Order — ECLI:EU:C:2008:383
Date: 2008-07-03
Language of the case: German
Court formation: Third Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Transport
Concepts: Community driving licence
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Germany

Reference for a preliminary ruling from the Amtsgericht Landau/Isar (Germany) lodged on 7 May 2007 - Criminal proceedings against Rainer Günther Möginger (Case C-225/07) Language of the case: German Referring court Amtsgericht Landau/Isar Party to the main proceedings Rainer Günther Möginger Questions referred Are Articles 1(2), 7(1)(b), 8(2) and (4) and 9 of Council Directive 91/439/EEC of 29 July 1999 on driving licences 1 as amended by Council Directive 97/26/EC of 2 June 1997 (hereinafter: the directive) to be interpreted as meaning that they preclude a Member State from refusing to recognise a driving licence issued by another Member State even where its holder has, in the first Member State, been subject to a measure withdrawing or cancelling the right to drive issued by that Member State and where a temporary ban on obtaining a new right to drive, with which that measure is coupled, had not yet expired before the date on which the driving licence was issued by the other Member State? If so: Is that directive to be interpreted as meaning that the principle of mutual recognition may be ignored by the courts and authorities of the first Member State where, on grounds of abuse of a right, the holder of the right to drive is barred in a specific case from relying on the right to drive acquired in another EU Member State, in particular where an overall appraisal of the objective circumstances shows that, despite formal observance of the conditions laid down by the Community rules, the purpose of the rules in the directive has not been achieved and where there is a subjective element consisting in the intention to obtain an advantage from the Community rules, in the form of recognition of the right to drive acquired in another EU Member State, by arbitrarily creating the conditions laid down for acquiring it, above all, where, according to the information available to the first Member State, when the driving licence was issued the holder of the driving licence had his normal residence in that Member State and not in the Member State which issued the driving licence, and where, according to the information available to the first Member State, it must be assumed, on the basis of objective and judicially verifiable facts, that the holder of the right to drive would not have had any possibility of lawfully acquiring a right to drive in the first Member State. ____________ 1 - OJ L 237, p. 1