Criminal proceedings against Rafael Ruiz Bernáldez.
Date: 1996-03-28
7. On this point, the Court has consistently held that it is for the national courts alone, before which the proceedings are pending and which must assume responsibility for the judgment to be given, to determine, having regard to the particular features of each case, both the need for a preliminary ruling to enable them to give judgment and the relevance of the questions which they refer to the Court.  A request for a preliminary ruling from a national court may be rejected only if it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law sought by that court bears no relation to the actual nature of the case or the subject-matter of the main action (see,  inter alia , Case C-143/94  Furlanis Costruzioni Generali  [1995] ECR I-0000, paragraph 12). That is not so, however, in the main proceedings in this case.
13. The preambles to the directives show that their aim is firstly to ensure the free movement of vehicles normally based on Community territory and of persons travelling in those vehicles, and secondly of guaranteeing that the victims of accidents caused by those vehicles receive comparable treatment irrespective of where in the Community the accident has 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).
14. For that purpose the First Directive, having regard to the agreement between the national insurers ' bureaux, 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, subject to the derogations in Article 4, to take all appropriate measures to ensure that civil liability in respect of the use of vehicles is covered by insurance.
15. The original version of that article left it to the Member States, however, to determine the damage covered and the terms and conditions of compulsory insurance.
16. In order to reduce the disparities which continued to exist between the laws of the Member States with respect to the extent of the obligation of insurance cover (third recital in the preamble to the Second Directive), Article 1 of the Second Directive required compulsory cover, as regards civil liability, for both damage to property and personal injuries, up to specified sums. Article 1 of the Third Directive extended that obligation to cover for personal injuries to passengers other than the driver.
18. In view of the aim of ensuring protection, stated repeatedly in the directives, Article 3(1) of the First Directive, as developed and supplemented by the Second and Third Directives, must be interpreted as meaning that compulsory motor insurance must enable third-party victims of accidents caused by vehicles to be compensated for all the damage to property and personal injuries sustained by them, up to the amounts fixed in Article 1(2) of the Second Directive.
19. Any other interpretation would have the effect of allowing Member States to limit payment of compensation to third-party victims of a road-traffic accident to certain types of damage, thus bringing about disparities in the treatment of victims depending on where the accident occurred, which is precisely what the directives are intended to avoid. Article 3(1) of the First Directive would then be deprived of its effectiveness.
20. That being so, Article 3(1) of the First Directive precludes an insurer from being able to rely on statutory provisions or contractual clauses to refuse to compensate third-party victims of an accident caused by the insured vehicle.
21. In that context the first subparagraph of Article 2(1) of the Second Directive merely recalls that obligation with respect to provisions or clauses in a policy excluding from insurance the use or driving of vehicles in particular cases (persons not authorized to drive the vehicle, persons not holding a driving licence, persons in breach of the statutory technical requirements concerning the condition and safety of the vehicle). However, by way of derogation from that obligation, the second and third subparagraphs of Article 2(1) provide that certain persons may be excluded from compensation by the insurer, having regard to the situation they have themselves brought about (persons entering a vehicle which they know to have been stolen) or to the compensation they can claim elsewhere (victims who may obtain compensation for the damage suffered from a social security body).