COVID-19 has closed the doors of another EU Institution (the European Parliament having done so on 2 March 2020) – this time, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Judges, Advocates General and staff have been sent home, hearings are postponed until further notice and only urgent procedures will be processed in the following days. The Court of Justice and the General Court are in lockdown.
But despite the severity of this halt, time-limits keep running. The CJEU issued a statement on Friday 13 (of all days…) declaring that ‘procedural time limits, including time limits for instituting proceedings, shall continue to run and the parties are required to comply with those time limits’.
Therefore, if your deadline to lodge an action of annulment expires tomorrow, you had better file it by then or you will be time-barred. In principle, the fact that both courts within the CJEU are in lockdown is no excuse to simply ignore the time limit.
Source EUlawlive
