EU Law - Case Facts – Rewe (1976), Francovich (1991), and Brasserie du Pecheur and Factortame III (1996) PDF

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Case facts of key EU law cases, namely Rewe, Francovich, and Brasserie du Pecher...

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EU Law – Case Facts – Rewe (1976), Francovich (1991), and Brasserie du Pecheur and Factortame III (1996) Rewe (1976)   

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Issue surrounding customs duties, direct effect, abolition and rights of individuals The prohibition laid down in article 13 of the Treaty and laid down in article 13 of Regulation No 159/66/EEC have a direct effect and confer on citizens rights which the national courts are required to protect. In the absence of community rules on this subject, it is for the domestic legal system of each member state to designate the courts having jurisdiction and to determine the procedural conditions governing actions at law intended to ensure the protection of the rights which citizens have from the direct effect of community law, it being understood that such conditions cannot be less favourable than those relating to similar actions of a domestic nature. The position would be different only if the conditions made it impossible in practice to exerciser the rights which the national courts are obliged to protect. The subject of the case was the interpretation or articles 5, 9 and 12 (2) of the EEC Treaty The issue surrounding payment on importation of French apples, which was seen as a form of customs duty. The appellants wanted the decisions imposing the charges annulled and the amounts paid to be refunded with interest on the ground that they were inadmissible because the time-limits laid down by Article 58 of the Verwaltungsgerichtsordnung (code of procedure before the administrative courts) had not been observed. First question asked whether where an administrative body in a state has infringed the prohibition on charges having an effect equivalent to customs duties (articles 5, 9 and 13 (2) or the EEC Treaty). The community citizen concerned has a right under community law to the annulment or revocation of the administrative measure and/or to a refund of the amount paid even if under the rules of procedure of the national law the time-limit for contesting the validity of the administrative measure is past. The second question asks whether this is so if the Court of Justice has already resulted that there does exist an infringement of the prohibition contained in community law. The third question asks whether, if a right to refund is held to exist under community law, interest is to be paid on the amount and if so from what date and what rate. Answer to first question: both the respondent and the national court accept that the charges in question had been unlawfully exacted. Although it has been possible to rely on the direct effect of Article 13 (2) of the EEC Treaty only as from 1st January 1970, the end of the transitional period, it should be stated however that the levying of the said charged was already provisionally unlawful by Virtue of Article 13 (1) of Regulation No 159/66/EEC of the council of 25 October 1966 which abolished them in respect to fruit and vegetables as from January 1967. The prohibition laid down in Article 13 of the treaty and Article 13 of the Regulation No 159/66/EEC have a direct effect and confer on the citizens rights which the national courts are required to protect. Therefore, national courts are entrusted with ensuring the legal protection which citizens derive from the direct effect of the provision of community law. Therefore, it is for domestic legal systems to designate the courts having jurisdiction and determine the procedural conditions governing actions at law intended to ensure

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the protection of the rights which citizens have from the direct effect of community law In the present state of community law, nothing prevents a citizen who contests before a national court a decision of national authority on the ground that it is incompatible in community law Second question answer: the fact that the court has given a ruling doesn’t affect the reply given to the first question Third question: In view of the reply given to the first question the third question does not arise Decision on costs: costs are not recoverable and, in so far as the parties to the main action are concerned, in the nature of a step in the action pending before the national court, costs are a matter for that court. Judgement for 1: the present state of community law there is nothing to prevent a citizen who contests before a national court a decision of a national authority on the ground that it is incompatible with community law from being confronted with the defence that limitation periods laid down by national law have expired, it being understood that the procedural conditions governing the action may not be less favourable than those relating to similar actions of a domestic nature. The fact that the court has given a ruling on the question of infringement of the treaty does not affect the reply given to the first question. Conclusion: there is no EU law duty on a member state to introduce remedies for an EU law claim as national procedural autonomy must be maintained, but member states must ensure that remedies are available to give effect to EU law

Francovich (1991) 

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One of the defining and controversial characteristics of the European Union has been the supranational nature of its institutions and laws. The European Court of Justice has been keen to extend the rights that are available to EU citizens. This case brought up the concept of state liability as well as the development of incidental horizontal effect. Mr Francovich, along with other employees, was left with unpaid salaries when his company went bust. He applied for compensation under the provisions of Directive 80/987 which required member states to institute compensation measures for such instances. In the absence of the Italian government instituting such measures, the case was referred to the Court of a ruling The court found the wording of the directive sufficiently vague as to not invoke the principle of direct effect. However, to deny the claimants justice because of this deficiency would be to impinge on the effet utile or utility of EU law that was intended to provide adequate compensation Even in the absence of sufficiently applicable directives, there was an obligation under the provisions of Article 5 EC Treaty (now Article 10) to compensate individuals for any loss suffered due to the failure of a Member State to implement Community law. The court ruled that individuals had a right to compensation when there was a violation of a member state’s duty to implement community law, provided that three conditions were met: 1. The directive must confer rights on individuals

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2. The contents of those rights must be identifiable in the wording of the measure 3. There must be a casual link between the damage suffered and the failure to implement the Directive Issues raised by the case: - Steiner et all outlined the significance of the ruling saying “Francovich introduced the notion of state liability, and created substantive rights for individuals in certain circumstances” - One of the main issues in this ruling is the propensity for member states to not comply with directives. A government may opt for non-compliance in the knowledge that the costs of compliance outweigh any potential sanction imposed by the Court. Non-compliance affects the uniform accessibility of rights across the Union and can cause discrimination between citizens in complying as opposed to non-complying states. - Prior to this, court’s rulings were based on guaranteeing that directives had direct effect as established in Van Gen den Loos - The significance of this case is that, in holding national governments accountable, they were also now liable to pay compensation for their failure to transpose a directive into national law within the stated time limit. Ruling: member states are liable in instances where they have failed to implement a directive which did not have direct effect because of the imprecise nature of the directive’s wording - Italian state had to pay - The ruling also allows for “national private law remedies or their equivalent to be made available for breaches of Community law” - The court effectively tied the principle of a member state’s liability to EC law as contained in the treaties, while laying down uniform criteria governing such liability. - The ruling was modified in a later ruling of Brasserie du Pecheur The court adopted a proactive approach and it could be argued that the foremost concern was to extend the applicability of EU law to European citizens. This is evident from early proactive rulings which established the supremacy of EU law, despite such a doctrine not being contained within the treaties at the time. This makes the ruling important in the extended access to rights by European citizens from the direct effectiveness of directives to state liability, and the eventual establishment of incidental horizontal effect

Brasserie du Pecheur and Factortame III (1996)   

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In Brasserie, the court extended the scope of liability to include any breach of EU law irrespective of which organ of state was responsible for the breach Also modified the second criteria of the Francovich ruling to state that the breach must be sufficiently serious, with this being determined by testing whether the state deliberately disregarded its responsibilities Brasserie was a case about Beer purity laws and the failure of Germany to amend the beer purity law as a breach of EU law - The scope of the principle of state liability is unlimited. Any violation of any organs of the state count. It applies to any aspect of EU law Factortame – sought to recover substantially from the UK government for their breaching of EU law after the Factortame saga

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Could they recover and if so, under what rules? The decision ruled that they could recover The reasoning was...