Judgment;Summary — ECLI:EU:C:2021:233
Date: 2021-03-24
Language of the case: Italian
Court formation: Tenth Chamber
Subject matter: Social Policy;Transport
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Italy

Anonymised version 
Translation C-870/19 - 1 
Case C-870/19 
Request for a preliminary ruling: 
Date lodged: 
26 November 2019 
Referring court: 
Corte suprema di cassazione (Italy) 
Date of the decision to refer: 
19 September 2019 
Appellant: 
Prefettura Ufficio territoriale del governo di Firenze 
Cross-appellant: 
MI 
      
THE CORTE SUPREMA DI CASSAZIONE (SUPREME COURT OF 
CASSATION) 
[…] 
SECONDA SEZIONE CIVILE (SECOND CIVIL DIVISION) 
[…] 
makes the following 
INTERLOCUTORY ORDER 
in the appeal […] brought by 
EN 
REQUEST FOR A PRELIMINARY RULING OF 19. 9. 2019 – CASE C-870/19 
 
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PREFETTURA UFFICIO TERRITORIALE del GOVERNO di FIRENZE, in 
persona del Prefetto pro tempore, (Prefecture of Florence, in the person of the 
prefect for the time being), […] 
- appellant - 
v 
MI, […] 
[…] 
- cross-appellant - 
against the judgment […] of the TRIBUNALE di FIRENZE (District Court, 
Florence), […]; 
[…] [OR.2] […] 
[OR.3] 
Whereas: 
the Florence Prefecture has brought an appeal against the judgment […] of the 
Florence District Court (‘the judgment or decision under appeal’), relying on a 
single ground of appeal, and MI has brought a related cross-appeal. 
In order to achieve a better understanding of the present case, the following points 
must be briefly summarised.  
The judgment under appeal upheld the appeal brought by MI, who had been 
accused of 24 infringements of Article 19 of Legge n. 727/1978 (Law No 
727/1978), with multiple police reports having been drawn up, included in the file, 
regarding the failure to produce record sheets in respect of various different days. 
The decision under appeal today before this Supreme Court of Cassation by the 
appellant administration […] (details not relevant for the purposes of the question 
referred for a preliminary ruling) therefore varied the decision of the first-
instance court — which was appealed against — which had dismissed the 
challenge to the above-mentioned reports establishing infringements of the Codice 
della strada (Italian Highway Code), reducing – in essence – to a single penalty 
the effect of establishing the infringements at issue. 
MI contended that the proceedings brought against him should be dismissed and 
filed submissions. 
[…] [OR.4] […] 
PREFETTURA UFFICIO TERRITORIALE DEL GOVERNO DI FIRENZE 
 
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[…] (references to the national proceedings) 
And whereas: 
1.- By the ground of appeal, the appellant alleges infringement and misapplication of 
Article 19 of Law No 727/1978 and [of Articles] 14(1) and 15(2) and (7) of 
Regulation (EEC) 3821/1985 in connection with Article 360(1)(3) of the Codice 
di Procedura Civile (Code of Civil Procedure).  
In short, it is submitted that the decision under appeal is erroneous; in that 
decision — concerning the infringement of the abovementioned legislation on 
record sheets for the tachograph installed in a vehicle — it was held that the 
failure to produce the record sheets could be penalised only within the limit laid 
down in the legislation (‘the record sheets for the current week and those used by 
the driver in the previous 15 days [or] after 1 January 2008, [for] the current day 
and the previous 28 days’, Article 15 of Regulation 3821/1985) by a single 
penalty relating to a single infringement and not also – as had occurred in the 
present case — by multiple penalties in respect of the individual shorter periods 
within the overall timeframe laid down by the legislation. 
The appellant administration, in particular, has expressly stated that ‘the present 
dispute is identical to [OR.5] thousands of disputes currently pending before the 
trial courts throughout the whole of Italy’; it has also requested — the highly 
conflicting guidelines in the matter having been indicated — that the dispute be 
decided by way of clarificatory ruling. 
2.- Having duly set out the ground of appeal, this court must make the following 
observations. 
MI infringed Article 15(7) of Regulation (EEC) No 3821/1985, as amended by 
Article 26 of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006. 
That provision states that ‘…, the driver must be able to produce, whenever an 
inspecting officer so requests: (i) the record sheets for the current week and those 
used by the driver in the previous 15 days; (ii) the driver card if he holds one, and 
(iii) any manual record and printout made during the current week and the 
previous 15 days … However, after 1 January 2008, the time periods referred to 
under (i) and (iii) shall cover the current day and the previous 28 days’. 
The relevant legal framework having been thus set out, this court notes that the 
interpretation of the above-cited provision which must be provided is essential to 
the outcome of the present dispute. 
[OR.6] 
If such a provision must indeed be interpreted as meaning that a driver is required 
to comply with a single form of conduct which consists in producing the record 
sheets relating to a certain number of days’ work together with the obligation to 
REQUEST FOR A PRELIMINARY RULING OF 19. 9. 2019 – CASE C-870/19 
 
