The Interaction Between the European Court of Justice and National Courts in Preliminary Ruling Proceedings: Some Institutional and Procedural Observations

Abstract

In view of the considerable diversity of international courts and other dispute settlement bodies,1 generalizations should be made with great care. Each judicial system has its own institutional and procedural setting and the substantive applicable rules often present their own specificities. This, of course, is not to deny that there may be common threads which call for at least partly similar solutions, such as the question of the independence and impartiality of judges and the rules of evidence.2 This article will deal with the judicial system of the European Union (EU) and more specifically, the two-layered system consisting of the joint involvement of the national courts of the EU Member States and the European Court of Justice (ECJ)3 in a mechanism known as the preliminary ruling procedure. The aim is to elucidate the interaction between national courts and the ECJ in dealing with preliminary rulings and to highlight some institutional and procedural challenges stemming from the parallel existence of two players, the national court and the ECJ, which are based on sets of rules of different origin. The national legal orders not only preI.