The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has tightened the test determining which individuals or companies have the right of audience before it, disappointing solicitors who claim it forces a convoluted application procedure on companies and individuals.

In Commission v Jgo Qur & Cie SA, the ECJ overturned a Court of First Instance decision relaxing the requirement that people and entities challenging general EU law must be affected directly and individually by that law.

June O'Keefe, the Law Society's European executive who heads Chancery Lane's Brussels office, said that the finding was disappointing.

She said: 'Natural and legal persons are often directly and adversely affected by European legislation, yet have very limited means of challenging it, save for challenges in the national courts.'

A Law Society submission on the draft European Constitution recently said that the direct and individual test is restrictive and should be modified to a single direct-concern test because the need to demonstrate individual concern is anachronistic.

Scott Crosby, a partner with Brussels-based Crosby Renouf and a member of the Law Society's European law committee, said: 'It means that access to the courts in Luxembourg is just as difficult as it was before [the Court of First Instance finding].

The individual-concern test is so narrowly drawn that litigators have to think of ways around it.

This usually means judicial review in London of implementing legislation which might then be referred by the national court to the ECJ.'

Mr Crosby said that companies are sometimes constrained to have themselves prosecuted in order to claim that national originating legislation for EU law is invalid.

He added: 'This could be done away with if the laws were more widely drawn.

I believe the ECJ has turned this down because it feared it would not have the resources to deal with the flow of applications to the court which might result.'

Jeremy Fleming