Moteurs Leroy Somer v Dalkia France and Ace Europe.
Date: 2009-06-04
20. It is, furthermore, true that the Court has held that the margin of discretion available to the Member States to make provision for product liability is entirely determined by Directive 85/374 itself and must be inferred from its wording, purpose and structure (Case C-402/03 Skov and Bilka  [2006] ECR I-199, paragraph 22 and the case-law cited).
21. In that respect, the Court has pointed out that Directive 85/374 seeks to achieve, in the matters regulated by it, complete harmonisation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States ( Skov and Bilka , paragraph 23 and the case-law cited).
22. It is also true that the Court has held that Article 13 of Directive 85/374, which provides that the directive is not to affect any rights which an injured person may have according to the rules of contractual or non-contractual liability or a special liability system existing at the moment when that directive was notified, could not be interpreted as leaving it open to the Member States to maintain a general system of product liability different from that provided for in the directive ( Skov and Bilka , paragraph 39 and the case-law cited).
23. Furthermore, the Court has held that Article 13 of Directive 85/374 must be interpreted as meaning that the system of rules put in place by the directive does not preclude the application of other systems of contractual or non-contractual liability based on other grounds, such as fault or a warranty in respect of latent defects ( Skov and Bilka , paragraph 47 and the case-law cited).
24. However, the fact remains that Directive 85/374 can preclude a system of liability such as that at issue in the main proceedings only on condition that that system is covered by the scope of application of that directive.
25. Although Directive 85/374, as was pointed out in paragraph 21 of the present judgment, seeks to achieve, in the matters regulated by it, complete harmonisation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States, it does not, however, as is apparent from the 18th recital in the preamble thereto, seek exhaustively to harmonise the field of liability for defective products beyond those matters.
29. That interpretation is not invalidated by the fact that Directive 85/374, as is clear from the first recital in the preamble thereto and from the case-law of the Court (Case C-52/00 Commission  v France  [2002] ECR I-3827, paragraph 17; Case C-154/00 Commission  v Greece  [2002] ECR I-3879, paragraph 13; and Case C-183/00 González Sánchez  [2002] ECR I-3901, paragraph 26), aims not only to avoid differences in levels of consumer protection, but also to ensure undistorted competition between traders and to facilitate the free movement of goods.
30. Nothing in the wording of Directive 85/374 leads to the conclusion that the Community legislature, by limiting compensation for damage to goods under that directive to items of property intended for private use or consumption, intended, so as to ensure undistorted competition and to facilitate the free movement of goods, to deprive the Member States of the power, concerning compensation for damage to an item of property intended for professional use and employed for that purpose, to provide for a system of liability which corresponds to that established by that directive.