A hearing of the General Court (source: Courtesy of the Court of Justice of the European Union)
Slovakia will have to relaunch the process of selecting an additional judge of the General Court of the European Court (EGC), as the court’s committee has rejected Slovak candidate Mária Patakyová due to her lack of knowledge of French, Slovak Judicial Council chair Jana Bajánková announced on March 21.
French is the working language of this court. Apart from Patakyová, who is vice-chancellor of Comenius University in Bratislava, the committee also rejected Maltese and Latvian candidates, said Bajánková as cited by the TASR newswire.
A new election for the Slovak candidate should take place on June 27. It is expected that Slovakia will nominate a woman. Slovakia has managed to acquire one of the 12 posts of additional judges who should have joined the court as of September 1, 2015. Slovakia already has one judge at EGC, Juraj Schwarcz.
The General Court is the first-instance body of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. It was established in 1998 to provide two-stage judicial supervision in certain areas and in order to relieve the Court of Justice itself.
The General Court is made up of at least one judge from each member state (28 as of 2013, plus the additional 12 posts). The judges are appointed by common accord of the governments of member states. Their term of office is six years and is renewable. The judges appoint their president from among their own ranks for a period of three years.
