On 19 February 2024, the High Administrative Court of Croatia held a seminar on the topic “Mechanisms of counteracting conflicting rulings from different domestic courts, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights” in Zagreb, Croatia. A primary goal identified during the Finnish-Swedish ACA presidency (2023 to 2025) is the vertical communication between a country’s highest court jurisdictions as well as the dialogue between the highest courts in the country with supranational European courts, whose decisions have a significant effect on judicial practice as well as influencing the legislation of each individual state. Of course, we are primarily referring to the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights as the most important European supranational courts. Therefore, the seminar has selected the topic of addressing mechanisms for suppressing the rendering of inconsistent judgments between different national courts, as well as mechanisms for suppressing the rendering of inconsistent judgments between the national courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. As ACA-Europe brings together the highest state courts competent in resolving administrative disputes, the focal point of this seminar was to further the understanding of the mechanisms currently in place for suppressing inconsistent rulings in the context of conducting administrative disputes. Today, judicial practice as a source of law is indisputably important. Therefore, dedicating the seminar in Zagreb to this topic is not surprising. Judicial practice provides clarification on how legal provisions should be interpreted and practically applied, pointing out appropriate approaches to legal interpretation and methods of interpretation that must be applied as relevant in a specific case. In essence, it preserves the principle of legality as a fundamental legal principle, as well as achieving predictability in legal decision-making, which is considered one of the most important elements of the rules of law. Prior to initiating any legal proceedings, the parties at hand should be able to conclude, by referring to existing court practice, which way the court will interpret the legal rules and practices relevant to the resolution of their particular case and, based upon preceding legal treatment, assess their prospects in a potential dispute. Court practice also serves as an important indicator of trends within society. It can, and should, point out to the legislator new values that should be normatively protected, as well as identifying areas of regulatory law which are insufficiently standardised or areas that deserve a different normative approach. Therefore, the monitoring and study of judicial practice in each state is an extremely important task which the state should approach systematically in order to ensure uniformity in judicial practice - not only vertically on a judicial level, but also horizontally between different courts - as well as between national and supra-national courts, indicating the revival of the principle of legality and improving the quality of the legal system as a whole. Each country focuses upon monitoring and studying the judicial practice of the highest courts. The judgments handed down by these courts are of a special significance, partially due to the formal obligation in appeal procedures and, possibly, in procedures for extraordinary legal remedies, but also due to the authoritative strength of their adopters. The practice of the lower courts in the country should be harmonised with the judicial practice of the higher courts in order to contribute to the realisation of the previously mentioned principles of legality and predictability in rules of law. A special problem is the mutual deviation of the jurisprudence of the highest courts in the country (horizontally), as well as the deviation of the jurisprudence of the highest courts from the jurisprudence of the supranational courts (vertically), directly affecting the Member State. Therefore, it is useful to investigate which mechanisms are available to individual European states in order to avoid the adoption of inconsistent judgments by national courts, especially the highest courts in the state, as well as avoiding the adoption of inconsistent judgments by the highest courts in the country with the jurisprudence of supra-national courts. The report specifically analyses inconsistent judicial practices on a national level in comparison with the judicial practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights as the two most important supranational courts in Europe. The report is divided into four thematic units. In the first section, it is considered how the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union is monitored and studied at the highest courts competent to resolve administrative disputes, i.e., whether special services or departments are summarily assigned the task of monitoring and studying jurisprudence established at the highest courts, the composition of these services and departments and the resulting effect of the positions taken in such organisational units. Special attention is allocated to appealing a final court decision made by a national court which conflicts with a position issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union, as generally expressed in a later decision of this Court, based upon a request to revisit the previous issue. Various procedural issues are addressed that arise in connection with the possibility of contesting such a final court verdict. Finally, it examines the number of such cases in each member state over the past 10 years, as well as the effects of the judicial crackdown by the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding changes in its national legislation. The second part of the report further examines how judicial practice is followed in the member states, but with the emphasis on the judicial practice of the European Court of Human Rights. The question arises as to whether this practice is followed and studied within specially organised units at the highest courts competent to resolve administrative disputes, or whether this is the task of each individual judge. It considers the composition of such services and departments, where they are organised and the resulting effects of their stance. This unit also takes into consideration the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and its position within the national legal system; whether its rulings are applied directly or if they require implementation. An attempt is being made to determine whether the supervision of proper application of this Convention in administrative disputes is currently entrusted to a special body and what subsequent consequences currently exist for violating provisions of this Convention as applied at the state level. First of all, attention is paid to the appellate court’s rights in the appeal procedure to establish a violation of the European Convention and its authority to amend or invalidate the lower court’s judgment. The parties’ procedural possibilities are also considered when the European Court of Human Rights determines that there has been a violation of Convention provisions in a particular case. Here, too, special attention has been allocated to the possibility of contesting a final court decision made by a national court, which is contrary to the position of the European Court of Human Rights as later expressed by decision of this Court, which also relates to third parties whose rights have been violated in the same way. Finally, there is also the question as to the number of cases in which, over the past 10 years, a request was made to change or invalidate a final court judgment that was passed contrary to the expressed position of the European Court of Human Rights. However, it is still being considered which freedoms and rights guaranteed by the European Convention are most often violated in the state, whether there is a special state body that is responsible for the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the national state, and whether there has been a change in the legislation in a particular state under the influence of the court’s decision. Finally, it considers which countries have ratified Protocol no. 16 in addition to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which prescribes the provision of advisory opinions by the European Court of Human Rights. An attempt is made to assess the current position insofar as the effectiveness of such opinions in individual countries as well as to analyse the practical experiences that countries associated with the application of this institute. In the third part, the report examines the relationship between the high court competent for the resolution of administrative disputes and the Constitutional Court and as a special institution in charge of constitutionality. Here, first of all, it determines which countries have specially designated and organised a Constitutional Court, how it operates and the jurisdictions of such a court. In particular, the powers of the highest courts competent to resolve administrative disputes are analysed in cases where they assess that some provision of a law or other regulation is contrary to the precepts of the constitution or the law. In this unit, the powers of individuals, who were parties to an administrative dispute in which a legal provision or a provision contained another regulation which was applied and later invalidated by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional or illegal, and the powers of third parties whose rights were also violated by the same provision of the law or regulation, which was subsequently invalidated by the Constitutional Court. Finally, in the fourth and final unit, the relationship between the high court competent for resolving administrative disputes and the second highest judicial jurisdiction in the country - the Supreme Court - is analysed. First, it determines whether there is a dual court system in place in the Member State, i.e., a system with two high court jurisdictions. The competences of each of these jurisdictions are discussed, and the mechanisms in place to prevent the issuance of inconsistent judgments from these two jurisdictions are postulated. At the same time, the question is posed whether such conflicts can be prevented. The General report was compiled on the basis of a completed questionnaire containing 37 questions. Completed and timely submitted national reports from 28 European countries were taken into account. It contains the general attitudes taken from the answers to the questions of each country analysed. It does not provide complete and detailed information on the answers to each question, but rather a concise overview of the answers given and the views expressed, pointing out the similarities and differences between individual European countries regarding regulation of the issues that were featured at the seminar in Zagreb. Countries mentioned in certain parts of the report, along with certain legal institutes and solutions, are only listed as examples, and not in the form of precise statistics. |