The “indirect constitutive role” of the EU national courts and the European methods of legal interpretation

In this paper there is an attempt to systematize and augment the traditional discussion regarding the duty and the derogations within the Article 267 (TFEU). Furthermore, there is an attempt to develop a normative, but legally empirical and “substantive”, approach to examine the national courts’ autonomy based on the study of the CJEU case law inclusive of the questions asked by the national courts. The thesis is that the EU national courts should be more autonomous in deciding European law cases because of their “indirect constitutive role”.1 Autonomous decision-making as it is referred to here also means a self-limitation of the chain of questions asked. The claim is that the autonomy of the national courts would make the application of the EU law more effective.