Procedures of the Court of Justice
Preliminary reference procedure: Relevance of the questions
In principle, all questions must be relevant for the outcome of the case pending before the domestic court. However, the CJEU considers that, in principle, the referring court alone can assess the necessity of the questions and determine their subject-matter. Therefore, the CJEU will examine the admissibility of a question only in exceptional circumstances. That is the case in particular where the problem referred to the Court is purely hypothetical or where the interpretation of a Community rule which is sought by the national court has no relation to the actual facts of the main action or to its purpose. (Case C 415/93 Bosman [1995] ECR I 4921, paragraph 61; Case C 466/04 Acereda Herrera [2006] ECR I 5341, paragraph 48; Case C 380/05 Centro Europa 7 [2008] ECR I 349, paragraph 53; Joined Cases C 188/10 and C 189/10 Melki and Abdeli [2010] ECR I 5667, paragraph 27.)
The reference must include the legal and factual background of the domestic case as well as the questions of the national court. It should also indicate why the reply is considered necessary for the decision of the domestic case. The domestic court can also indicate its position on the questions of EU law and propose a reply.
The reference and the relevant translations or summaries will be sent to the parties before the domestic courts as well as to the interested parties mentioned in Article 23 of the statute of the CJEU, that is all Member States, the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, as well as, in some cases the States of the EEA and the EFTA Surveillance Authority. They can submit observations in their own language with two months. The CJEU can convene a hearing.
In most but not all preliminary reference procedures there will be an opinion by an Advocate General that is published before the CJEU deliberates the case. The CJEU can decide in chambers of three, five and fifteen judges as well as in the plenary.
The court can employ an accelerated procedure and – in certain areas – an even more accelerated urgent procedure. However, these procedures are used very rarely, and, up to now, not in environmental cases. Normally, the CJEU expects the domestic courts to deal with any urgency by interim measures. The large number of persons or legal situations potentially affected by the decision that a referring court must deliver after having referred the matter to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling is not, as such, liable to constitute an exceptional circumstance of such as to justify recourse to an accelerated procedure (see, orders of the President of the Court in joined Cases C-283/06 and C-312/06 KÖGÁZ and Others, para. 9; in Case C-368/06 Cedilac, para. 7; in Case C-201/08 Plantanol, para. 10; Case C-317/04, Parliament v Council, para. 13).
In Case C-240/09 Lesoochranárske zoskupenie (Order) concerning protection of Slovak brown bears, the CJEU was informed by the national court that there were several administrative procedures initiated by various associations of hunters or other persons concerning the granting of exemptions from the species protection regime. If granted, the exemptions would result in the killing of the brown bears and the use of chemicals in protected natural areas. However, the CJEU concluded that as regards the threats to property or to the health of persons, the referring court in no way specifies their form and extent, and does not indicate how a decision of the CJEU intervening in a very short time would be necessary in order to avoid the risks which would be incurred if the procedure followed the normal course, or, why provisional measures could not be taken in this regard at national level. Therefore, the request to submit the case to an accelerated procedure was not upheld.