Paris, of which there are numerous editions; EVERSEN-SPERL, Europäische Rechtsprechung,
Cologne, in many volumes.
5. See, for example, H.J. KÜSTERS "Die Verhandlungen über das institutionelle System zur Gründung
der Europäischen Gemeinschaft für Kohle und Stahl", in The Beginnings of the Schuman-Plan,
Baden-Baden 1988, p. 73 and onward; P. REUTER, "Quelques aspects institutionnels du Plan Schuman",
Revue de droit public et de la science politique, 1951, p. 105 and onward.