The Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg ensures that EU law is interpreted and applied in the same way in all Member States. When national courts are unsure about how to interpret an EU rule, they can ask the Court for a preliminary ruling, and in some cases they are obliged to do so. Recently, the workload of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has increased significantly, which has lengthened the processing times for preliminary rulings. To reduce the workload of the Court of Justice, part of the responsibility for preliminary rulings was transferred to the General Court as of October 2024. The General Court will now have to deal with matters such as VAT, excise duties and customs, while the Court of Justice of the EU will retain cases relating to other areas, as well as the transferred cases concerning fundamental principles, the EU treaties or human rights. This change raises important questions: how are cases distributed between the courts in practice? Does the General Court maintain the same high legal standards as the Court of Justice? Is there a risk of ambiguity or strategic referrals from national courts? The project aims to analyze the judgments of the General Court in the first four years after the transfer, focusing on VAT and excise duties, and compare their legal reasoning and clarity with the case law of the CJEU. The aim is to increase knowledge about the legal certainty, quality and legitimacy of the EU judicial system and to assess whether the General Court can establish itself as a reliable player in the preliminary ruling procedure.