Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti v Organismul Intermediar pentru Programul Operaţional Capital Uman - Ministerul Educaţiei Naţionale.
Date: 2021-03-17
In that regard, it must be borne in mind that, in the context of the cooperation between the Court and the national courts established in Article 267 TFEU, it is solely for the national court before which a dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine, in the light of the particular circumstances of the case, both the need of a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted concern the interpretation of EU law, the Court is, in principle, bound to give a ruling (judgment of 19 December 2019, Darie, C‑592/18, EU:C:2019:1140, paragraph 24 and the case-law cited).
It follows that questions relating to EU law enjoy a presumption of relevance. The Court may refuse to give a ruling on a question referred by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of EU 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 enable it to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it (judgment of 8 October 2020, Union des industries de la protection des plantes, C‑514/19, EU:C:2020:803, paragraph 29 and the case-law cited).
Fourthly, with regard to the position expressed by the Commission that, since the dispute in the main proceedings concerns the remuneration of workers, it does not concern Directive 2003/88, it is important to recall that, with the exception of the specific case of paid annual leave, referred to in Article 7(1) thereof, the latter is limited to regulating certain aspects of the organisation of working time in order to ensure the protection of the safety and health of workers, so that, in principle, it does not apply to workers’ pay (judgment of 30 April 2020,Készenléti Rendőrség, C‑211/19, EU:C:2020:344, paragraph 23  and the case-law cited).
As a preliminary matter, it must be recalled that the right of every worker to a limitation of maximum working hours and to daily and weekly rest periods not only constitutes a rule of EU social law of particular importance, but is also expressly enshrined in Article 31(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union that Article 6(1) TEU recognises as having the same legal value as the Treaties (see, to that effect, judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraph 30 and the case-law cited).
The provisions of Directive 2003/88, in particular Articles 3 thereof, give specific form to that fundamental right and must, therefore, be interpreted in the light of the latter (see, to that effect, the judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraph 31 and the case-law cited).
That said, it follows from the settled case-law of the Court that, for the purpose of interpreting a provision of EU law, it is necessary to consider not only its wording but also the context in which it occurs and the objectives pursued by the rules of which it is part (see, in particular, judgment of 6 October 2020, Jobcenter Krefeld, C‑181/19, EU:C:2020:794, paragraph 61 and the case-law cited).
Article 3 of that directive requires Member States to take the measures necessary to ensure that ‘every worker’ is entitled to a minimum rest period of 11 consecutive hours per 24-hour period (see, to that effect, judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraph 38).
The Court has repeatedly held that that concept and the concept of ‘working time’ are mutually exclusive, and that Directive 2003/88 does not provide for any intermediate category between working time and rest periods (judgment of 10 September 2015, Federación de Servicios Privados del sindicato Comisiones obreras, C‑266/14, EU:C:2015:578, paragraphs 25 and 26 and the case-law cited).
Furthermore, Article 2 of that directive is not one of the provisions from which it is possible to derogate (judgment of 10 September 2015, Federación de Servicios Privados del sindicato Comisiones obreras, C‑266/14, EU:C:2015:578, paragraph 28 and the case-law cited).
It must be recalled that the aim of Directive 2003/88 is to lay down minimum requirements intended to improve the living and working conditions of workers through approximation of national provisions concerning, in particular, the duration of working time (judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraph 36 and the case-law cited).
That harmonisation of the organisation of working time at EU level is designed to guarantee better protection of the safety and health of workers by ensuring that they are entitled to minimum rest periods – particularly daily and weekly – and to adequate breaks and by setting a maximum limit on the weekly working time (see, to that effect, (judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraph 37 and the case-law cited).
Furthermore, according to the case-law of the Court, the worker must be regarded as the weaker party in the employment relationship, so that it is necessary to prevent the employer from being able to impose on him a restriction of his rights (judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraph 44 and the case-law cited).
