Article 3(1) of Council Directive 72/166/EEC of 24 April 1972 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles, and to the enforcement of the obligation to insure against such liability, as amended by Directive 2005/14/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005, must be interpreted as meaning that the conclusion of a contract of insurance against civil liability relating to the use of a motor vehicle is obligatory when the vehicle concerned is still registered in a Member State and is capable of being driven but is parked on private land, solely by the choice of the owner, who no longer intends to drive it.

Article 3(1) of the First Directive, worded in very general terms, therefore requires Member States to establish, in their domestic legal systems, a general obligation to insure vehicles (see, to that effect, judgment of 11 July 2013, Csonka and Others, C‑409/11, EU:C:2013:512, paragraph 24). Accordingly, each Member State must ensure, subject to the derogations provided for in Article 4 of that directive, that every vehicle normally based in its territory is covered by a contract concluded with an insurance company in order to cover, up to the limits established by EU law, civil liability arising as a result of the use of that vehicle (see, to that effect, judgment of 11 July 2013, Csonka and Others, C‑409/11, EU:C:2013:512, paragraph 28). The concept of ‘vehicle’ is defined in Article 1(1) of the First Directive as ‘any motor vehicle intended for travel on land’. That definition is unconnected with the use which is made or may be made of the vehicle in question (judgments of 4 September 2014, Vnuk, C‑162/13, EU: C:2014:2146, paragraph 38, and of 28 November 2017, Rodrigues de Andrade, C‑514/16, EU: C:2017:908, paragraph 29). As the Advocate General stated in points 63 to 65 of his Opinion, such a definition is conducive to the concept of ‘vehicle’ being given an objective sense that is independent of the intention of the owner of the vehicle or of another person actually to use it.

It is important, moreover, to point out that, unlike, in particular, the cases which gave rise to the judgments of 4 September 2014, Vnuk (C‑162/13, EU:C:2014:2146), of 28 November 2017, Rodrigues de Andrade (C‑514/16, EU:C:2017:908), and of 20 December 2017, Núñez Torreiro (C‑334/16, EU:C:2017:1007), in which, as regards motor vehicles for which civil liability insurance had been taken out in respect of their use, the Court of Justice was called upon to specify the situations in which use of the insured vehicle falls within the scope of the insurance cover thus taken out, the main proceedings concern the separate issue of the scope of the obligation to take out such insurance which must, for reasons of legal certainty, be determined in advance, that is, before any involvement of the vehicle concerned in an accident. As the Advocate General states in point 34 of his Opinion, the scope of obligatory intervention of the compensation body referred to in Article 1(4) of the Second Directive is therefore, as regards the damage or injuries caused by an identified vehicle, coextensive with the scope of the general insurance obligation laid down in Article 3(1) of the First Directive. The obligatory intervention of that body in such a situation cannot therefore extend to situations in which the vehicle involved in an accident was not covered by the insurance obligation.

(see paras 36-40, 46, 52, operative part 1)