National Parking Adjudication Service is not a court of Law

Wednesday 02nd March 2005
National Parking Adjudication Service is not a court of Law, therefore it is a contravention of Article 6 HRA1998

Arbitration panel not a court for Art. 234

The Court of Justice has recently confirmed its previous caselaw according to which an arbitration panel is not a national court or tribunal within the meaning of Article 234 EC.
Consequently, the ECJ has no jurisidiction to answer a question referred to it by such a panel. The recent judgment is in C-125/04 Guy Denuit, Betty Cordenier v Transorient-Mosaïque Voyages and Culture SA. The Court reminds everyone that to determine whether a body making a reference is a court or tribunal of a Member State for the purposes of Article 234 EC, it takes account of a number of factors, such as whether the body is established by law, whether it is permanent, whether its jurisdiction is compulsory, whether its procedure is inter partes, whether it applies rules of law and whether it is independent (see, the leading older case C-54/96 Dorsch Consult and Case C-516/99 Schmid). An arbitration panel is not a ‘court or tribunal of a Member State’ within the meaning of Article 234 EC where the parties are under no obligation, in law or in fact, to refer their disputes to arbitration and the public authorities of the Member State concerned are not involved in the decision to opt for arbitration nor required to intervene of their own accord in the proceedings before the arbitrator (see Case 102/81 ‘Nordsee’ and Case C-126/97 Eco Swiss .

The position of the ECJ would have been different had national law made recourse to arbitration mandatory.