 Useful points to bear in mind about references to the CJEU  For a reference to be possible, there must be a question of EU law on which a ruling from the CJEU is necessary to enable the local court to give judgment.  As well as ordinary courts an investigating judge can refer a question; a prosecutor, however, cannot.  The national court is entitled by Article 267 TFEU to make a reference; a rule of national law which prevents this must be set aside.  Courts of last instance infringe Article 6 ECHR if they provide no reasoning for a refusal to refer an EU law question to the CJEU.  Constitutional Courts in some countries (e.g. Germany, Slovenia) also consider the refusal to refer an EU law question to the CJEU an infringement of the constitutional right to the lawful judge.  The availability of an individual right of petition to a constitutional court is not considered a further judicial remedy, so a supreme court is required to make a reference to the CJEU if the question is not acte clair / éclairé.  There is an urgent procedure (‘PPU’) available under Article 267 TFEU, fourth subparagraph and Articles 107-114 of the CJEU Rules of Procedure. This will be applied where the person is in detention and the CJEU’s interpretation of the Directive may impact upon the decision to detain (the precise test is unclear). The national court must request the procedure, setting out the reasons for it. If applied, the process could be shortened to as little as eight-ten weeks, as opposed to a around fifteen months. G. STRATEGIC APPROACHES 1. Work with Fair Trials You are one of thousands of lawyers who will be seeking to use the Directives in practice. This is new for everyone, and we are keen to hear about what is working and what is not, how police and courts are reacting, and what success you are having relying on the ideas and arguments put forward in our Toolkits. We will be sharing examples between jurisdictions and using the information we hear from practitioners to inform our strategies on obtaining rulings from the CJEU.  Let Fair Trials know what results you are having when relying on the Directives and the arguments supplied in our Toolkits, via the contacts on p. 1. 2. Tactics & cooperation Ensuring the Directives have effect could take time and require more than just making arguments before the courts. LEAP members in Spain, for instance, have and France, for example, have led linked initiatives to use Article 7(1) of the Right to Information Directive to get access to the police file prior to questioning, combining litigation with briefings to police and court services, governments and complaints to the European Commission as to non-implementation. 21