The Grand
Chamber (Judge Arabadijev) also did some more Portuguese car insurance law, holding
that Directives 72/166, 84/5 and 90/232 “do not preclude national provisions which, where two motor vehicles
collide giving rise to personal injury to the passenger in one of the vehicles
and the event is not attributable to the fault of the drivers of those
vehicles, [but to the fact that the passenger wasn’t wearing his seat belt]
allows the civil liability of the insured persons to be limited or excluded.” Almeida v. Carvalheira et al.
The first
judgment is in of the infringement proceedings brought against half of Europe
regarding the First Railway Package. Predictably, Portugal lost (Judge
Borg Barthet). Commission v. Portugal Cf. here for my discussion of the AG’s opinions in
these cases.
Following AG Jääskinen’s opinion in April, the Court (Judge Safjan)
finally sorted out what to do with the German “Negative Feststellungsklage”,
i.e. the suit that asks the Court to say that no liability in tort exists.
Unlike the AG, however, the Court decides that this kind of suit does fall
under art. 5(3) of Regulation 44/2001. Folien Fischer and Fofitec v.
Ritrama
In the wake of
the recent Dutch studiefinanciering case, the Court (Judge Prechal) follows AG Cruz Villalón and holds that a Belgian measure which gives allowances for
young persons seeking their first job only to persons who have spent the last
six years in Belgium should be considered in violation of the free movement of
workers. Prete v. Office national de l’emploi
France did not transpose Directive 2003/96 on
the taxation of electricity in time, leaving in place the possibility for
municipalities or departments to set a tax higher than the minimum established
by law, rather than enacting a uniform tariff for the entire country.
Commission v. France (FR)
AG
Jääskinen proposes some clarifications of the Authorisation Directive – Directive 2002/20 – in the context of a dispute
between the Belgian mobile telecom operators and the Belgian government. I
leave it as an exercise for the reader to sort out which side benefits from the
interpretation he proposes. Belgacom et al. v. Belgium
AG Mengozzi
does some car insurance law in Csonka et al. v. Állam (NL, DE, FR), where he proposes a reading of the law that
the Hungarian government will like: the Member State does not have to stand in
for an insolvent insurance company. At the same time, the AG emphasized that
you can’t use a prejudicial question procedure to get the ECJ to decide whether
the national law infringes EU law.
AG Cruz
Villalón also takes a look at Hungarian car insurance, albeit in the context of
competition law. First of all, in par. 20-48, he proposes a narrow reading of
the case law on the admissibility of purely internal questions where they rely
on concepts derived from EU law, as it was applied only last week by the Court
in Punch Graphix (par. 27). Alternatively, the AG
proposes that the contracts in question unlawfully reduce competition in the
car repairs market, but not the insurance market. Allianz Hungária et al. v.
Gazdasági Versenyhivatal (NL, DE, FR)
The General
Court annulled the asset freezes of two companies accused of being involved in
Iran’s nuclear proliferation programme for failure to state (adequate) reasons.
CF
Sharp Shipping v. Council and Oil Turbo Compressor Co. v. Council (NL,
DE,
FR)
Finally, I
came across an interesting recent journal article this week about free movement of
goods law by Gareth Davies. The fun isn’t in the substantive law he discusses,
but in the approach he takes to distilling meaning out of a body of case law.
(Cf. p. 25-27, in particular.) Other reading tips include this blog post by Deirdre Curtin about the future
of Kadi-litigation and this summary of a high-level conference in
Luxembourg about the future of ECJ-ECtHR collaboration. (Key quote: “speakers
like Hans Nilsson from the Council of the EU do not expect the accession to
enter into force until the end of the decade.”)
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