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produce the sheets in their entirety to the inspecting officers, the infringement of 
that provision can only be a single infringement precisely because the conduct 
itself is a single form of conduct. 
It follows from the foregoing that the single form of conduct can give rise to the 
commission of only a single infringement and the imposition of a single fine, 
without the cumulation of penalties for each act of omission, regardless of the 
number of individual discs which a driver is unable to produce. 
If, on the other hand, the provision must be interpreted as referring to divisible 
conduct, it will then be possible to draw up as many police reports as the number 
of days (or, in the case at issue, groups of days) in relation to which the duty to 
produce record sheets has not been complied with. 
This Supreme Court of Cassation has already addressed from a different 
perspective — in Cass. civ., Sez. Lav. Sent. 3 agosto 2007, n. 17073 (judgment 
No 17073 of 3 August 2007 of the Court of Cassation (Civil), Labour Division) — 
the issue of the conduct required of a trader, who, on the basis of Article 14(2) of 
Regulation (EEC) No 3821/1985, must keep record sheets for at least a year after 
their use. 
[OR.7] 
However, the distinct function and rationale of that provision cannot mean per se 
that the unified nature of the conduct and penalty applies to the different situation 
in the present case; this is despite the fact that the literal wording of Article 14 of 
that regulation, which provides for a penalty for each individual missing sheet for 
the driving days, might lead to the finding, a contrario and in the absence of an 
express statement in that regard, that, as regards the infringement governed by 
Article 15 of that regulation, the overall infringement and the penalty are unified 
in nature. 
That interpretation may, however, be countered by a different interpretation which 
is more responsive to the possible evasion or fragmentation of the legislative 
provision […] (details relating to the national proceedings) or more closely 
aligned with a more stringent criterion. 
Indeed, the dictum in the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union 
of 9 February 2012 [in Case C-210/10], delivered in the case concerning the 
request for a preliminary ruling […] from the Hungarian [court] is well-known. 
In examining that case concerning the proportionality of the penalty specifically 
as regards infringements regarding the use of a tachograph, the Court of Justice 
stated ‘... In that regard, Article 19(1) of that regulation requires Member States to 
lay down “rules on penalties applicable to [OR.8] infringements … [which] shall 
be effective, proportionate, dissuasive and non-discriminatory”.’ 
PREFETTURA UFFICIO TERRITORIALE DEL GOVERNO DI FIRENZE 
 
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Evidently, this should result in the imposition — by each individual State — of 
appropriate penalties or penalties adapted to the entire timeframe (28 days) and 
not to a single daily infringement which may be cumulated; this has the further 
consequence — which, incidentally, is an important and significant one — that the 
effective deterrence of the penalty could clearly not be pursued through the 
practice of issuing multiple penalties that may not be proportionate, by default, to 
the overall act of omission. 
Since — in this court’s view and in the light of all of the foregoing — there is 
objective uncertainty regarding interpretation, a request for a preliminary ruling 
must, therefore, be made to the Court of Justice of the European Union for the 
interpretation, in particular, of the following question: 
‘May Article 15 [(7) of Regulation No 3821/85] be interpreted, in the specific case 
of the driver of the motor vehicle, as a rule which prescribes a single, overall form 
of conduct and, therefore, entails the commission of a single infringement and the 
imposition of a single penalty, or may it result, through the cumulation of 
penalties for each act of omission, in as many infringements and penalties as the 
number of days in relation to which the record sheets for the tachograph have not 
been produced [OR.9] in the context of the timeframe laid down (“current day and 
the previous 28 days”)?’. 
ONE THOSE GROUNDS 
The Supreme Court of Cassation 
[…] (reference to EU law) directs that the file be forwarded to the Court of Justice 
of the European Union, seeking a preliminary ruling on the question set out above; 
[…] (references to the stay of the national proceedings) 
So decided […] on 19 September 2019. 
[…]