Implementing judgments in the field of asylum and migration on odd days II. Legal framework for the execution of judgments II.1. CJEU rulings execution mechanism All rulings by the CJEU are binding on all Member States’ authorities, including national courts.6 According to Art. 228 of the EC treaty,7 if the CJEU finds that a Member State has failed to fulfil an obligation under this Treaty, the State shall be required to take the necessary measures to comply with the judgment. If, despite the Court’s judgment, the country still does not rectify the situation, the Commission may refer the country back to the Court. This is a special judicial procedure for the enforcement of judgments that provides for the imposition of penalty payments or lump sums by the CJEU on a Member State which fails to comply with an earlier judgment. It is for the CJEU to take the final decisions on the penalties to be imposed, while the Commission, as a guardian of the Treaties, has a decisive part in initiating the Art. 228 procedure, to bring a case before the CJEU and to give its view on the actual amount to be paid by the Member State concerned. Amongst the cases examined for this study, the only one that has been referred back to the CJEU by the Commission due to ‘blatant’ non-implementation is case C-808/18, concerning the unlawful Hungarian practice of pushbacks (see p. 21). Slovakia has had no migration-related CJEU cases in which a judgment has already been delivered. Slovenia implemented all migration related CJEU judgments. Czechia and Poland implemented all migration related CJEU judgments, with the exception of the relocation judgment (see IV.2. of the study), while Hungary refuses to implement several of CJEU judgments. See all relevant cases in Annex I. 6 7 https://www.pubaffairsbruxelles.eu/eu-institution-news/european-commission-reaffirms-the-primacy-of-eu-law/. Treaty establishing the European Community, Consolidated Version 2002, OJ C 325. 6