Acte clair

Acte clair is a doctrine of EU law, which states that if a judgment or rule of law is clear enough, then a member state has no duty to refer a question for preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The acte clair doctrine has its roots in the Cilfit judgement delivered in 1982, which developed what was called 'Cilfit criteria'. Though at the beginning it was believed that the Court of Justice of the European Union would be very strict as to its application, recent scholarly papers claim that Cilfit criteria, although often quoted in judgments and doctrine, have been applied neither consistently nor truly rigidly by the Court. Instead, a more flexible approach to acte clair requirements is taking shape.