T-Mobile Austria GmbH v Verein für Konsumenteninformation.
Date: 2014-04-09
20. According to settled case-law, questions on the interpretation of European Union law referred by a national court in the factual and legislative context which that court is responsible for defining and the accuracy of which is not a matter for the Court to determine, enjoy a presumption of relevance. The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of European Union law that is sought bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it (see, inter alia, Case C‑379/98 PreussenElektra  EU:C:2001:160, paragraph 39; Joined Cases C‑222/05 to C‑225/05 van der Weerd and Others  EU:C:2007:318, paragraph 22; and Case C‑5/12 Betriu Montull  EU:C:2013:571, paragraph 34).
31. As a preliminary point, it should be noted that there is some divergence between the different language versions of that provision, as the Advocate General notes in point 36 of his Opinion. It is true that, in all language versions, the adjective ‘personalised’ describes the phrase ‘any ... device’. However, in the French version (‘tout dispositif personnalisé et/ou ensemble de procédures’), which is the same as, inter alia, the Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Portuguese and Romanian versions, the adjective ‘personalised’ does not describe the phrase ‘set of procedures’. In contrast, in the German version (‘jedes personalisierte Instrument und/oder jeden personalisierten Verfahrensablauf’), the adjective ‘personalised’ describes the phrase ‘set of procedures’. The English version (‘any personalised device(s) and/or set of procedures’), which is the same as, inter alia, the Danish, Greek, Dutch, Finnish and Swedish versions, lends itself to both readings.
32. According to settled case-law, provisions of European Union law must be interpreted and applied uniformly in the light of the versions existing in all the languages of the European Union. Where there is divergence between two language versions of a European Union legal text, the provision in question must be interpreted by reference to the purpose and general scheme of the rules of which it forms part (see, inter alia, Case C‑89/12 Bark  EU:C:2013:276, paragraph 40, and Case C‑309/11 Commission  v Finland  EU:C:2013:610, paragraph 49).
33. In this respect, the Verein, the Austrian, German and French Governments and the Commission rightly point out that, a payment instrument must allow the payment service provider to verify that the payment order was initiated by a user authorised to do so in order for it to be considered to be personalised.
34. However, as the French Government notes, some payment instruments expressly referred to in Article 53 of Directive 2007/64 are not personalised. Thus, it is apparent, for example, from Article 53(1)(b) of that directive that some payment instruments are used anonymously, in which case the payment service providers are not required to prove that the transaction in question was authenticated in the situation referred to in Article 59 of that directive.
35. It necessarily follows from the existence of such non-personalised payment instruments that the concept of payment instrument defined in Article 4.23 of the directive is capable of covering a non-personalised set of procedures, agreed between the user and the payment service provider, and used by the user in order to initiate a payment order.
50. According to settled case-law, the interpretation which the Court, in the exercise of the jurisdiction conferred on it by Article 267 TFEU, gives to a rule of European Union law clarifies and defines the meaning and scope of that rule as it must be, or ought to have been, understood and applied from the time of its entry into force. It follows that the rule as thus interpreted may and must be applied by the courts to legal relationships arising and established before the judgment ruling on the request for interpretation, provided that in other respects the conditions for bringing before the courts having jurisdiction an action relating to the application of that rule are satisfied (see, inter alia, Case C‑92/11 RWE Vertrieb  EU:C:2013:180, paragraph 58 and the case-law cited).
51. Furthermore, a limitation of the temporal effects of a judgment is an exceptional measure which assumes that there is a risk of serious economic repercussions owing in particular to the large number of legal relationships entered into in good faith on the basis of rules considered to be validly in force and that it appears that individuals and national authorities have been led to adopt practices which do not comply with European Union law by reason of objective, significant uncertainty regarding the implications of European Union provisions, to which the conduct of other Member States or the Commission may even have contributed (see, inter alia, Case C‑209/12 Endress  EU:C:2013:864, paragraph 36 and the case-law cited).
53. In addition, it must be noted that T-Mobile Austria merely refers to ‘serious financial consequences’ for undertakings in the telecommunications sector in the European Union, without adducing evidence or providing precise data in that respect, as noted by the Advocate General in point 98 of his Opinion. In those circumstances, the existence of a risk of serious economic consequences has not been established (see, to that effect, Endress  EU:C:2013:864, paragraph 37).