ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
Article 6(2) of Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters must be interpreted to the effect that its scope includes an action brought by a third party, in accordance with national law, against the defendant in the original proceedings, and closely linked to those original proceedings, seeking reimbursement of compensation paid by that third party to the applicant in those original proceedings, provided that the action was not instituted solely with the object of removing that defendant from the jurisdiction of the court which would be competent in the case.

Recital 15 of that regulation states that, in the interests of the harmonious administration of justice, it is necessary to minimise the possibility of concurrent proceedings and to ensure that irreconcilable judgments will not be given in two Member States, while recital 12 of the regulation points out that, in addition to the defendant’s domicile, there should be alternative grounds of jurisdiction based on a close link between the court and the action or in order to facilitate the sound administration of justice. The hearing, in the course of the same proceedings, of both the original action and an action brought by a third party against one of the parties to the original action and closely linked to the original action, is such as to further the abovementioned objectives in a situation in which an action has been brought by the injured party against the insurer of the person liable for the damage and another insurer, which has already paid the injured party some compensation for his injuries, seeks reimbursement of that compensation from the first-mentioned insurer. If that were not permissible, there would be a risk of two courts, in the same case, arriving at different solutions, whose recognition and enforcement would therefore be uncertain.

(see paras 38-40, 47, operative part)
Article 39 of Directive 2005/85 on minimum standards on procedures in Member States for granting and withdrawing refugee status, read in the light of Articles 19(2) and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which does not confer suspensory effect on an appeal brought against a decision not to further examine a subsequent application for asylum.

It should be stated that a second application for asylum must be regarded as a ‘subsequent application’ for the purposes of Article 32 of Directive 2005/85 and that the refusal of a competent authority to take that application into consideration corresponds to a ‘decision not to further examine the subsequent application’ for the purposes of Article 39(1)(c) of that directive.

In that regard, it is apparent from Article 39(1)(c) of Directive 2005/85 that Member States must ensure that applicants for asylum have the right to an effective remedy against a decision not to further examine the subsequent application pursuant to Articles 32 and 34 of that directive. Furthermore, where an applicant for asylum makes a subsequent application for asylum without presenting new evidence or arguments, it would be disproportionate to oblige Member States to carry out a new full examination procedure and they should have a choice of procedure involving exceptions to the guarantees normally enjoyed by the applicant.

Accordingly, the lack of suspensory effect of an appeal brought against a decision not to further examine a subsequent application for asylum is, in principle, compatible with Articles 19(2) and 47 of the Charter. Although such a decision does not allow a third-country national to receive international protection, the enforcement of that decision cannot, as such, lead to that national’s removal. It follows that the lack of a suspensory remedy against such a decision, the enforcement of which is not likely to expose the national concerned to a risk of ill-treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, does not constitute a breach of the right to effective judicial protection as provided for in Article 39 of Directive 2005/85, read in the light of Articles 19(2) and 47 of the Charter.

(see paras 40, 45, 46, 56, 59, 60, operative part)
Case C‑429/14

Air Baltic Corporation AS

v

Lietuvos Respublikos specialiųjų tyrimų tarnyba

(Request for a preliminary ruling from the Lietuvos Aukščiausiasis Teismas)

‛Reference for a preliminary ruling — Air transport — Montreal Convention — Articles 19, 22 and 29 — Liability of air carrier in the event of delay in the international carriage of passengers — Contract of carriage concluded by the passengers’ employer — Damage caused by delay — Damage suffered by the employer’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Third Chamber), 17 February 2016

Transport — Air transport — Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air — Liability of air carrier in the event of delay in the international carriage of passengers — Contract of carriage concluded by the air carrier and the passengers’ employer — Employer’s entitlement to compensation — Lawfulness — Scope

The Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (Montreal Convention), concluded in Montreal on 28 May 1999, was signed by the European Community on 9 December 1999 and then approved on its behalf by the Council on 5 April 2001. It entered into force, so far as the European Union is concerned, on 28 June 2004. It follows that the provisions of the Montreal Convention have been an integral part of the European Union legal order from the date on which it entered into force and that, consequently, the Court has jurisdiction to give a preliminary ruling concerning its interpretation, it being understood that that convention was drawn up in French, English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and Russian, with all six language versions being authentic. With regard to such an interpretation, Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which codifies general international law and is binding on the European Union, states that a treaty is to be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to its terms in their context and in the light of its object and purpose. (see paras 22-24)

