Portugal Advertises Its Seat on the EU's Highest Court, and the File Has to Be in by 21 September

Portugal has one seat on the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the Ministry of Justice has just advertised it. Applications for the post of Judge at the Luxembourg court opened this week and close on 21 September 2026.

The invitation is addressed to people who offer every guarantee of independence and who meet the conditions required in their own country for appointment to the highest judicial offices, or who are jurists of recognised competence. That wording is not the ministry's; it is the first paragraph of Article 253 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and it is the only qualification the treaties impose. The ministry's invitation sets out six admission criteria in full.

Applications go to [email protected] with the subject line "Candidatura ao cargo de Juiz do TJUE".

How the choice is actually made

The procedure has four steps, and the government's discretion sits at the end of them rather than the beginning.

• An Evaluation Panel assesses the applications received.
• Candidates who meet the admission criteria are heard by that panel.
• The panel produces a reasoned proposal naming the three candidates it considers best suited to the post.
• Parliament's European Affairs Committee hears all three and reports.
• The government then selects one name, taking into account both the committee's report and the panel's.

That is the domestic half. The nomination then goes to the panel established under Article 255 TFEU, the committee of former judges and senior lawyers that vets every candidate for the Court of Justice and the General Court before the member states appoint by common accord. Its opinions are not published, but they are not decorative either: it has rejected national nominees before, and governments have withdrawn names rather than test it.

Why the seat matters to residents

The Court of Justice is not a distant constitutional abstraction for anyone living in Portugal. It is where the limits of Portuguese tax law, environmental law and market regulation are settled, usually at the end of a reference from a Portuguese court or an infringement action from the Commission.

The recent docket makes the point. In June the Court ruled against Portugal's IMT charge on corporate restructuring, holding that an EU directive overrode the domestic levy. In July it faulted the country over the Industrial Emissions Directive, down to the definition of hazardous substances and the speed of incident reporting. Earlier in the year Brussels referred Portugal to the Court over the RED III renewables directive. Each of those cases changes a rule that someone in Portugal has to comply with.

The wider context

Judicial appointments have been a live argument in Portugal all year. Parliament seated four new Constitutional Court judges on a joint party list in June, an episode that put the mechanics of who chooses judges, and on whose votes, into open political contest. The CJEU procedure is deliberately different in shape: an open call, a technical panel, a parliamentary hearing of three shortlisted names, and only then a government decision.

The practical detail worth noting is the deadline. Under four weeks is a short window for a call of this kind, and it is the sort of appointment where the field is small and largely self-selecting: sitting senior judges, professors of European law, and a handful of practitioners with Luxembourg experience. Anyone who fits the description and has not started assembling the file has under four weeks to do it.