Eirini Lechouritou and Others v Dimosio tis Omospondiakis Dimokratias tis Germanias.
Date: 2007-02-15
18. It must be pointed out at the outset that neither the Statute of the Court of Justice nor its Rules of Procedure make provision for the parties to submit observations in response to the Advocate General’s Opinion. The Court has therefore held that applications to that effect must be rejected (see, in particular, the order in Case C‑17/98 Emesa Sugar  [2000] ECR I-665, paragraphs 2 and 19).
25. The Court may, of its own motion, on a proposal from the Advocate General or at the request of the parties order the reopening of the oral procedure under Article 61 of its Rules of Procedure, if it considers that it lacks sufficient information or that the case must be dealt with on the basis of an argument which has not been debated between the parties (see, inter alia Case C-309/99 Wouters and Others  [2002] ECR I‑1577, paragraph 42; Case C-309/02 Radlberger Getränkegesellschaft and S. Spitz [2004] ECR I‑11763, paragraph 22; and Case C‑308/04 P SGL Carbon  v Commission  [2006] ECR I-5977, paragraph 15).
28. It must be stated at the outset that while the Brussels Convention, in accordance with the first sentence of the first paragraph of Article 1, lays down the principle that its scope is limited to ‘civil and commercial matters’, it does not define the meaning or the scope of that concept.
29. It is to be remembered that, in order to ensure, as far as possible, that the rights and obligations which derive from the Brussels Convention for the Contracting States and the persons to whom it applies are equal and uniform, 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. It is thus clear from the Court’s settled case-law that ‘civil and commercial matters’ must be regarded as an independent concept to be interpreted by referring, first, to the objectives and scheme of the Brussels Convention and, second, to the general principles which stem from the corpus of the national legal systems (see, inter alia, Case 29/76 LTU  [1976] ECR 1541, paragraphs 3 and 5; Case 814/79 Rüffer  [1980] ECR 3807, paragraph 7; Case C‑271/00 Baten  [2002] ECR I-10489, paragraph 28; Case C-266/01 Préservatrice foncière TIARD  [2003] ECR I-4867, paragraph 20; and Case C-343/04 ČEZ  [2006] ECR I-4557, paragraph 22).
30. According to the Court, that interpretation results in the exclusion of certain legal actions and judicial decisions from the scope of the Brussels Convention, by reason either of the legal relationships between the parties to the action or of the subject-matter of the action (see LTU , paragraph 4; Rüffer , paragraph 14; Baten , paragraph 29; Préservatrice foncière TIARD , paragraph 21; ČEZ , paragraph 22; and Case C‑167/00 Henkel  [2002] ECR I-8111, paragraph 29).
31. Thus, the Court has held that, although certain 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 (see LTU , paragraph 4; Rüffer , paragraph 8; Henkel , paragraph 26; Baten , paragraph 30; Préservatrice foncière TIARD , paragraph 22; and Case C-172/91 Sonntag  [1993] ECR I‑1963, paragraph 20).
32. It is pursuant to this principle that the Court has held that a national or international body governed by public law which pursues the recovery of charges payable by a person governed by private law for the use of its equipment and services acts in the exercise of its public powers, in particular where that use is obligatory and exclusive and the rate of charges, the methods of calculation and the procedures for collection are fixed unilaterally in relation to the users ( LTU , paragraph 4).
33. Similarly, the Court has held that the concept of ‘civil and commercial matters’ within the meaning of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the Brussels Convention does not include an action brought by the State as agent responsible for administering public waterways against a person having liability in law in order to recover the costs incurred in the removal of a wreck, in performance of an international obligation, carried out by or at the instigation of that administering agent in the exercise of its public authority ( Rüffer , paragraphs 9 and 16).
34. Disputes of that nature do result from the exercise of public powers by one of the parties to the case, as it exercises powers falling outside the scope of the ordinary legal rules applicable to relationships between private individuals (see, to this effect, Sonntag , paragraph 22; Henkel , paragraph 30; Préservatrice foncière TIARD , paragraph 30; and Case C-265/02 Frahuil  [2004] ECR I‑1543, paragraph 21).
41. First of all, the Court has already held that the fact that the plaintiff acts on the basis of a claim which arises from an act in the exercise of public powers is sufficient for his action, whatever the nature of the proceedings afforded by national law for that purpose, to be treated as being outside the scope of the Brussels Convention (see Rüffer , paragraphs 13 and 15). The fact that the proceedings brought before the referring court are presented as being of a civil nature in so far as they seek financial compensation for the material loss and non-material damage caused to the plaintiffs in the main proceedings is consequently entirely irrelevant.