The number of new cases brought before the European Union’s highest court has reached an all-time high, statistics have revealed.

Last year the number of cases across the three of the chambers in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rose to 1,711, up from 1,691 the year before.

The number of cases particularly increased in the Court of Justice; 713 cases were lodged, a 15% increase on the year before.

The CJEU welcomed the development, which it said was an ‘expression of the confidence placed in it by national courts and litigants’.

It said that the increase in cases in the Court of Justice was driven by a higher number of appeals, which have doubled since 2014, and the high number of requests made to the court for a preliminary ruling.

It added that its reform of the judicial structure, which began in 2011 and will double the number of judges in the general court by 2019, will enable it to deal with the increase in number of cases.

The number of new cases in the Civil Service Tribunal also rose, to 167 from 157 in 2014. But the number of cases in the General Court dropped from a record of 912 new cases in 2014 to 831 in 2015.

However, the CJEU said that the number of new cases in the General Court ‘confirms the general upward trend’ since the court’s creation, pointing out that the average number of new cases per year between 2013 and 2015 is 40% higher than the average between 2008 and 2010.

Overall the court said that productivity in the court had reached an ‘unprecedented level’ with 1,755 cases completed in 2015, a 4% rise from the previous year.