Article 1(1) of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, concluded at Montreal on 28 May 1999 and signed by the European Community on 9 December 1999, then approved on its behalf by the Council on 5 April 2001, should be interpreted in the light of the third recital in the preamble to that convention, which emphasises the importance of ensuring protection of the interests of consumers in international carriage by air, it being understood that the concept of ‘consumer’ for the purposes of that convention should not be confused with the concept of ‘passenger’, but may include persons who are not themselves carried and are therefore not passengers. Given that objective, the lack of reference in the wording of Article 1(1) of the Montreal Convention to persons who retain the services of an international air carrier for the purpose of carriage of their employees as passengers cannot be construed as excluding those persons from the scope of application of that convention and, consequently, any damage they may suffer in association therewith. (see paras 38, 39)
Regulation No 1907/2006 concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), as amended by Regulation No 552/2009, must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which requires an importer of chemical products to register those products with the competent national authority when that importer is already under an obligation under that regulation to register those same products with the European Chemicals Agency, provided that that registration with the competent national authority does not constitute a pre-condition to the placing of those products on the market, it concerns information different from that required by that regulation and contributes to the achievement of the objectives pursued by that regulation, in particular those of ensuring a high level of protection of human health and the environment and the free movement of such substances in the internal market, in particular by the implementation of a system of controls of the safe management of such products in the Member State concerned and the evaluation of that management, which it is for the referring court to ascertain.

The harmonisation carried out by the provisions of Regulation No 1907/2006 in respect of the notification and registration requirement for chemical substances, however far-reaching it may be in order to establish an integrated system of control of those substances on EU territory enabling their safe management, is not such as to exclude another registration, such as that which seeks, in essence, to enable the national authorities to hold a database necessary for the monitoring of chemical products in the territory of the Member State concerned, and which contributes, in particular, to the implementation of a system of controls of that management in the Member State concerned and the evaluation of that management in order, particularly, to propose any useful improvements thereto at EU level.

(see paras 34, 38, 41, operative part 1)
The Court has jurisdiction to hear a request for a preliminary ruling, although it has been made by the national court at the non-contentious stage of examining the admissibility of the application before it, which seeks to open a procedure for an arrangement with creditors, which is intended, if it is admissible, to result in a judicial decision, adopted in the presence of the public prosecutor, after the court has ruled on any oppositions brought by the minority creditors. National courts may refer a question to the Court if there is a case pending before them and if they are called upon to give judgment in proceedings intended to lead to a decision of a judicial nature and the choice of the most appropriate time to refer a question for a preliminary ruling lies within their exclusive jurisdiction.

Article 4(3) TEU and Articles 2, 250(1) and 273 of Directive 2006/112 on the common system of value added tax do not preclude national legislation, interpreted as meaning that an insolvent trader may apply to a court to open a procedure for an arrangement with creditors for the purpose of settling its debts by liquidating its assets, in which that trader offers only partial payment of a value added tax (VAT) debt and establishes by an independent expert’s report that that debt would not be repaid more fully in the event of that trader’s bankruptcy.

The admission of a partial payment of a VAT claim by an insolvent trader in the context of an arrangement with creditors, which does not constitute a general and indiscriminate waiver of collecting VAT, is not contrary to the obligation on Member States to ensure collection of all of the VAT due on their territory as well as the effective collection of the European Union’s own resources.

(see paras 28, 29, operative part)
An interpretation to the effect that a natural person may have overlapping normal places of residence for the purpose of Article 3 of Regulation No 1186/2009, one in a third country and another in a Member State, cannot be regarded as consistent with the objective of making it easier to establish a new residence in a Member State.

Article 3 of Regulation No 1186/2009 setting up a Community system of reliefs from customs duty is to be interpreted as meaning that, for the purposes of the application of that provision, a natural person may not have at the same time a normal place of residence in both a Member State and in a third country.

In circumstances where a person has both personal and occupational ties in a third country and personal ties in a Member State, it is necessary, for the purpose of determining whether the normal place of residence of that person within the meaning of Article 3 of Regulation No 1186/2009 setting up a Community system of reliefs from customs duty is in the third country, to attach particular importance to the length of that person’s stay in the third country when carrying out an overall assessment of the relevant facts.

