II —

My discussion of the first question and the answer which I shall suggest that the Court should give will free me from the need to consider the other two at length although they are actually put in the expectation of a negative reply to the first one. Article 4 (4) of Reguladon No 1408/71 provides that the regulation is not to apply to ‘benefit schemes for victims of war or its consequences’. The main argument advanced by the competent French authorities against the applicant is that the provisions of the French Law of 21 November 1973 comes within the field of application of the above-mentioned Article 4 (4) because the conditions in which the benefits or advantages referred to by that law are awarded give them a character in the nature of compensation exceeding the stria bounds of social security: these benefits are not, it is said, paid to workers who are victims of war solely on the ground that the war adversely affected them as regards the acquisition of rights to old-age pensions (or to other similar advantages). The advantages (advanced payment, increase in rate) laid down by the French Law of 21 November 1973 constitute such benefits by way of compensation. Naturally it is not the Court's function to classify the French provision in question with regard to Community law or indeed to inquire whether the law in question is intended to confer benefits strictly in the nature of compensation or whether it also has the objective of compensating ex-servicemen and prisoners of war ‘for the hardships undergone by them and the services rendered by them to the country’. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that Article 51 of the Treaty and the provisions of Regulation No 1408/71 do refer to benefits of the same type as the adventages in question: we are indeed dealing with the entitlement or the acquisition of the right to benefit and to the calculation of the amount of benefit, expressions used in Article 51 of the Treaty of Rome or in Articles 45 and 46 of the regulation. As soon as it is established that a law has the object in particular of neutralizing the interruption due to the war in the acquisition or maintenance of rights to old-age pensions we are indeed in the field of social security and not in that of special or individual advantages. The fact that the provisions of the French law were inserted in Article L 332 (2) of the social security code is a logical consequence of that finding though not its prime cause. In these circumstances it seems to me to be pointless to inquire whether the law in question also has the character of benefit schemes for victims of war or its consequences and whether it relates to national solidarity as in the case of the grant to aged workers. The schemes which are excluded from the field of application of the Community rules concern benefits whose object is exclusively to repair the bodily or other injuries sustained by victims of war such as those which are dealt with in French law under the Code des Pensions Militaires d'Invalidité et des Victimes de Guerre (Code relating to military invalidity pensions and war victims). Moreover the pension supplement provided for former prisoners of war by the French Law of 21 November 1973, re-enacted as Article L 332 (2) of the social security code, may be aggregated in France with, for example, a military invalidity pension due by reason of a wound sustained or an affliction resulting from captivity. It must be noted that it is not necessary to refer to Article 13 (2) (d) of Regulations No 1408/71 in order that the periods completed with the Belgian armed forces may effectively be taken into consideration. Moreover I think that that provision relates only to benefits which arise from ‘service with the colours’ and not to ones which only arose on that occasion and which only have a vague connexion with military service.