This article examines how private parties may use the preliminary reference
procedure in Article 267 TFEU to attain judicial coherence. Even though, in
principle, the preliminary reference procedure is not a remedy available to private
parties, in practice such parties have been able to draw on the procedure in
order to further their own interests. To analyse this, the article first considers the
preliminary rulings’ erga omnes effect. Thereupon follows an examination of how
a private party may go about actually using the preliminary reference procedure.
This is followed by an account of how a private party may seek to influence the
actual formulation of the national court’s preliminary questions. Next, the article
considers a private party’s possibilities of influencing the preliminary reference
procedure before the Court of Justice of the European Union as well as the fact
that since the preliminary reference procedure is not conceived as an inter partes
remedy it does not provide for the usual ‘right of defence components’. Finally, a
modest proposal for improving the procedure is presented.