On account of that position of weakness, such a worker may be dissuaded from explicitly claiming his rights vis-à-vis his employer where, in particular, doing so may expose him to measures taken by the employer likely to affect the employment relationship in a manner detrimental to that worker (see, to that effect, judgment of 14 May 2019, CCOO, C‑55/18, EU:C:2019:402, paragraphs 45 and the case-law cited).
According to the Court’s case-law, the essential feature of an employment relationship is that for a certain period of time a person performs services for and under the direction of another person in return for which he receives remuneration (judgment of 20 November 2018, Sindicatul Familia Constanliana and Others, C‑147/17, EU:C:2018:926, paragraph 41).
It follows that an employment relationship implies the existence of a hierarchical relationship between the worker and his employer. Whether such a relationship exists must, in each particular case, be assessed on the basis of all the factors and circumstances characterising the relationship between the parties (judgment of 11 April 2019, Bosworth and Hurley, C‑603/17, EU:C:2019:310,  paragraph 26).
It must be recalled, according to the Court’s case-law, as regards the possibilities of derogation provided for by Directive 2003/88, in particular in Article 17 thereof, as exceptions to the EU rules on the organisation of working time laid down by that directive, that those derogations must be interpreted in such a way as to limit their scope to what is strictly necessary in order to safeguard the interests which those derogations enable to be protected (judgment of 21 February 2018, Matzak, C‑518/15, EU:C:2018:82, paragraph 38 and the case-law cited).
Furthermore, it has been held that Article 17(1) of Directive 2003/88 applies to workers whose working time, as a whole, is not measured or predetermined, or can be determined by the workers themselves on account of the particular characteristics of the activity carried out (judgment of 26 July 2017, Hälvä and Others, C‑175/16, EU:C:2017:617, paragraph 32 and the case-law cited).
It is clear from settled case-law that, whenever the provisions of a directive appear, so far as their subject matter is concerned, to be unconditional and sufficiently precise, they may be relied upon before the national courts by individuals against the State where the latter has failed to implement the directive in domestic law by the end of the period prescribed or where it has failed to implement the directive correctly (see, to that effect, judgment of 6 November 2018, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, C‑684/16, EU:C:2018:874, paragraph 63 and the case-law cited).
It should be added that the question whether a national provision must be disapplied in so far as it is contrary to EU law arises only if no interpretation of that provision in conformity with EU law proves possible (judgment of 6 November 2018, Bauer and Willmeroth, C‑569/16 and C‑570/16, EU:C:2018:871, paragraph 65).
The principle that national law must be interpreted in conformity with EU law, under which the national court is bound to interpret national law, so far as possible, in conformity with the requirements of EU law, is inherent in the system of the Treaties, in that it enables that court to ensure, within the limits of its jurisdiction, the full effectiveness of EU law when it determines the dispute before it (judgment of 14 May 2020, Staatsanwaltschaft Offenburg, C‑615/18, EU:C:2020:376, paragraph 69 and the case-law cited).
Finally, as regards the request by the ASE, it must be recalled that, 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 an action relating to the application of that rule before the courts having jurisdiction are satisfied (judgment of 3 October 2019, Schuch-Ghannadan, C‑274/18, EU:C:2019:828, paragraph 60 and the case-law cited).
It is only quite exceptionally that the Court may, in application of the general principle of legal certainty inherent in the EU legal order, be moved to restrict for any person concerned the opportunity of relying on a provision which it has interpreted with a view to calling into question legal relationships established in good faith. Two essential criteria must be fulfilled before such a limitation can be imposed: those concerned must have acted in good faith and there must be a risk of serious difficulties (judgment of 3 October 2019, Schuch-Ghannadan, C‑274/18, EU:C:2019:828, paragraph 61 and the case-law cited).
More specifically, the Court has taken that step only in quite specific circumstances, notably where there was 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 where it appeared that individuals and national authorities had been led to adopt practices which did not comply with EU law by reason of objective, significant uncertainty regarding the implications of EU provisions, to which the conduct of other Member States or the European Commission may even have contributed (judgment of 3 October 2019, Schuch-Ghannadan, C‑274/18, EU:C:2019:828, paragraph 62 and the case-law cited).