Monitoring References to the Court of Justice of the European Union
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 Dual-Use Regulation lets a Member State stop goods in transit only where they may serve weapons of mass destruction or a military end-use in a country under an arms embargo. Belgian NGOs say the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions oblige Belgium to do more. The Brussels Court of Appeal asks whether the Regulation is valid and whether Article 351 TFEU lets Belgium act anyway.
The recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive makes producers of medicines and cosmetics pay at least 80% of the cost of removing micropollutants from wastewater. The industry's direct actions were dismissed as inadmissible; the Irish High Court has now sent the validity question to Luxembourg, and in Poland's parallel action Advocate General Kokott has proposed that the core of the scheme be annulled.
A Dutch card issuer asked a customer of twelve years to identify again online with a photo of an identity document and a selfie. The customer refused and the card was cancelled. The Hoge Raad asks whether storing a face photo for identification is biometric processing, whether the anti-money laundering rules require a copy of the identity document at all, and whether a photograph reveals racial or ethnic origin.
A Czech customs dispute over suspected imports of Chinese-origin goods turns on two OLAF missions to Taiwan, in 2013 and 2014. The Czech Supreme Administrative Court asks whether OLAF had a legal basis to investigate there, whether its reports are valid, and how much they can prove when their content cannot be verified.
An Italian criminal court may give the facts a different legal classification in its judgment without warning the accused. The new offence may have opened the way to an alternative procedure, but by then the deadline to ask for it has passed. The Corte suprema di cassazione asks whether the Directive on the right to information in criminal proceedings allows that.
In the Vivendi/Lagardère merger probe the Commission ordered Vivendi, which controls a large press group, to hand over documents found by searching its executives' files. Vivendi lost before the General Court in June. Its appeal goes further than Lagardère's: it asks the Court to declare Article 11(3) of the Merger Regulation inapplicable, because it offers no prior judicial check before journalists' sources reach the Commission.
An Albanian company holding a large Albanian judgment against Enel has spent years trying to enforce it in courts outside Albania. The Rome Court of Appeal asks whether a Member State court's decision declaring a third-State judgment enforceable is itself a 'judgment' that the Brussels I Regulation lets circulate across the Union.
Italy's competition authority found that Autostrade per l'Italia engaged in an unfair commercial practice by charging full tolls while the service fell short because of its own lack of diligence, where drivers had no real alternative. The Consiglio di Stato asks whether the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive stretches that far — or whether a price that should have been cut is a matter for contract law.
A lender failed to assess a borrower's creditworthiness and then sold the loan to Hoist Italia, a buyer of consumer debt. Italian law lets the borrower claim only against the original lender, for pre-contractual liability and damages. A court in Busto Arsizio asks whether that sanction is effective enough under the Consumer Credit Directive when the debt is being collected by someone else.
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.
The questions referred are quoted word-for-word from the official texts. Commentary is clearly separated from the record.
Each report links the authentic documents on CURIA and EUR-Lex by ECLI and CELEX number.
URLs cited in academic literature since 2012 do not change. Corrections are logged, never silently overwritten.