Environmental Law Preliminary References Submitted by Czech and Slovak Courts: How Does the Story End?

Preliminary ruling mechanism is a well-known institute for EU lawyers. However, while the CJEU and its rulings are well-known, that cannot be said about the follow-up work of national courts. After the CJEU issues its decision, the case returns to the national level and its destiny remains unknown - not only to the EU-wide audience, but often even to lawyers and scholars from the same jurisdiction. Sanja Bogojevic has attempted to change this: she analysed all the "follow-up rulings" in cases submitted to the CJEU by Swedish courts in the area of environmental law. This challenge was later accepted also by Lorenzo Squintani, Dionne Annink, Sjoerd Kalisvaart, and Jon Rakipi, thanks to whom we have had a chance to also learn about the follow-up rulings by British, Dutch, Belgian, and Italian courts after they received an answer from the CJEU on their environment-related questions. Together with my team (of 5 junior scholars) we have been analysing cases submitted to the CJEU by Czech and Slovak courts. We have now gathered all relevant data and read all the references, answers, and follow-up rulings. This presentation will narrow down our research to cases in the area of environmental law and will provide an overview of Czech and Slovak contribution to the European judicial dialogue in this area of law. This way, this presentation (and later article) will continue in the line of articles introduced above.