Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Preliminary rulings – Admissibility – Limits

(Art. 234 EC)

2. Community law – Legal proceedings – National procedural rules

(Council Directive 85/511, as amended by Directive 90/423, Arts 11 and 13)

Summary

1. Questions on the interpretation of Community law referred by a national court in the factual and legislative context which that court is responsible for defining and the accuracy of which is not a matter for the Court to determine, enjoy a presumption of relevance. The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law that is sought bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it. That presumption of relevance cannot be rebutted by the simple fact that one of the parties to the main proceedings contests certain facts, the accuracy of which is not a matter for the Court to determine and on which the delimitation of the subject-matter of those proceedings depends.

(see paras 22-23)

2. Community law does not require the national court, in legal proceedings concerning the legality of an administrative measure having regard to pleas alleging infringement of Articles 11 and 13 of Directive 85/511 introducing Community measures for the control of foot-and-mouth disease, as amended by Directive 90/423, to raise of its own motion an issue as to whether the provisions of Community legislation have been infringed, since neither the principle of equivalence nor the principle of effectiveness require it to do so.

As regards the principle of equivalence, those provisions of the directive govern neither the conditions in which procedures relating to the control of foot‑and‑mouth disease may be initiated nor the authorities which have the power, within their area of responsibility, to determine the extent of the rights and obligations of individuals, with the result that they cannot be regarded as being equivalent to national rules of public policy, which lie at the very basis of the national procedures, since they define the conditions in which those procedures may be initiated and the authorities which have the power, within the framework of those provisions, to determine the extent of the rights and obligations of individuals. Moreover, the principle of effectiveness does not preclude a national provision which prevents national courts from raising of their own motion an issue as to whether the provisions of Community law have been infringed, where examination of that issue would oblige them to abandon the passive role assigned to them by going beyond the ambit of the dispute defined by the parties themselves and relying on facts and circumstances other than those on which the party with an interest in application of those provisions has based his claim. In such proceedings, the principle of effectiveness does not impose a duty on national courts to raise an issue based on a Community provision of their own motion, irrespective of the importance of that provision to the Community legal order, where the parties are given a genuine opportunity to raise a plea based on Community law before a national court.

(see paras 29-31, 36, 41-42, operative part)