Citing the case law of the Court of Justice

A typical citation might look like this:

C-279/00 Commission v Italy EU:C:2002:89

C-279/00

Every case filed with the European Court is given a registration number. Cases before the European Court of Justice are prefixed C, cases before the General Court are prefixed T, Cases before the Civil Service Tribunal are prefixed F.
This case was number 279, filed before the Court of Justice in 2000.

Commission v Italy

The parties in the case

EU:C:2002:89

This is the ECLI (European Case Law Identifier). ECLIs were introduced in 2014 and assigned to all Court of Justice decisions issued since 1954. An ECLI consists of a geographical code (to indicate if the decision is from a European Court or a member state), a court abbreviation, the year of the decision, and a sequential number.
In this case, the decision is from the European Court of Justice, delivered in 2002, and is ECLI number 89 for that year.
The ECJ website includes more information on ECLI (European Case Law Identifier).

Law report citations

You may also see a references to published series of law reports, such as the European Court Reports, for example [2002] ECR I-1425