30Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the fact that the parties to the main proceedings did not raise a point of European Union law before the referring court does not preclude the latter from bringing the matter before the Court of Justice. In providing that a request for a preliminary ruling may be submitted to the Court where ‘a question is raised before any court or tribunal of a Member State’, the second and third paragraphs of Article 267 TFEU are not intended to restrict this procedure exclusively to cases where one or other of the parties to the main proceedings has taken the initiative of raising a point concerning the interpretation or the validity of European Union law, but also extend to cases where a question of this kind is raised by the court or tribunal itself, which considers that a decision thereon by the Court of Justice is ‘necessary to enable it to give judgment’ (Case 126/80 Salonia [1981] ECR 1563, paragraph 7, and Case C-251/11 Huet [2012] ECR, paragraph 23).
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