Translation Issues in Preliminary References: Cases of Czech Supreme Court

Abstract

The paper address preliminary references that the Czech Supreme Court, as the Apex Court, submitted to the CJEU when was unsure of the correct interpretation. In total, the Supreme Court filed 4 such preliminary references (out of 18) in the past 20 years since Czechia acceded to the European Union.The analysis shows that the ambiguity was most often caused by an inadequate translation. At the same time, it turned out that the Supreme Court used a total of six other different language versions – English, French, Polish, Slovak, German and Croatian – for comparison across four preliminary references. It follows that for comparison in preliminary references, at least two, but overall, maximally six other language versions were used.