4.4.2016

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 118/7

(Case C-685/15)

(2016/C 118/08)

Language of the case: German

Referring court

Parties to the main proceedings

Applicants: Online Games Handels GmbH, Frank Breuer, Nicole Enter, Astrid Walden

Defendant authority: Landespolizeidirektion Oberösterreich

Question referred

Is Article 56 TFEU or Article 49 et seq. TFEU, in the light of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights read in conjunction with Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to be interpreted, having regard to the judicial objectivity and impartiality required by the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (in particular with regard to its judgment of 18 May 2010, Application No 64962/01, paragraph 54), as precluding, in the light of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (in particular its judgment of 30 April 2014, C-390/12, (1) a national rule according to which, in the case of administrative offence proceedings, it is not for the State prosecution services (or other State prosecution bodies) in their function of representing the prosecution but rather for the court called upon to rule on the legality of the criminal measure against which an action has been brought, of its own motion and independently of the conduct of the parties to the proceedings, (in one and the same person/function) to state and delimit wholly independently the evidence justifying the criminal law protection of the quasi-monopoly regulation of the national gambling market and then autonomously to investigate and evaluate it?

ECLI:EU:C:2014:281 Pfleger and Others.

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(*1) Language of the case: German.