The normal place of residence within the meaning of Article 3 of Regulation No 1186/2009 must be regarded as the place where the person concerned has established the permanent centre of his interests. In order to determine whether the normal place of residence is located in a third country, for the purpose of the application of the relief from customs duty provided for in Article 3, all the relevant facts must be taken into account. It should be borne in mind when carrying out that analysis that Regulation No 1186/2009 attaches particular importance to the length of the stay of the person concerned in the third country in question. Thus, according to Article 5(1) of the regulation, the relief from customs duty provided for in Article 3 of the regulation may be granted only to persons whose normal place of residence has been outside the customs territory of the European Union for a continuous period of at least 12 months.

(see paras 39-41, operative part 2)
Article 12(2)(c) of Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted must be interpreted as meaning that it is not a prerequisite for the ground for exclusion of refugee status specified in that provision to be held to be established that an applicant for international protection should have been convicted of one of the terrorist offences referred to in Article 1(1) of Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA of 13 June 2002 on combating terrorism.

If the EU legislature had intended to restrict the scope of Article 12(2)(c) of Directive 2004/83, and to confine the concept of ‘acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations’ solely to the offences listed in Article 1(1) of Framework Decision 2002/475, it could easily have done so, by expressly stipulating those offences or by referring to that framework decision.

Article 12(2)(c) of Directive 2004/83 makes no reference, however, either to Framework Decision 2002/475, although that framework decision was in existence when Article 12(2)(c) was drafted, or to any other European Union instrument adopted in the context of the fight against terrorism.

(see paras 52-54, operative part 1)
It is not for the Court, in the context of the preliminary ruling procedure, to review, in arbitration proceedings, the findings of the sole arbitrator or his interpretation of the licence agreement carried out in the light of the applicable national law.

Article 101(1) TFEU must be interpreted as not precluding the imposition on the licensee, under a licence agreement, of a requirement to pay a royalty for the use of a patented technology for the entire period in which that agreement was in effect, in the event of the revocation or non-infringement of a licenced patent, provided that the licensee was able freely to terminate that agreement by giving reasonable notice.

If, during the period in which a licence agreement is in effect, the payment of the royalty is still due even after the expiration of industrial property rights, the same applies, a fortiori, before the validity of those rights has expired. The fact that the courts of the State issuing the patents have held, following the termination of the licence agreement, that the applicant’s use of the licensed technology does not infringe the rights derived from those patents has no effect on the enforceability of the royalty for the period prior to that termination. Since the licensee was free to terminate the agreement at any time, that obligation does not constitute a restriction of competition within the meaning of Article 101(1) TFEU.

(see paras 41-43, operative part)
Article 94(1) and (2) of Regulation No 1408/71 on the application of social security schemes to employed persons, to self-employed persons and to members of their families moving within the Community, in the version amended and updated by Regulation No 118/97, as amended by Regulation No 647/2005, must be interpreted as not precluding legislation of a Member State that does not take into account, when determining rights to old-age pension, an insurance period claimed to have been completed under its own legislation by a foreign worker when the State of which that worker is a national acceded to the European Union after the completion of that period.

In order to be able to rely legitimately on Article 94(2) of Regulation No 1408/71, a claimant must be able to identify a period of insurance and, as the case may be, periods of employment or residence completed under the legislation of a Member State before 1 October 1972 or in the case of Member States which acceded to the European Union after that date, before the date of application of that regulation in the territory of the Member State concerned.

However, the legislation mentioned above excluded the worker from benefiting from the old-age insurance, on the ground that he was a third-country national and resided aboard vessels for which he was a crew member. Such exclusion, although based on nationality, was not prohibited by the law of the European Union at the time of the facts at issue, since that country had not yet acceded to the Union.

(see paras 56, 64, 66, operative part 1)
To ensure the separation between the management of the railway infrastructure and transport operations, so that these activities can be managed separately, but also so that the public funds paid to one of these two activities cannot be transferred from one to the other, Article 6(1) of Directive 91/440 on the development of the Community’s railways requires the keeping of separate profit and loss accounts and balance sheets and that the accounts relating to the activities at issue be published. As regards public funds in particular, the Union legislature’s intention was to oblige railway undertakings providing railway transport services and managing railway infrastructure not only to enter such funds into the accounts, to ensure that they can be monitored in the accounts, but also to publish those accounts in order, inter alia, to ensure that the information relating to the funds is publicly available, which should make it possible to verify objectively that there is no cross-subsidisation between rail infrastructure management and railway transport activities. Article 6(1) of Directive 91/440 aims not only to put in place a precise accounting treatment which makes it possible, in particular, to identify the public funds received by the railway undertakings but also to ensure the external transparency of the use of those funds.

