5.

In the applicant's view, the purpose of the expatriation allowance is‘to offset the difficulties and the inconvenience resulting from the status of alien which beset an official who does not intend to establish lasting ties with the country to which he has been posted by the international organization for which he works’. In her view, although it expressly denies the benefit of that allowance to an official who, before entering the service, had established lasting ties with the country of employment, the Commission nevertheless expressly reserves the benefit of the allowance to officials who, whilst they may have lived in the country of employment during the reference period, have not established lasting ties with that country. The applicant claims that she falls within the latter situation and that she merely accompanied her husband when he moved to Belgium on the ground that she was legally bound to do so by virtue of her personal status as a married woman and that she was anxious to preserve the unity of the family, but had no intention of establishing lasting ties with her husband's country of employment. Finally, the applicant contends that when she entered the service, she was in a situation ‘arising from work done for another State or for an international organization’. I am not swayed by that argument. As the Commission — which cites the Court in this regard — rightly points out: ‘The object of the expatriation allowance is to compensate officials for the extra expense and inconvenience of taking up employment with the Communities and being thereby ( 3 ) obliged to change their residence’. ( 4 ) As far as the concept of residence is concerned, the Court has held that a person's place of residence is that in which he has established, with the intention that it should be of a lasting character, the ‘permanent’ or ‘habitual’ centre of his interests. ( 5 ) Admittedly, I recently proposed in Case 144/84 that the Court should, in determining the place of origin of Mrs De Angelis, declare that the centre of her interests is situated in Ischia. In this case I intend to demonstrate that she has established the permanent centre of her interests in Brussels. Nothwithstanding the similarities in terminology, that does not involve any contradiction. The Court has already held ( 6 ) that the expression ‘place of origin’ in Article 7 (3) of Annex VII to the Staff Regulations, which is determined by an official's centre of interests, is a term of art whose function is to indicate the place which is relevant for determining certain expenses of travel from the official's place of employment to his place of origin. The Court pointed out that ‘that concept is different from that’ of the place where the officials concerned ‘resided before their entry into the service’. The Court therefore distinguishes between the concept of ‘centre of interests’ within the meaning of Article 7, and the concept of ‘permanent centre of interests’ which is used to define the place of residence. Mrs De Angelis, who, according to the criteria laid down by the Court in its caselaw, resided in Brussels, was not required to change her residence as a result of taking up employment in that city and it is difficult to identify ‘the extra expense and inconvenience’ resulting therefrom which need to be compensated. Moreover, and the observation made in this regard by the Commission at the hearing seems pertinent, the provision to the effect that ‘circumstances arising from work done for another State or for an international organization shall not be taken into account’ does indeed constitute an exception to the rule which precedes it and which lays down that, in order to qualify for the expatriation allowance, an official must not, during the reference period, have resided or carried on his occupation within the territory of the State of employment. That exception was recognized as such by the Court in the Vutera judgment. ( 7 ) It must therefore be given a restrictive interpretation. It applies to an official and cannot, unless otherwise provided, extend to the official's spouse, where the latter has also become a Community official. In my view, therefore, this submission is unfounded.