Clean Car Autoservice GmbH v Stadt Wien and Republik Österreich.
Date: 2001-12-06
13 It is settled case-law that, in the context of the cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national courts provided for by Article 234 EC, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted by the national court concern the interpretation of Community law, the Court of Justice is, in principle, bound to give a ruling (see, inter alia, Case C-379/98 PreussenElektra [2001] ECR I-2099, paragraph 38, and Case C-340/99 TNT Traco [2001] ECR I-4109, paragraph 30).
14 Nevertheless, the Court has also stated that, in exceptional circumstances, it can examine the conditions in which the case was referred to it by the national court, in order to assess whether it has jurisdiction (see, to that effect, Case 244/80 Foglia [1981] ECR 3045, paragraph 21). The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred for a preliminary ruling by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law 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 (see, inter alia, PreussenElektra, paragraph 39, and TNT Traco, paragraph 31).
26 As the Court has already held, there is an essential difference between proceedings under Article 177 of the EC Treaty (now Article 234 EC) and contentious proceedings and for that reason the rules on costs laid down for the latter proceedings in Articles 69 to 75 of the Rules of Procedure cannot, without express provision, be extended to the former proceedings. It follows that, in the absence of Community rules, payment of costs and the recoverability of expenses necessarily incurred by the parties to the main proceedings for the purpose of an application for a preliminary ruling are governed by the provisions of national law applicable to the main proceedings (see, in that regard, Case 62/72 Bollmann [1973] ECR 269, paragraphs 5 and 6).
28 However, as the Advocate General observes in point 26 of his Opinion, although in the absence of Community legislation governing the matter it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State to lay down the detailed procedural rules governing court actions for safeguarding rights which individuals derive from Community law, such rules must not be less favourable than those governing similar domestic actions (principle of equivalence) and must not render virtually impossible or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by Community law (principle of effectiveness) (in that regard, see, in particular, Joined Cases C-279/96 to C-281/96 Ansaldo Energia and Others [1998] ECR I-5025, paragraphs 16 and 27, and Case C-326/96 Levez [1998] I-7835, paragraph 18).
31 It is for the national court, which alone has direct knowledge of the procedural rules governing actions in domestic law, to examine whether that is the case (see, in that regard, in particular, Levez, cited above, paragraphs 39, 50 and 53, and Case C-78/98 Preston and Others [2000] ECR I-3201, paragraphs 49 and 56).