Abstract

Taking as its starting point a judicial event that took place in Portugal, the work sets out to reflect on various questions of a general nature on prejudicial interpretive deferment as provided under Art. 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and on the idea of interpretation that it prefigures. After having reconstructed the case in point and having provided a concise account of the comments given rise to in Portuguese scholarly circles, in particular the work deals with the obligation of deferral charged to the jurisdictions of last resort by the aforesaid provision and the consequences of a compensatory nature provided by the European system in the event of infringement of such obligation. The survey of the discipline on the point, enriched with specifications provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union, offer the cue for some reasoning of a general nature on the margins of independence left to the judges of the Member States of the European Union in the performance of their hermeneutic activity.