CYIL vol. 8 (2017)

VÁCLAV STEHLÍK CYIL 8 ȍ2017Ȏ raised is to be resolved . 4 The CJEU added conditions under which the national court may reach this conclusion: a) when assessing clarity of the EU law provision, the national court must be convinced that the question is equally obvious also to the courts of other Member States and the Court of Justice; b) the existence of such a possibility must be assessed on the basis of the characteristic features of EU law, in particular: • an authentic interpretation of the EU law requires the comparison of different language versions which are equally authentic; • even in case of a full equivalence of various language versions, terminology of the EU law is autonomous and the legal concepts may not necessarily have the same meaning as in the laws of the individual Member States; • every provision of the EU law must be placed in its context with other provisions of the EU law as a whole; • it is necessary to respect the objectives of the EU law and the current state of development as of the date when the contested provision is to be applied. 5 Correspondingly, the acte éclairé doctrine means that the issue has already been clarified by the CJEU, and therefore, the courts of last instance need not initiate the procedure. The interpretation provided in one preliminary ruling shall also be applied to other cases held by other courts in the Member States. 6 The aim of this paper is to analyse 7 the application of both doctrines by the Czech supreme courts, namely the Supreme Administrative Court (further referred as SAC) which is in charge of the administrative agenda and the Supreme Court (further referred as SC) which deals with civil and criminal law cases. Both courts are the courts of last instance for the purposes of Art. 267 TFEU. The primary objective of the analysis will be the following issues: • whether both courts accepted the limits contained in CJEU case-law concerning the obligation to initiate preliminary ruling, 2.1 Acceptance of CILFIT criteria The SAC referred to the acte clair doctrine in several areas. The most significant case-law, as far as the volume of disputes is concerned, developed in the area of EU environmental law, mainly the implementation of the Aarhus Convention. 8 4 Comp. ibid., point 16. 5 Comp. ibid., points 17-20. 6 Still, national courts may raise a question again in the same or similar issue and press the CJEU to change its case-law. 7 Former version of this analysis was published in STEHLÍK, V. et al.: Právo Evropské unie před českými soudy , Praha: Leges 2014. 8 2005/370/EC: Council Decision of 17 February 2005 on the conclusion, on behalf of the European Community, • how these conditions formulated in the CILFIT case are fulfilled and • a comparison of the practice of both courts and an evaluation thereof. 2. Supreme Administrative Court

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