Published on 21 July 2025
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 36945/22
Friedrich Holger BASTIAN
against Germany
lodged on 21 July 2022
communicated on 4 July 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns criminal proceedings in which the court of last instance abstained from referring a question to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling.
The applicant, a winemaker, was convicted for intentional unlawful sweetening of wine and ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 euros (EUR).
In his appeal on points of law he requested the Court of Appeal to refer to the CJEU the question whether the term “wine” in the relevant European Union law provisions included “new wine still in fermentation”, the latter to which he had added sucrose.
On 1 June 2021 the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal as manifestly ill‑founded, holding without further reasoning that an examination of the grounds of appeal invoked by the applicant had shown no errors in law. The court dismissed as unfounded the applicant’s subsequent complaint for a violation of the right to be heard, noting that it had considered his submissions but that it was not obliged to respond to all his arguments or to give further reasons for rejecting an appeal.
On 26 January 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court declined to admit the applicant’s constitutional complaint for adjudication, without giving reasons.
The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that the domestic courts and, most notably the Court of Appeal, did not refer the above-mentioned question to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Did the refusal of the Court of Appeal to grant the applicant’s request for a referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) render the proceedings unfair in violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see Ullens de Schooten and Rezabek v. Belgium, nos. 3989/07 and 38353/07, §§ 54-62, 20 September 2011)?
In particular, did the Court of Appeal indicate the reasons why the question for referral was irrelevant, that the European Union law provision in question had already been interpreted by the CJEU, or that the correct application of Community law was so obvious as to leave no scope for any reasonable doubt (see Sanofi Pasteur v. France, no. 25137/16, §§ 68-71, 13 February 2020)?
If not, do the overall circumstances in which the Court of Appeal’s decision was taken allow the conclusion that the Court of Appeal complied with the obligation for domestic courts under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention to provide reasons for their judgments and decisions (ibid.)?