The Court of Justice of the EU ruled, on 17 May in case C-176/22, that a request for a preliminary ruling does not prevent the referring court from continuing the main proceedings in part. According to the Court, the referring court may carry out procedural steps that it considers necessary, such as the collection of evidence, and which do not prevent it from complying with the subsequent response of the Court.
A Bulgarian investigator accused of corruption challenged this legal classification of corruption given by the prosecution. The Bulgarian court dealing with the charges questioned its power to reclassify the offence at issue without informing the person prosecuted in advance. It therefore submitted a request for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice, which is still pending before the Court. The Bulgarian court then asked whether it should continue the proceedings in its entirety until the Court’s response, or whether it can continue to examine the case pending the Court’s reply. It submitted a second request for a preliminary ruling to the Court to clarify this issue.
For the Court, EU law does not preclude a national court which has made a request for a preliminary ruling to the Court from continuing the main proceedings only with regard to the aspects of those proceedings that are likely to be affected by the Court’s response to that request.
It considers that the preservation of the effectiveness of that procedure is not made impossible in practice or excessively difficult by a national rule which makes it possible, between the date on which a request for a preliminary ruling is made to the Court and that of the Court’s answer, to continue the main proceedings in order to carry out procedural steps.
To see the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/6yf (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)