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.
A Ukrainian couple fled to Georgia when the war began, lived and worked there legally for two years, and then came to Germany. The district refused them temporary protection and threatened deportation to Ukraine. The Hessian Higher Administrative Court asks whether a long stay in a third country takes Ukrainians outside the EU's temporary protection decision.
A 2024 Belgian law allows the authorities, during a public health emergency declared by the WHO, to subject foreign nationals to a compulsory medical examination, by force if necessary, where the destination country or the carrier requires it for their removal. The Belgian Constitutional Court asks whether the Return Directive and the Charter allow that.
A customer of Trezor, the hardware wallet maker, signed up for its newsletter and now complains that his data were processed on servers in the United States. The Austrian Supreme Court asks whether handing data to a processor needs its own legal basis under the GDPR, and whether consent to a newsletter is informed if the subscriber was not told that a processor outside the EU would send it.
In June the Commission ordered Meta, by way of interim measures, to give rival general-purpose AI assistants free access to the WhatsApp Business API for three years. Meta asks the General Court to annul the decision on eight pleas, from market definition to the requirement that access be free.
Nine Hungarian villages that received an EU co-financed grant face a claim arising from an irregularity: they did not take the required measures against conflicts of interest when awarding the contract, although the contract itself broke no procurement rule. The Pécs Regional Court asks when the four-year limitation period starts, and when a 2014-2020 project counts as a 'multiannual programme' that is 'definitively terminated'.
Hungarian law requires a court that misses a statutory deadline for acting to pay financial compensation. The Szeged Regional Court, hearing a case against the immigration authorities and the Constitution Protection Office, asks whether that is compatible with the effectiveness of EU law and with the independence of the courts that apply it.
Hungary obliges retailers of household goods with a turnover above HUF 1 billion to cap their margins on certain products at their earlier average, and at most 15%, and to keep those products in stock. Rossmann was fined. The Kúria asks whether the Services Directive and freedom of establishment allow such a scheme, and whether a refunded fine must carry interest.
France has banned nicotine pouches outright, from sale and use to manufacture and export. The Conseil d'État upheld the ban on selling and using them, but asks the Court of Justice whether France may also forbid producing, transporting and exporting pouches meant only for sale in other Member States.
Since March 2025 Italian law treats people born abroad with another nationality as never having acquired Italian citizenship by descent, unless they meet narrow conditions. The Corte costituzionale considers that compatible with EU law, but has asked the Court of Justice anyway: do Article 9 TEU and Article 20 TFEU preclude the rule?
The second Hungarian reference against Google on chatbots and the press publishers' right goes further than the first: it asks about summaries rather than copied passages, about grounding on current articles, and whether a publisher that did not opt out has consented. It arrives on the day Advocate General Szpunar proposed that the Court leave training aside in Like Company.
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.