Revista Temas de Derecho Constitucional

324 Revista Temas de Derecho Constitucional therefore, hypothetical. Nonetheless, the Commission did acknowledge at a later stage (during the hearing) that there was a dispute in the main proceedings. The Court, endorsing the case law of Gauweiler and American Express reminded that the assessment of the need to request a preliminary ruling corresponds to the referring national court. 24 In this regard, the Court stated “it is solely for the court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subse- quent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case, both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted concern the interpretation of a rule of EU law, the Court is in principle bound to give a ruling”. 25 The Court further confirmed that, as a rule, questions relating to EU law enjoy a pre- sumption of relevance. The exception consists of a “ruling by a national court onlywhere it is quite obvious that the interpretation of EU law that is sought bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it”. 26 4.2. The Court’s standpoint on the admissibility of the request The Court circumscribe the goal of the decision to “an action seeking a declarator spec- ifying whether the notification of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Union, given under Article 50 TEU, may be unilaterally revoked before the expiry of the two-year period laid down in that article, having the effect that, if the noti- ficationmade by the UK were revoked, that the Member State in question would remain in the European Union”. 27 Hence, the reference for a preliminary ruling thus enables opinions to be delivered on questions that are deemed necessary for the effective res- olution of a dispute. 28 The referring court stated the need for the ECJ to rule on that question of law, which constitutes “a genuine and live issue, of considerable practical importance, and which 24 See Judgments of 16 June 2015, Gauweiler and Others, C 62/14, EU:C:2015:400, paragraph 24, and of 7 February 2018, American Express, C 304/16, EU:C:2018:66, paragraph 31. In Gauweiler, the request for a preliminary ruling concerns the validity of the decisions of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) of 6 September 2012 on a number of technical features regarding the Eurosystem’s outright monetary transactions in secondary sovereign bond markets (‘the OMT decisions’) and the interpretation of Articles 119 TFEU, 123 TFEU and 127 TFEU and of Articles 17 to 24 of Protocol (No 4) on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (OJ 2012, C 326, p. 230; ‘the Protocol on the ESCB and the ECB’). Conversely, in American Express, Judgment of The Court (First Chamber), the reference for a preliminary ruling concerned the Regulation (EU) 2015/751 on interchange fees for card- based payment transactions. 25 Judgment, para 26. 26 Judgment, para 27. 27 Judgment, para 28. The Court also cited the following case law: judgment of 28 March 2017, Rosneft, C 72/15, EU:C:2017:236, paragraph 194 and the case-law cited; see, also, to that effect, judgments of 16 December 1981, Foglia, 244/80, EU:C:1981:302, paragraph 18, and of 12 June 2008, Gourmet Classic, C 458/06, EU:C:2008:338, paragraph 26. 28 Ibid.