| Abstract [eng] |
This Master’s thesis looks at how judicial dialogue between national courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union works in practice. The study focuses on selected “dialogue episodes” where national courts use the preliminary reference procedure and later respond to the Court of Justice in their own decisions. The aim of the thesis is to explain this interaction in a clear and practical way and to show that it can take cooperative, negotiated, or conflictual forms. The thesis uses a qualitative doctrinal method and is based on case studies. First, it explains the legal framework of the preliminary reference procedure and the main doctrines that shape the role of national courts. Second, it presents the main theoretical approaches to judicial dialogue and three broader views of the EU legal order: integration through primacy, constitutional pluralism and resistance. Third, it applies a working analytical framework to selected case studies and shorter examples from different Member States. The thesis shows that national courts use preliminary references selectively, especially in constitutional and politically sensitive cases. In cooperative and negotiated episodes, courts are often willing to adapt domestic law and, in some cases, even reinterpret constitutional standards when EU law is seen as compatible with domestic values. In conflictual episodes, courts rely on tools such as ultra vires review, constitutional identity and interpretive limits in order to resist the effects of certain judgments. Overall, the thesis concludes that judicial dialogue is an important but ambivalent mechanism in the EU legal order, because it can both support and limit integration. |
