The Reference for a Preliminary Ruling and the Right to a Statutory Judge - Is the Czech Justice more European than the European Union Again?
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | The Role and Place of Law in a Society Based on Knowledge |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Law sciences |
| Keywords | primacy of the EU law; reference for a preliminary ruling; Czech Constitutional Court |
| Description | The article analysis 2 decisions of the Czech Constitutional Court (CCC) related to the EU. The 1st decision concerns the constitutionality of the Lisbon Treaty and the second one is about the duty to make a reference for a preliminary ruling. The 1st decision was decided against the settled case law of the ECJ. The challenged parts of the Lisbon Treaty were found compatible with the Czech constitution; however the CCC held that it might not be bound by the principle of primacy of EU law in future. Contrary to this eurosceptic decision in the second judgment the CCC decided that the Czech Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) violated the fundamental right of the complainant to a statutory judge guaranteed by the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights. The breach was caused by the fact that the SAC did not, being the court of last instance, referred to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling. In these two decisions the Czech justice has proved again, that its approach to the EC law is unpredictable |