Within the monitoring activities on most topical and relevant issues submitted to the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Department for European Policies (Parliament Information and EU Court of Justice Service) edits an annual collection of references for preliminary rulings examined jointly with relevant public administrations and the Avvocatura Generale dello Stato (the State legal advisory service).

The collection brings together all the references for preliminary rulings (classified by 'subject-matter' or 'macro-area') on which, following the requests made by relevant public administrations, in-depth investigations were carried out to define the procedural positions most in line with national interests.

The references for preliminary rulings are placed in special thematic sections, and each section contains a brief introduction aimed at providing an overview and facilitating consultation of the list of cases. Each list identifies, through registered identification numbers, the references for preliminary rulings, highlighting Italian references as opposed to foreign references, and indicating the referring country for each of the latter. For each preliminary ruling, a summary of the subject matter and questions raised by the referring jurisdictions is provided, complemented with any EU Court's published judgment via an ad-hoc link to the Curia website.

The collections for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021 here published allow for a comparative analysis of the statistical data graphically represented on the dedicated webpage and in the document.

The lists are updated with judgments published until 15 July 2022.

This activity falls within the in-depth studies carried out on references for preliminary rulings in collaboration with the Office for studies, documentation, and training on administrative justice as from December 2019