In this Newsletter, Cruz Vilaça Advogados analyses the request submitted by the President of the Court of Justice of the European Union to the European Parliament and to the Council of the European Union with a view to amending Protocol No 3 on the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Based on the second paragraph of Article 281 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Court of Justice’s request is ‘made against a background of sustained high levels of judicial activity marked by both the volume and complexity of cases brought before the Court of Justice’ and has been designed along two main lines. First, the Court’s request concerns the specific areas in which, according to Article 256(3) TFEU and the Statute, the General Court is to have jurisdiction to hear and determine questions referred for a preliminary ruling by the national courts under Article 267 TFEU. Secondly, it concerns the mechanism by which the Court of Justice determines whether an appeal brought against decisions of the General Court handed down in respect of decisions of boards of appeals is allowed to proceed.