8.

I am not swayed by those arguments. When applied to this case, most of the criteria developed by the Court in its judgments in Di Paolo and Reibold point instead to the conclusion that the national court was right to consider that during her employment in the United Kingdom Miss Knoch had retained her habitual residence in Germany. The crucial factor, in my view, is that in those decisions the Court proceeds on the assumption that the worker in question is resident in the Member State in which he is employed only where he has a fixed employment (un emploi stable') in that State. That was clearly not the case here since Miss Knoch was employed for two academic years as an assistant in the United Kingdom under an academic exchange programme established by the DAAD. On the expiry of that period (June 1984) her association with the United Kingdom came to an end and her efforts to find work there proved unsuccessful. It is impossible to infer the existence of a fixed employment from those circumstances. Nor can the argument concerning the duration of Miss Knoch's absence from Germany be considered decisive. As the Court stated in Reibold, that criterion is not precisely defined anywhere, nor is it exclusive, and an excessively strict maximal provision concerning absence (for instance, four months, by analogy with the definition of ‘frontier worker’ in Article 1(b) of Regulation No 1408/71) would deprive Article 71 of the regulation of part of its effectiveness: ‘A person other than a frontier worker may be employed for more than four months on the territory of another Member State whilst retaining the habitual centre of his interests in his country of origin. To exclude such a person would preclude, in breach of the aim pursued by those provisions, the possibility of guaranteeing him the best opportunities for reemployment. The criterion relating to the duration of absence must therefore be applied by reference to the facts of each individual case.’ ( 11 ) Furthermore, in its judgment in Di Paolo the Court made it clear that the addition of the words ‘or who returns to that territory’ in Article 71(l)(b)(ii) ‘implies merely that the concept of residence, such as defined above, does not necessarily exclude non-habitual residence in another Member State.’ ( 12 ) Subsequently, it may be possible to infer from the reasons for her stay abroad and the nature of her occupation there that Miss Knoch was no longer residing in Germany. It is scarcely plausible for a temporary teaching post abroad under an academic exchange programme to lead of itself to a change of residence. Finally, as regards the relationship between Miss Knoch's position and that of Miss Reibold in the judgment of the same name, I consider, unlike the French Government, that there are strong similarities between the two cases. As in the case of Miss Knoch, the DAAD arranged for Miss Reibold to spend two consecutive academic years as an assistant in the United Kingdom (totalling 21 months, that is to say the same number of months as Miss Knoch spent there); in addition, during the university vacations Miss Reibold also returned to Germany where she had retained rented premises. In my view, the fact that Miss Knoch drew unemployment benefit in the United Kingdom is not — at least so far as the assessment of the residence requirement is concerned — a crucial factor. Nor is the fact that she sought employment there, albeit unsuccessfully: this means merely that if she had found work in the United Kingdom, she might have transferred her residence there. There is another point concerning the argument relating to the cohesion of Community law. The concept of ‘habitual residence’ applied by the Court in its aforesaid decisions has a Community dimension. In my view it is desirable in that connection that the meaning of that concept should be as unequivocal as possible in the various areas covered by Community law. However, account must be taken of the purpose and scheme of the Community legislation in question (for instance, tax legislation or, as in this case, social legislation) which — as in Article 7 of Directive 83/182 ( 13 ) — entails as a rule a specific definition of the concept of ‘normal residence’.