epi meets the Boards of Appeal
October 24, 2025
On 21 October 2025, a meeting of the MSBA took place. Historically, “MSBA” stood for meeting of members of SACEPO with the Boards of Appeal” but now it just signifies a meeting of the President of the Boards of Appeal, a number of senior Chairs of Boards and some of the President’s staff with 4 person delegations from Business Europe and epi.
At the meeting, the President gave a presentation on the state of play of the Boards of Appeal. A number of interesting statistics were given, including the reduction in the number of cases pending for more than 24 months from 20% to 10% of the pending cases, the static number of Appeal Board members and the low numbers petition for review cases where a 5-membered Board was required. The President also referred to initiatives to improve the electronic case management system and other electronic systems used by the Boards to improve the speed and quality of Board decisions.
The Boards are also carrying out a number of initiatives to improve quality, including many educational events regarding all aspects of the Boards’ activities. There was a good discussion on these events and other measures which could contribute to an increase in the quality of decisions. One vent which may help epi members in improving quality is that the Case Law Book, at least in its HTML version, will be updated annually. (The pdf version will only be updated triannually.)
At least the HTML version will be able to refer to the recent spurt of Enlarged Board decisions on which a presentation was made. There was a discussion as to whether the decisions had actually answered the questions posed and whether the questions were posed in the right way. The main message seemed to be that there was no need to change the current practice unless there had been legislative change.
There was then a presentation and discussion on whether the most recent change in the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal, in particular in relation to a change of case during the proceedings. It was indicated that next year there would be a consultation on the effect of these Rules. The presentation showed that there was still some variance as to how the Rules were applied but that the variances were related to particular cases.
The meeting was very helpful in improving understanding between the Boards and the invited participants and was followed by a delightful lunch at which the understanding was further deepened.
Chris Mercer, Chair EPPC