INTRODUCTION

GENERAL OVERVIEW

EU law is only able to achieve its goals if the Member States ensure its effective application at a national level. Considering how EU legal instruments and norms are constructed, it is obvious that they very often require judicial interpretation that allows them to be properly understood and applied at a national level. This is particularly important for the open, general norms, as well as for the lacunas that require filling in at an national level. Since the effectiveness of EU law is measured in its operation in practice, it is critical to ensure that the CJEU'S case law is applied at a national level. In order to reach this point, the CJEU'S case law must become part of the national legal reality. National courts are the guardians of this process. They hold very powerful tools that allow them to control market practice as well as the implementation of EU law. National courts often also play a correctional function when confronted with the inaccurate transposition of EU rules. Their function as guardians is an active one: in order to build a European legal sphere, national courts of all instances must engage in meaningful dialogue with the CJEU. While effective cooperation between the national and the European judiciary is indispensable for implementing EU law, many characteristics of EU law make this process rather challenging.

THE FOCUS OF THE CHAPTER

Bearing in mind the importance of national courts for ensuring the proper functioning of EU law, the primary focus of this chapter is the hurdles (and much less so the potential) when it comes to the integration of the CJEU'S jurisprudence into national judicial practice. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first presents the external perspective, i.e. the construction of the EU judicial system in which national courts function, focusing on the characteristics that impede fruitful dialogue between the European and national judiciary. These include the structure and specific features of EU law, the way the CJEU operates and the effects it has on the national courts. The second part presents an example of a national perspective in the form of a case study that deals with the application of the Unfair Contract Terms Directive to consumer loans denominated or indexed in Swiss francs in the Polish legal system.