References for a Preliminary Ruling
to the European Union Court of Justice:
The Substantive Criteria of Admissibility
The preliminary ruling procedure as stipulated by Article 276 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union had a significant impact on the de-ve lop ment of EU law and became a collaborative tool as part of the dialogue bet-ween supranational and national judges.The mechanism of preliminary ruling enables to ensure a uniform interpretation and application of the provisions of EU law with all member states and consti tutes an instrumental element for preserving the uniformity of the European legal system.When developing the mechanism of preliminary ruling at EU level one consi-dered constitutional & legal traditions of member states, however, for long periods, the EU was perceived as "exotic" one and its impact on the national law was often underesti mated. Initially there were no any clear concepts how the mechanism of preliminary ruling would work. The EU court encouraged national judges of member states to use this mechanism; however, gradually it started introducing certain acceptability criteria in respect of such requests.The practice of the EU Court was summarized in the updated Rules of Procedure of 25 September 2012. During the period from 2014 to 2018, the number of cases sub mitted for preliminary ruling procedure was increasingly growing. Consequently, natio nal courts had started using this procedure relatively intensively and the con so-li dation of acceptability criteria created no serious problems for them.The imposition by the EU Court of minimal requirements towards the substance of requests does not reduce their number, since the acknowledgement of a re quest as inadmissible does not prevent a national court from sending a repeated re quest. However, it contributes to the improvement of quality and efficiency of the pre li mi-nary ruling procedure. The establishment of the respective requirements is necessary to ensure that the EU Court could provide national courts with an interpretation of EU law useful for resolution of a specific dispute and ensure constructiveness of the dialogue.