Accordingly, Article 6(1) of Directive 91/440 cannot be interpreted as limiting the obligations of railway undertakings to the mere entry in their accounts of the public funds which they receive, even if such entries were such as to make it possible, in the internal accounting system of those companies, to monitor the prohibition of the transfer of such funds.

(see paras 61-65, 68)
19

Taking the view that the resolution of the dispute before it depends on the interpretation of certain provisions of the Sixth Directive, the cour d’appel de Mons decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following question to the Court for a preliminary ruling: ‘Does the making available of the facilities of a sports installation used exclusively for footballing purposes, understood as being the right to use and enjoy the football stadium playing surface (the pitch) and the players’ and referees’ changing rooms on an ad hoc basis for up to 18 days per season (a season starting on 1 July each calendar year and ending on 30 June the following year), constitute an exempt letting of immovable property for the purposes of Article 13B(b) of [the Sixth Directive] (Article 135(1)(l) of Council Directive 2006/112), in so far as the party granting the right of use and enjoyment: — is fully entitled to confer identical rights on other natural or legal persons of its choice in respect of days other than the 18 days referred to above; — has the right to obtain access to those facilities at any time, without the prior consent of the party to whom the right of use and enjoyment is granted, in order, in particular, to satisfy itself as to the proper use of the facilities and to pre-empt any damage, on the sole condition that it does not disrupt the smooth running of sports events; — retains, in addition, a right of permanent control over access to those facilities, including during the period of their use by RFCT; — charges a flat-rate fee of EUR 1 750 per day for use of the playing surface, the changing rooms, the bar and the caretaking, surveillance and monitoring service for the facilities as a whole, it being understood that it has been agreed between the parties that, of the amount charged, 20% represents the right of access to the football pitch and 80% the consideration for various services connected with maintenance, cleaning, upkeep (mowing, grass sowing etc.) and ensuring regulatory compliance of the playing surface and ancillary services supplied by the party granting the right of use and enjoyment …?’
5

Article 3(1), (2) and (5) to (7) of the basic regulation under the heading ‘Determination of injury’ provides: ‘1. Pursuant to this Regulation, the term “injury” shall, unless otherwise specified, be taken to mean material injury to the Community industry, threat of material injury to the Community industry or material retardation of the establishment of such an industry and shall be interpreted in accordance with the provisions of this Article. 2. A determination of injury shall be based on positive evidence and shall involve an objective examination of both (a) the volume of the dumped imports and the effect of the dumped imports on prices in the Community market for like products; and (b) the consequent impact of those imports on the Community industry. … 5. The examination of the impact of the dumped imports on the Community industry concerned shall include an evaluation of all relevant economic factors and indices having a bearing on the state of the industry, including the fact that an industry is still in the process of recovering from the effects of past dumping or subsidisation, the magnitude of the actual margin of dumping, actual and potential decline in sales, profits, output, market share, productivity, return on investments, utilisation of capacity; factors affecting Community prices; actual and potential negative effects on cash flow, inventories, employment, wages, growth, ability to raise capital or investments. This list is not exhaustive, nor can any one or more of these factors necessarily give decisive guidance. 6. It must be demonstrated, from all the relevant evidence presented in relation to paragraph 2, that the dumped imports are causing injury within the meaning of this Regulation. Specifically, this shall entail a demonstration that the volume and/or price levels identified pursuant to paragraph 3 are responsible for an impact on the Community industry as provided for in paragraph 5, and that this impact exists to a degree which enables it to be classified as material. 7. Known factors, other than the dumped imports, which at the same time are injuring the Community industry shall also be examined to ensure that injury caused by these other factors is not attributed to the dumped imports under paragraph 6. Factors which may be considered in this respect include the volume and prices of imports not sold at dumping prices, contraction in demand or changes in the patterns of consumption, restrictive trade practices of, and competition between, third country and Community producers, developments in technology and the export performance and productivity of the Community industry.’