Trust Issues? Article 99 RoP Reasoned Orders in the Preliminary Reference Procedure

This article explores reasoned orders issued by the Court of Justice (the Court) to reply to preliminary references of the national courts in the procedure for a preliminary ruling of Article 267 TFEU. Reasoned orders allow the Court to reply in a swift manner to preliminary references that raise no doubts. This article looks at the use of reasoned orders as proxies of trust and, thus, contributes to the research on trust in a multilevel judicial system. To this end, it analyses all Article 99 orders issued by the Court of Justice during two full years (2020 and 2021). The article uses this qualitative analysis to reflect on the Court’s trust on its national counterparts, and of the latter in the Court, and provide suggestions on how to use these orders to enhance reciprocal trust.