The materials are noteworthy in that they relate to the cases brought before the Court of Justice from 1953 until 1982.
The files contain traditional procedural documents such as requests for preliminary rulings or actions for annulment, defenses and responses presented in Court, opinions of the advocate general, statements by regional and national administrations, and approaches proposed by local judicial authorities to support or juxtapose decisions of the Court of Justice, and so on.
Furthermore, the transfer also included internal documents drawn up by the Commission services to support their position as well as notes from the Legal Service on the interpretation of judgments. It is to be noted that the documents may be in the official languages in use at the time the file was drawn up.
The availability of these files offers researchers an opportunity to broaden and deepen knowledge about the juridical history of European integration. They represent a complementary archival source to the holdings of the Court of Justice, which are also stored at the HAEU.
The files are distributed in three different archival holdings, according to the new filing structure of the Commission’s holdings, based on their creator: 224 files from the ECSC Legal Service (1953-1958) are filed under CECA_SEJU; 496 files from the period 1959-1966 when the Legal Service was a common service for the then three Communities are archived under CECA_SEJC; finally, 2307 files are kept under CEUE_SEJU, corresponding to the Legal Service after the executive bodies of the three Communities were merged. However, at the level of storage-rooms, they will maintain their original code under provisional series BAC 371/1991.
Complete information is available on the descriptive cards within each collection.