According to its Judicial Statistics 2017, the number of cases brought before the Court of Justice and the General Court of the EU exceeded 1600 in 2017 as it did in 2016: a total of 1656 cases were brought before the two courts, and 1594 cases were closed by the courts.

A new record was set for the number of cases registered at the Court of Justice in 2017 with 793 new registrations, including 533 requests for a preliminary ruling, which is a 13% increase compared to 2016. The average duration of proceedings regarding requests for a preliminary ruling remained stable at 15,7 months in 2017.

While the number of actions for failure of a Member State to fulfil obligations continued to go up in 2017, the number of appeals lodged before the Court was considerably lower than in the two previous years at 141 cases in 2017 compared to 206 in 2015 and 168 in 2016. Nevertheless, the average duration of appeal proceedings increased to 17,1 months in 2017 compared to 12,9 months in 2016, which can be explained by the complexity of the cases under appeal in the given period.

The new organisation of the General Court led to an improvement, as 140 more cases could be closed in 2017 than in 2016, an increase of 18,5%. Furthermore, the duration of proceedings decreased by 13% compared to 2016 with an average of 16,3 months for cases decided by judgment or order. In total, 917 cases were brought before the General Court, and it closed 895 cases in 2017.