Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2000:185
Date: 2000-04-04
Language of the case: French
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Right of establishment;Freedom to provide services
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: France

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Preliminary rulings — Admissibility of references — Need to provide the Court with 
sufficient details of the factual and legal context 
(EC Treaty, Art. 177 (now Art. 234 EC)) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-109/99 
2. Freedom of movement for persons — Freedom of establishment — Freedom to provide 
services — Direct insurance other than life assurance — Directive 73/239 — Insurance 
companies prohibited from business activities other than insurance — Scope — 
Creation by such undertakings of bodies having their own legal personality and 
carrying on commercial business — Conditions governing permissibility — Direct 
effect of the corresponding provision 
(Council Directive 73/239, Art. 8(1)(b)) 
1. The need to provide an interpretation 
of Community law which will be of use 
to the national court makes it necessary 
for the national court to define the 
factual and legal context of the ques­
tions it is asking or, at the very least, to 
explain the factual circumstances on 
which those questions are based. Those 
requirements are of particular impor­
tance in certain areas, such as that of 
competition, where the factual and 
legal situations are often complex. 
The information provided in orders 
for reference must not only be such as 
to enable the Court to reply usefully 
but must also give the Governments of 
the Member States and other interested 
parties the opportunity to submit 
observations pursuant to Article 20 of 
the Statute of the Court of Justice. It is 
the Court's duty to ensure that the 
opportunity to submit observations is 
safeguarded, bearing in mind that, by 
virtue of the abovementioned provi­
sion, only the orders for reference are 
notified to interested parties 
(see paras 42-43) 
2. Article 8(1)(b) of First Directive 
73/239 on the coordination of laws, 
regulations and administrative provi­
sions relating to the taking-up and 
pursuit of the business of direct insur­
ance other than life assurance, as 
amended by Directive 92/49, under 
which insurance undertakings must 
limit their objects to the business of 
insurance and operations arising 
directly therefrom, to the exclusion of 
all other commercial business, does not 
preclude mutual benefit societies 
engaged solely in insurance business 
from creating between themselves a 
body with legal personality and legal 
autonomy — such as an association of 
mutual benefit societies — which 
engages in commercial business, provi­
ded that the capital subscribed to that 
body by those societies does not exceed 
the value of their free assets and 
provided that, in each case, the socie­
ty's liability is limited to the value of its 
capital contribution. 
Article 8(1)(b) is, moreover, sufficiently 
precise and unconditional to be relied 
upon before the national courts as 
against the administrative authorities 
and entails the inapplicability of any 
rule of national law incompatible with 
it. 
(see paras 64, 70 and operative part 1-2) 
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