Quasi-legal bodies of the member states of the EU as parties to a preclusive plea to the EU Court of justice: the concept and qualification criteria

The article deals with the status of quasi-legal bodies of the member states of the EU as parties to a preclusive plea to the EU Court of Justice, and the developed by the EU Court’s case-law the criteria for the qualification of the party to the preclusive plea as a national court. The topicality of the research question is due to the fact that both at the level of EU law and the national law of the member states of the EU there is no common understanding of the party to a preclusive plea under clause 267 of Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Methods: the author has used the general scientific research methods such as comparison, analysis, synthesis, and the specific scientific research methods such as technical and legal and formal legal methods. Results: the author analyses the EU Court’s case law in terms of the concept of «a party to a preclusive plea», determines the stages and the criteria for their legitimacy, concludes on the separateness of the concept of «court» in the European law. Conclusions: the author has found out the criteria for determining quasi-legal bodies of the EU member state, allowing it to make a preclusive plea, which are differentiated by the EU Court of Justice into the main ones (the legitimacy of the parties and their powers, the nature of their activities, the compulsory nature of their jurisdiction, the competitiveness of the procedure) and the additional ones (the party’s application of the norms of law, the settlement of a dispute on the merits as one of the tasks, the lack of a higher administrative authority, the independence in decision-making), and pinpointed the problem of lack of the concept of «party to a preclusive plea» enshrined in legislation.