Proceedings brought by Mircea Florian Freitag.
Date: 2017-06-08
29


In the procedure providing for cooperation between national courts and the Court of Justice, it is for the latter to provide the national court with an answer which will be of use to it and enable it to determine the case before it. To that end, the Court may have to reformulate the questions referred to it (see, inter alia, judgment of 19 September 2013, Betriu Montull, C‑5/12, EU:C:2013:571, paragraph 40).
31


It must be added that, in accordance with the Court’s settled case-law, Article 21 TFEU contains not only the right to move and reside freely in the territory of the Member States but also a prohibition of any discrimination on grounds of nationality. Consequently, the applicant’s situation should be examined in the light of that provision alone (judgment of 12 May 2011, Runevič-Vardyn and Wardyn, C‑391/09, EU:C:2011:291, paragraph 65; see, by analogy, judgment of 2 June 2016, Bogendorff von Wolffersdorff, C‑438/14, EU:C:2016:401, paragraph 34).
33


It follows from settled case-law that although, as EU law stands at present, the rules governing the way in which a person’s surname is entered on certificates of civil status are matters coming within the competence of the Member States, the latter must nonetheless, when exercising that competence, comply with EU law and, in particular, with the FEU Treaty provisions on the freedom of every citizen of the Union to move and reside in the territory of the Member States (judgments of 2 October 2003, Garcia Avello, C‑148/02, EU:C:2003:539, paragraph 25; of 14 October 2008, Grunkin and Paul, C‑353/06, EU:C:2008:559, paragraph 16; of 22 December 2010, Sayn-Wittgenstein, C‑208/09, EU:C:2010:806, paragraphs 38 and 39; of 12 May 2011, Runevič-Vardyn and Wardyn, C‑391/09, EU:C:2011:291, paragraph 63; and of 2 June 2016, Bogendorff von Wolffersdorff, C‑438/14, EU:C:2016:401, paragraph 32).
34


According to settled case-law, a link with EU law exists in regard to nationals of one Member State lawfully resident in the territory of another Member State (judgment of 2 October 2003, Garcia Avello, C‑148/02, EU:C:2003:539, paragraph 27). That is the case as regards the applicant in the main proceedings, who is a Romanian national and is resident in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, of which he is also a national.
35


It must be borne in mind that the Court has repeatedly held that national legislation which places certain of the nationals of the Member State concerned at a disadvantage simply because they have exercised their freedom to move and to reside in another Member State is a restriction on the freedoms conferred by Article 21(1) TFEU on every citizen of the Union (judgments of 14 October 2008, Grunkin and Paul, C‑353/06, EU:C:2008:559, paragraph 21; of 22 December 2010, Sayn-Wittgenstein, C‑208/09, EU:C:2010:806, paragraph 53; of 12 May 2011, Runevič-Vardyn and Wardyn, C‑391/09, EU:C:2011:291, paragraph 68; and of 2 June 2016, Bogendorff von Wolffersdorff, C‑438/14, EU:C:2016:401, paragraph 36).
36


It also follows from the case-law of the Court that a refusal by the authorities of a Member State to recognise the name of a national of that State who exercised his right of free movement in the territory of another Member State, as determined in that second Member State, is likely to hinder the exercise of the right, enshrined in Article 21 TFEU, to move and reside freely in the territories of the Member States. Confusion and inconvenience are liable to arise from the divergence between the two names used for the same person (see, to that effect, judgment of 2 June 2016, Bogendorff von Wolffersdorff, C‑438/14, EU:C:2016:401, paragraph 37).
37


In that regard, it must be borne in mind that many daily actions, both in the public and in the private domains, require a person to provide evidence of his or her own identity and also, in the case of a family, evidence of the nature of the links between different family members (judgments of 12 May 2011, Runevič-Vardyn and Wardyn, C‑391/09, EU:C:2011:291, paragraph 73, and of 2 June 2016, Bogendorff von Wolffersdorff, C‑438/14, EU:C:2016:401, paragraph 43).
38


For a national of two Member States, such as the applicant in the main proceedings, there is a real risk — because he bears two different surnames, namely Pavel and Freitag — of being obliged to dispel doubts as to his identity and the authenticity of the documents submitted, or the veracity of their content, which, as the Court has ruled, is such as to hinder the exercise of the right which flows from Article 21 TFEU (see judgments of 22 December 2010, Sayn-Wittgenstein, C‑208/09, EU:C:2010:806, paragraph 70, and of 2 June 2016, Bogendorff von Wolffersdorff, C‑438/14, EU:C:2016:401, paragraph 40).
42


In the absence of EU legislation in respect of modification of surnames, it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State to determine the detailed rules laid down by national law and intended to safeguard the rights which individuals derive from EU law, provided, first, that those rules are not less favourable than those governing rights which originate in domestic law (principle of equivalence) and, second, that they do not render impossible or excessively difficult in practice the exercise of rights conferred by the EU legal order (principle of effectiveness) (see, inter alia, by analogy, judgments of 12 September 2006, Eman and Sevinger, C‑300/04, EU:C:2006:545, paragraph 67; of 3 July 2014, Kamino International Logistics and Datema Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, C‑129/13 and C‑130/13, EU:C:2014:2041, paragraph 75; and of 8 March 2017, Euro Park Service, C‑14/16, EU:C:2017:177, paragraph 36).