Criminal proceedings against Giovanni Dell'Orto.
Date: 2007-06-28
34. First of all, it should be noted that, in accordance with Article 46(b) EU, the provisions of the EC and EAEC Treaties concerning the powers of the Court of Justice and the exercise of those powers, including the provisions of Article 234 EC, apply to the provisions of Title VI of the Treaty on European Union under the conditions laid down by Article 35 EU. Contrary to what is argued by the United Kingdom Government, it therefore follows that the system under Article 234 EC is capable of being applied to the Court’s jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings by virtue of Article 35 EU, subject to the conditions laid down by that provision (see, to that effect, Pupino , paragraphs 19 and 28).
35. It is established that the Italian Republic indicated, by a declaration which took effect on 1 May 1999, the date on which the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force, that it accepts the jurisdiction of the Court to rule on the validity and interpretation of the acts referred to in Article 35 EU in accordance with the rules laid down in paragraph 3(b) of that article. It is also undisputed that the Framework Decision, based on Articles 31 EU and 34 EU, is one of the acts referred to in Article 35(1) EU on which the Court may rule in a reference for a preliminary ruling ( Pupino , paragraphs 20 and 22) and it is accepted that the judge in charge of preliminary investigations at the Tribunale di Milano, acting in proceedings such as those in the main action, must be considered as a court or tribunal of a Member State for the purposes of Article 35 EU.
39. The Court observes that, like Article 234 EC, Article 35 EU makes reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling subject to the condition that the national court ‘considers that a decision on the question is necessary in order to enable it to give judgment’, meaning that the case-law of the Court of Justice on the admissibility of references under Article 234 EC is, in principle, transposable to references for a preliminary ruling submitted to the Court of Justice under Article 35 EU ( Pupino , paragraph 29).
40. It follows that the presumption that questions referred by national courts for a preliminary ruling are relevant may be rebutted only in exceptional cases, where it is quite obvious that the interpretation which is sought of the provisions of Union law referred to in the questions bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or to its purpose or where the problem is hypothetical or the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it. Save for such cases, the Court is, in principle, required to give a ruling on questions concerning the interpretation of the acts referred to in Article 35(1) EU ( Pupino , paragraph 30).
48. In that regard, it must be recalled that, according to settled case-law, procedural rules are generally held to apply to all proceedings pending at the time when they enter into force, whereas substantive rules are usually interpreted as not applying to situations existing before their entry into force (see, inter alia, Case C-293/04 Beemsterboer Coldstore Services  [2006] ECR I-2263, paragraph 21 and case-law cited).
53. It follows from the wording of this provision that the Framework Decision applies only to natural persons who have suffered harm directly caused by conduct which infringes the criminal law of a Member State.
54. To interpret the Framework Decision to mean that it would also apply to ‘legal’ persons who, like the civil party to the main action, maintain that they have suffered harm directly caused by a criminal act, would contradict the very letter of Article 1(a) of the Framework Decision.
55. In addition, there is no indication in any other provision of the Framework Decision that the European Union legislature intended to extend the concept of victim for the purposes of the application of the Framework Decision to legal persons. The converse is in fact the case, as several provisions of the Framework Decision confirm that the legislature’s objective was to limit its scope exclusively to natural persons who are victims of harm resulting from a criminal act.
56. In that regard, apart from Article 1(a) of the Framework Decision, which refers, so far as the principal categories of harm are concerned, to physical or mental injury and to emotional suffering, reference should also be made to Article 2(1) of the Framework Decision, which obliges each Member State to make every effort to ensure that victims are treated with due respect for the dignity of the individual, Article 2(2), which refers to the specific treatment from which victims who are particularly vulnerable can benefit, and also Article 8(1) of the Framework Decision, which obliges the Member States to ensure a suitable level of protection to the family of the victim or to persons in a similar position.
57. The Directive is not of such a kind as to invalidate this interpretation. The Framework Decision and the Directive govern different matters. The Directive sets up a system of cooperation to facilitate access to compensation to victims of crimes in cross-border situations. It seeks to ensure that where a violent intentional crime has been committed in a Member State other than that in which the victim is habitually resident, the victim shall receive compensation from the former Member State. The Framework Decision, on the other hand, aims to approximate the legislation of the Member States concerning the protection of the interests of the victim in criminal proceedings. It seeks to ensure that the offender makes reparation for the harm suffered by the victim.
59. Moreover, a situation such as that in the main action does not fall within the scope of the Directive. As is evident from paragraph 57 of this judgment, the Directive provides for compensation only where a violent intentional crime has been committed in a Member State other than that in which the victim is habitually resident, whereas the main action relates to offences of false accounting, aggravated embezzlement and unlawful financing of political parties committed substantially on the territory of the Member State in which the victim resides.