The European Court of Justice said in a statement that it had rejected a lower court decision in 2005 that a representative of the PKK, Osman Ocalan, could not appeal on its behalf because the group no longer existed.

"The Court of Justice observed that that organisation cannot, simultaneously, have an existence sufficient for it to be subject to restrictive measures laid down by the (EU) community legislature and not have an existence sufficient to contest those measures," it said.

It said that the Court of First Instance, which first heard the case and is also based in Luxembourg, must now rule on the merits of the application made by Ocalan on the PKK's behalf.

The PKK, which is outlawed in Turkey and the United States as well as the EU, waged a 15-year war for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey that claimed more than 36,000 lives.

It announced in April 2002 that it would cease to exist, and its members reorganised under the name of Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK), in a new campaign for Kurdish freedoms through democratic means.

The EU's terror register, of more than 50 organisations and individuals, includes the Palestinian governing party Hamas, the armed Basque separatist group ETA and Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and is revised about every six months.

The list, which allows for an asset freeze and greater EU police and security cooperation in combatting those who figure on it, was drawn up in the months after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

But it has been increasingly criticised over the way it is compiled and revised, and the EU's top legal counsel acknowledged in early December that the bloc would need to re-examine it.

On December 12, the Court of First Instance, Europe's second-highest tribunal, ruled the EU had not respected the right to a fair hearing of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (OMPI), when it ordered an asset freeze in 2002.

The PKK along with KADEK and another alleged alias Kongra-Gel figures on the most recent list published on the EU's official website.