The EU preliminary reference procedure enables courts of the EU Member States to put questions about the interpretation or validity of EU law to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The procedure is an EU law instrument and therefore the ECJ has held that, as a matter of principle, it only has competence to answer preliminary references where EU law applies directly in the case before the referring Member State court. Nevertheless, in a number of situations the ECJ has shown itself ready to answer preliminary references even though no EU law applies directly in the main action. In this article, we identify those situations and we discuss the broader implications of the ECJ’s practice. We conclude that whereas it is easy to point to good practical reasons in support of this practice, it also essentially means that the ECJ’s powers to answer preliminary references will not only be laid down by EU law, but also by Member State legislators and in this respect we argue that the practice may conflict with the fundamental principle of conferred powers.