Legal summary

December 2022

Rutar and Rutar Marketing d.o.o. v. Slovenia - 21164/20

Judgment 15.12.2022 [Section I]

Article 6

Administrative proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Domestic court’s failure to provide reasons for refusal to accede to applicant’s request to seek a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union: violation

Facts – The applicants were a company and its marketing director. In minor offence proceedings, the Market Inspectorate imposed fines on them on account of a misleading commercial practice regarding advertised price advantage. The applicants lodged a request for judicial protection. The domestic court dismissed the case, without addressing the applicants’ request for a preliminary ruling from the CJEU. A subsequent constitutional complaint by the applicants was also dismissed.

Law – Article 6 § 1:

The applicants had requested that the domestic court seek a preliminary ruling from the CJEU on the question of whether the commercial practice of comparing promotional prices with the prices recommended by suppliers or producers was in accordance with the provisions of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. The request had been clearly formulated and supported by argument. It had related to at least one of the grounds on which the minor offence had been based. However, the reasons given in the judgment at issue had left open the possibility that this request had been simply disregarded.

The Court noted the domestic court’s finding that the applicants had not been in a position to dispute the facts, because they had failed to do so in the proceedings before the Market Inspectorate. However, this was no basis for the conclusion that that fact in itself necessarily rendered the applicants’ legal arguments, including those related to their request to seek a preliminary ruling from the CJEU, irrelevant or redundant. In this connection, the right to a reasoned decision served the general rule enshrined in the Convention which protected the individual from arbitrariness by demonstrating to the parties that they had been heard and obliged the courts to base their decision on objective reasons.

Lastly, the Government had not argued that a complaint before the Constitutional Court should be regarded as the judicial remedy under national law for the purposes of Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It would thus follow that the domestic court had been under a duty to give reasons for its refusal to request a preliminary ruling in the light of the exceptions provided for by the case-law of the CJEU. Neither the court of first instance nor the Constitutional Court had addressed the applicants’ request to seek a preliminary ruling, nor any other of their legal arguments.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: no claim made.

(See also Baydar v. the Netherlands , 55385/14, 24 April 2018, Legal Summary ; Sanofi Pasteur v. France , 25137/16, 13 February 2020, Legal Summary )

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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