Preliminary references are EU law's early-warning system: every reference is a dispute a national judge could not resolve alone. EU Law Radar reports them as they are lodged — the questions quoted verbatim — and follows each case through to judgment.
The EU's €150 billion SAFE defence-loan instrument excludes contractors controlled by third countries — unless they have passed foreign-investment screening. In an Italian Ministry of Defence tender, a bidder relied on a firm holding a screening authorisation from another Member State. The first two references on SAFE ask whether the exclusion reaches companies a bidder merely relies on, and whether another Member State's clearance binds the buyer.
In June the General Court annulled Meta's gatekeeper designation for Marketplace but upheld it for Messenger. Meta now appeals the half it lost, on a single ground: that Messenger is the chat function of Facebook, not a separate number-independent communications service. The answer decides how the Digital Markets Act carves a company's products into services.
Greek law obliges every employer to pay Christmas, Easter and holiday bonuses worth two months' salary — except employers in the public sector, which stopped paying them in the crisis years. Hospital staff in Kilkis, most of whom now earn less per year than the statutory minimum wage, ask whether the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive allows that.
Latvia's air navigation provider, a state-owned company, requires its air traffic controllers to hold security clearance for classified information — which in practice excludes nationals of other Member States. A licensed EU controller challenged the exclusion. Latvia's Supreme Court asks whether the post falls within the public service exception, and whether airspace security in a 'complex geopolitical context' can justify it.
Italian law refuses to execute a European arrest warrant if the requested person's mental state makes them permanently unable to take part in proceedings with full awareness. That ground appears nowhere in the Framework Decision. The Milan Court of Appeal asks whether recital 12 and Article 1(3) allow it anyway.
Fourteen Skåne municipalities award contracts directly to a jointly owned company, relying on the in-house exception. That exception requires more than 80% of the company's activities to serve the owners. Sweden's competition authority says the company's sales to third parties on a competitive market should not count towards the 80%. The Supreme Administrative Court asks the Court.
France taxes large companies that buy back and cancel their own shares, on the amount of the capital reduction and a proportionate share of the premiums. Carrefour and Teleperformance say that is an indirect tax on the raising of capital, which Directive 2008/7 forbids outright. The Conseil d'État asks whether a tax on giving capital back can be a tax on bringing it in.
Greece notifies asylum refusals by ordinary email and treats them as served 48 hours after sending, with the appeal deadline running from that moment. There is no record of when the email was received or opened. A Thessaloniki court asks whether that presumption is compatible with the right to an effective remedy — and what happens when the email went to spam.
The European Public Prosecutor's Office, investigating a recruitment at the European Court of Auditors, asked it to release twelve officials from their duty of confidentiality so they could be heard as witnesses. The Court of Auditors refused. The General Court annulled the refusal in June; the Court of Auditors now appeals, asking how much a Union institution must be told before it lets the Union's own prosecutor question its staff.
Belgium's French Community makes streaming services that target its audience invest in audiovisual production, and it decides what counts: new works, with a quota for Belgian French-language ones, and no credit for buying rights to films already made. Netflix — established in the Netherlands, already paying there — asks the Constitutional Court, and now the Court of Justice, how much of that the Audiovisual Media Services Directive allows.