United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v Council of the European Union.
Date: 2013-09-26
27. In that regard, it should be observed that the Court may at any moment, having heard the Advocate General, order the reopening of the oral procedure under Article 83 of its Rules of Procedure, inter alia if it considers that it lacks sufficient information or that the case must be dealt with on the basis of an argument which has not been debated between the parties or the parties concerned referred to in Article 23 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union (see Case C‑116/11 Bank Handlowy and Adamiak  [2012] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 28 and the case-law cited).
44. In that regard, it should be borne in mind that, according to settled case‑law, the choice of the legal basis for an act of the European Union must rest on objective factors amenable to judicial review, which include the aim and content of that measure (C‑130/10 Parliament  v Council  [2012] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 42 and the case-law cited).
48. In so far as the contested decision seeks to amend the rules on coordination of social security systems laid down in the EEA Agreement, it is also necessary to take account of the context of which that decision is part, and, inter alia, of the objective and content of that agreement, in order to establish whether Article 48 TFEU is the appropriate legal basis for the adoption of that decision.
50. As the Court has already had occasion to state, one of the principal aims of the EEA Agreement, to which the United Kingdom and Ireland are also parties, is to provide for the fullest possible realisation of the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital within the whole EEA, so that the internal market established within the European Union is extended to the EFTA States (Case C‑452/01 Ospelt and Schlössle Weissenberg  [2003] ECR I‑9743, paragraph 29).
55. Consequently, as the Commission has correctly pointed out, the contested decision does not seek only to regulate the social rights of nationals of the three EFTA States concerned, but also, and in the same manner, to regulate the social rights of EU citizens in those EFTA States. In other words, the amendment to the EEA Agreement contemplated by the contested decision not only enables, in essence, nationals of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to invoke the rights conferred by Regulations Nos 883/2004 and 987/2009 within the European Union, but also enables nationals of the Member States to rely on those rights in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
56. That said, it must be held that, so far as the present case is concerned, at the time when the EEA Agreement was concluded, Regulation No 1408/71, which was then in force, was incorporated into Annex VI and Protocol 37 to that agreement, and the rules on the coordination of social security systems contained in it were thus extended to the entire EEA.
57. However, in so far as the contested decision seeks to replace the reference to Regulation No 1408/71 with a reference to Regulation No 883/2004, the latter having repealed the former, it should be noted that, from a substantive point of view, that decision makes it possible, in compliance with the commitments entered into by the parties to the EEA Agreement and with the level of integration already attained since its entry into force, to retain the extension of social rights to nationals of the States concerned as already intended and given effect to by the EEA Agreement since 1992.
58. The contested decision is thus precisely one of the measures by which the law governing the EU internal market is to be extended as far as possible to the EEA, with the result that nationals of the EEA States concerned benefit from the free movement of persons under the same social conditions as EU citizens.
67. In that regard, suffice it to note that, in accordance with settled case-law, the legal basis for an act must be determined having regard to its own aim and content and not to the legal basis used for the adoption of other EU measures which might, in certain cases, display similar characteristics (see, inter alia, Case C‑94/03 Commission  v Council  [2006] ECR I‑1, paragraph 50 and the case-law cited).