Vitor Manuel Mendes Ferreira and Maria Clara Delgado Correia Ferreira v Companhia de Seguros Mundial Confiança SA.
Date: 2000-09-14
19 Mundial Confiança maintains that the national court is confusing compulsory insurance against civil liability in respect of motor vehicles, which is governed by the various directives, with private-law rules governing civil liability, which have not been the subject of any harmonisation. The sole purpose of Article 3 of the Second Directive, it submits, is to have the Member States remove any unequal treatment considered to be unfair in the area of domestic law on compulsory civil liability motor-vehicle insurance, and that this is clear from the recitals to the Second Directive.
23 On this point, it should be observed first of all that it is clear from the aim of the three directives governing insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles and from their wording that they do not seek to harmonise the rules of the Member States governing civil liability.
24 As the Court held in Case C-129/94 Ruiz Bernáldez [1996] ECR I-1829, at paragraphs 13 to 16, the preambles to the directives in question show that their aim is, first, to ensure the free movement of vehicles normally based on Community territory and of persons travelling in those vehicles and, second, to guarantee that the victims of accidents caused by those vehicles receive comparable treatment irrespective of where in the Community the accident occurred (see, more particularly, the fifth recital in the preamble to the Second Directive and the fourth recital in the preamble to the Third Directive).
25 For that purpose, the First Directive established a system based on the presumption that vehicles normally based on Community territory are covered by insurance (see the eighth recital). Article 3(1) of the First Directive thus provides that Member States are to take all appropriate measures to ensure that civil liability in respect of the use of vehicles normally based in their territory is covered by insurance.
26 However, the original version of that article left it to the Member States to determine the damage covered and the terms and conditions of the compulsory insurance against civil liability. In order to reduce the disparities which continued to exist between the laws of the Member States as regards the extent of the obligation to insure (third recital in the preamble to the Second Directive), Article 1 of the Second Directive required civil liability for damage to property and personal injuries to be compulsorily covered up to specified sums and Article 3 of that directive provided that, as regards personal injuries, the members of the family of the insured person or of the driver may not be excluded from cover on the ground of their family relationship. Article 1 of the Third Directive extended that obligation to provide cover for personal injuries to passengers other than the driver.
27 Article 3(1) of the First Directive, as amplified and supplemented by the Second and Third Directives, thus requires the Member States to ensure that civil liability in respect of the use of vehicles normally based in their territory is covered by insurance, and specifies, inter alia, the types of loss or injury and the third-party victims to be covered by that insurance. On the other hand, that provision does not state what type of civil liability, for risk or for fault, is to be covered.
29 It follows that, as Community law stands at present, the Member States are free to determine the type of civil liability applicable to road-traffic accidents. However, they must ensure that the civil liability arising under their domestic law is covered by insurance which complies with the provisions of the three directives in question.
33 The accident which gave rise to the main proceedings occurred in fact on 12 February 1995, before the date on which the period laid down by the Third Directive for transposition by the Portuguese Republic expired, which was on 31 December 1995. That directive cannot therefore be relied on by individuals before national courts (see Case C-316/93 Vaneetveld [1994] ECR I-763, paragraph 16).