You are a judicial research fellow working for the Law Society of a candidate EU country. The country is in the process of preparing its legal system for integration within the EU law system, and asks you to produce a memo detailing the law on preliminary references under Article 267 TFEU, and in particular to address the following:

(a) The types of bodies that can request preliminary references from the Court of Justice;

(b) The distinction between discretionary and mandatory references;

(c) The grounds on which the Court of Justice may deem a preliminary reference request to be inadmissible.

The Law Society also asks that you critically analyse the effectiveness of the Article 267 TFEU provisions.

For reference, Article 267 TFEU provides The Court of Justice of the European Union shall have jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings concerning:

(a) the interpretation of the Treaties; 4 (b) the validity and interpretation of acts of the institutions, bodies, offices or agencies of the Union; Where such a question is raised before any court or tribunal of a Member State, that court or tribunal may, if it considers that a decision on the question is necessary to enable it to give judgment, request the Court to give a ruling thereon. Where any such question is raised in a case pending before a court or tribunal of a Member State against whose decisions there is no judicial remedy under national law, that court or tribunal shall bring the matter before the Court. If such a question is raised in a case pending before a court or tribunal of a Member State with regard to a person in custody, the Court of Justice of the European Union shall act with the minimum of delay.

Subject :European Union Law

Country:UK