Gemeente Steenbergen v Luc Baten.
Date: 2002-11-14
28 It is settled case-law that, since Article 1 of the Brussels Convention serves to indicate the area of application of the Convention, it is necessary, in order to ensure, as far as possible, that the rights and obligations which derive from it for the Contracting States and the persons to whom it applies are equal and uniform, that the terms of that provision should not be interpreted as a mere reference to the internal law of one or other of the States concerned. The concept referred to must therefore be regarded as an independent concept to be interpreted by reference, first, to the objectives and, secondly, to the general principles which stem from the national legal systems as a whole (Case 29/76 LTU [1976] ECR 1541, paragraph 3; Case 133/78 Gourdain [1979] ECR 733, paragraph 3; Case 814/79 Rüffer [1980] ECR 3807, paragraph 7; and Case C-172/91 Sonntag [1993] ECR I-1963, paragraph 18).
29 The Court has made it clear that that interpretation results in the exclusion of certain judicial decisions from the scope of the Brussels Convention, owing either to the legal relationships between the parties to the action or to its subject-matter (LTU, cited above, paragraph 4).
30 Thus the Court has held that, although certain judgments in actions between a public authority and a person governed by private law may come within the scope of the Brussels Convention, it is otherwise where the public authority is acting in the exercise of its public powers (LTU, cited above, paragraph 4, and Rüffer, paragraph 8).
31 In order to determine whether that is so in a case such as that in point in the main proceedings, in which a public body seeks from a person governed by private law recovery of sums paid by it by way of social assistance to the former spouse and the child of that person, it is necessary to examine the basis and the detailed rules governing the bringing of that action.
37 In light of the foregoing considerations, the reply to the first question must be that the first paragraph of Article 1 of the Brussels Convention must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of `civil matters' encompasses an action under a right of recourse whereby a public body seeks from a person governed by private law recovery of sums paid by it by way of social assistance to the divorced spouse and the child of that person, provided that the basis and the detailed rules relating to the bringing of that action are governed by the rules of the ordinary law in regard to maintenance obligations. Where the action under a right of recourse is founded on provisions by which the legislature conferred on the public body a prerogative of its own, that action cannot be regarded as being brought in `civil matters'.
Second question
43 In view of the link between the Brussels Convention and Community law (see Case C-398/92 Mund & Fester [1994] ECR I-467, paragraph 12, and Case C-7/98 Krombach [2000] ECR I-1935, paragraph 24), regard must be had to the substance of that concept in Community law.
45 It must therefore be held that the substance of the concept of `social security' in the second paragraph of Article 1 of the Brussels Convention encompasses the matters covered by Regulation No 1408/71, as defined in Article 4 thereof and clarified in the Court's case-law.
46 However, irrespective of how, in the light of Article 4 of Regulation No 1408/71, benefits paid by way of social assistance by a public body to persons without resources are to be characterised, the action under a right of recourse brought by that body against a third party, a person governed by private law, as the subject of an obligation to pay maintenance to the persons assisted, is not concerned with the conditions under which the benefits in question are granted but with recovery of the sums paid in that regard.
47 It follows that, in any event, the subject-matter of the dispute does not concern the application of Regulation No 1408/71.