Preliminary ruling

The paper develops brief critical reflections on the dialogue between national and supranational courts, with particular reference to the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, in light of recent procedural reforms.

The paper aims to analyze the judgment C-367/19 with which the Court of Justice expressed itself on the age-old problem that afflicts the public procurement system: the tenders at price of € 0 and the legal basis for their exclusion. The case dealt with by the Court concerns the preliminary ruling proposed by the National Commission for the review of the procedures for the award of public contracts as to whether it was possible to base the provision for the exclusion of a bid at price of € 0 on Article 2, par. 1, § 5, of Directive 2014/24 / EU.

On 9th December 2020, the Portuguese Constitutional Court (‘PCC’) referred its first question for preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’). In a case allegedly entailing the need to balance different Treaty rules such as anti-discriminatory EU tax law (Article 110 TFEU) and environmental protection (Article 191 TFEU), the PCC acknowledged its nature as a court against whose decisions there is no judicial remedy under national law and referred the matter to the CJEU. This ruling shall be read in combination with the judgment in Case no. 422/2020 of 15th July 2020, where the PCC recognized the CJEU’s exclusive competence to interpret and assess the validity of EU law, consequently declaring its lack of jurisdiction to do so. After summarizing the main facts of the case, this article aims at analysing its consequences for the relationship between the PCC and the CJEU.

In the recent judgment of June 2020 in case C-378/19 (Prezident Slovenskej republiky), the Court is once again called upon to rule on the definition of ‘independencÈ regarding regulatory Authorities. In particular, it has to give an answer to the question on whether it can be considered as independent an Authority which is appointed by the Government and to which procedures are allowed to take part representatives of the ministries. Therefore, the Court has to assess whether the Slovak legislation implementing Directive 2009/72/EC, relating to the internal energy market can be considered legitimate, with particular regard to art. 35 of the same Directive, which precisely governs the designation and independence of the regulatory Authority. The Court concludes that, in accordance with the principle of institutional autonomy, which, inter alia, allows Member States to decide on their internal administrative organisation, the national legislation in question cannot be considered per se illegitimate, provided that all the requirements are met indicated by the Directive in order to ensure the independence of the Authority. In other words, governmental appointment and ministerial participation in the price-fixing procedures do not affect ex se the independence of the regulator. In any case, the criteria in accordance to which this appointment is carried out must be as such as not to compromise the objective of the integration of the specific market, precisely that of guaranteeing the independence of the regulator. This decision, despite being in line with the previous case-law (even if the Court does not give a definite answer left to the national judge) which leaves Member States wide margins of choice in relation to the organisation and powers of the independent Authorities, provided that minimum requirements are met aimed at guaranteeing the achievement of the objectives of the legislation considered, it gives us the opportunity to dwell on the issue of institutional autonomy in the specific sector of the independent Authorities and make some final considerations.