Monitoring References to the Court of Justice of the European Union
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69 case reports
A Sofia hospital trains a doctor to specialist level and binds them to five more years, on pain of repaying every training cost plus two months' salary. The Sofiyski rayonen sad asks whether that is a restriction on free movement, an unfair consumer term, or an element of coercion under Article 5 of the Charter.
The Court has twice told Bulgaria that mandatory minimum lawyers' fees set by the bar offend Article 101 TFEU. Bulgaria then moved the appointment of court-appointed representatives, and the setting of their fees, to the bar councils. A Blagoevgrad court asks in twenty-five questions whether that is the same restriction in new clothes.
Four years after the Court struck down public access to beneficial ownership registers, the replacement directive lets Member States shield an owner in 'exceptional circumstances to be laid down in national law'. Luxembourg defined those circumstances as the very risk that already triggers the shield. The Tribunal d'arrondissement asks what is left of the condition.
A parent withheld information about who the father of their child is. Sweden asks whether the EU law principle against fraud allows a derived right of residence under Article 20 TFEU to be refused — a right that exists for the child's sake, not the parent's.
Sweden will not grant a derived right of residence under Article 20 TFEU unless the applicant's identity is established. But the right exists to stop a Union citizen child being forced out of the EU, and the child's dependency does not depend on paperwork. The Migration Court of Appeal asks.
Bulgarian prosecutors want voice samples from a suspect and propose to get them by compelling answers to harmless questions, on pain of a fine or criminal consequences. Sofia City Court asks whether the right not to incriminate oneself permits it — and the answer turns on a list in a recital.
A financial supervisor obtains a court order to inspect. Does that order hand it the exclusive power to decide what data it takes, or must the scope be fixed in advance by the subject matter of the inspection? A Lithuanian administrative court asks.
Bulgaria's national health system holds every diagnosis, prescription and operation a person has had, and opens the whole file to doctors, insurers and prosecutors with no technical limit on what they read. Six questions from the Supreme Administrative Court ask whether Article 9 GDPR permits any of it.
A court expert produced his report with the help of software. Ten questions follow: is that software a high-risk AI system, how much of the algorithm must the expert explain, and does the AI Act apply at all to a dispute that predates it? A Sofia court asks.
A Polish judge was released from her cases against the rules, and the replacement was drawn by a random-allocation system built by the Ministry of Justice whose source code nobody may inspect. Is a court composed that way still a tribunal established by law? The Warsaw Regional Court asks.
One authority withdraws international protection and finds no risk of ill-treatment. A second authority then orders removal. Must it examine that risk again from the beginning — and what happens to evidence the person could have produced earlier but did not? The Bremen administrative court asks.
An EAW issued by a public prosecutor with no pre-surrender judicial review, resting on a national warrant whose judge never assessed proportionality: the Rechtbank Amsterdam asks whether the 'dual level of protection' is still real.
By judgment of 14 March 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:181) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
By judgment of 29 May 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:335) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Examination of the question has not disclosed any issues capable of affecting the validity of Article 4(4) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1099/2009 of 24…
By judgment of 26 June 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:492) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Council Directive 79/7/EEC of 19 December 1978 on the progressive implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women in matters of…
By judgment of 19 October 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:776) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
By judgment of 15 March 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:185) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
By judgment of 13 September 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:715) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Article 54 of Directive 2004/39/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 on markets in financial instruments amending…
By judgment of 20 December 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:994) the Court held that a candidate's written answers in a professional examination — and the examiner's comments on them — are the candidate's personal data, opening access and rectification rights adapted…
Judgment of 17 April 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:257): a church's claim that religion is an occupational requirement must be open to effective judicial review — and Articles 21 and 47 of the Charter apply even between private parties.
By Grand Chamber judgment of 17 October 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:766) the Court held that a legal person claiming injury from online publications may sue for its entire damage where it has its centre of interests, and that claims for rectification and removal…
By judgment of 2 October 2018 (ECLI:EU:C:2018:788) the Court held that police access limited to the identity data of SIM-card holders is not a serious interference with fundamental rights and may therefore be justified for investigating offences that are…
By judgment of 19 July 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:566) the Court held that Italy's on-call contracts available to workers under 25 and terminating automatically at that age are not precluded by the prohibition of age discrimination: the flexibility served a…
By judgment of 26 July 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:597) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
On 5 June 2018 the Grand Chamber ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2018:388) that the administrator of a Facebook fan page is a joint controller, together with Facebook, of the processing of visitors' data through the Insights statistics — and that the German supervisory…
By judgment of 27 September 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:725) the Court held that requiring exhaustion of administrative remedies before a data-protection claim reaches a court is compatible with Article 47 of the Charter if it causes no substantial delay or…
On 27 February 2018 the Grand Chamber ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2018:117) that Article 19(1) TEU obliges Member States to ensure that courts which may apply EU law meet the requirements of effective judicial protection, including independence — though Portugal's…
By judgment of 21 December 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:974) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
By judgment of 9 June 2016 in the joined Pesce cases (ECLI:EU:C:2016:428) the Court upheld the Commission's Xylella fastidiosa decision: the obligation to remove host plants, including asymptomatic ones, within 100 metres of infected plants is a…
By Grand Chamber judgment of 16 May 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:373) the Court held that a company fined for refusing to answer a cross-border tax-information order may invoke Article 47 of the Charter: the national court must be able to review whether the…
By judgment of 4 April 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:255) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Article 6(1)(d) of Council Directive 2004/114/EC of 13 December 2004 on the conditions of admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of…
By judgment of 18 July 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:562) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Article 45 TFEU must be interpreted as not precluding legislation of a Member State, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, under which the…
By judgment of 26 July 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:593) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
Joined with Tele2 Sverige and decided by Grand Chamber judgment of 21 December 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:970): yes, Digital Rights Ireland's standards bind national regimes — Article 15(1) of the e-Privacy Directive, read with the Charter, precludes general and…
On 14 June 2017 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2017:456) that the operators of The Pirate Bay themselves make a communication to the public by indexing and managing torrents of protected works, despite the content sitting on users' machines.
By order of 27 October 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:830) the Court declared the Brussels commercial court's reference manifestly inadmissible for failure to set out the factual and legal context required by Article 94 of the Rules of Procedure.
By judgment of 15 March 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:214) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
On 9 March 2017 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2017:197) that there is no general right to have personal data erased from the companies register: the publicity of such registers pursues legal certainty for third parties and data may be kept indefinitely.
By judgment of 16 November 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:878) the Court held that the French scheme licensing digital exploitation of out-of-print books precluded authors' exclusive rights: consent may sometimes be implicit, but only where every author is actually…
By judgment of 30 June 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:498) the Court found nothing affecting the validity of the poultrymeat labelling requirement: obliging retailers to show the total price and price per unit of weight on prepacked fresh poultry is a proportionate…
By judgment of 14 March 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:204) the Court held that an employer's willingness to accommodate a customer's wish no longer to have services provided by a worker wearing an Islamic headscarf is not a "genuine and determining occupational…
On 21 December 2016 the Grand Chamber ruled in the joined Tele2/Watson cases (ECLI:EU:C:2016:970) that Article 15(1) of the e-Privacy Directive, read with the Charter, precludes national legislation imposing general and indiscriminate retention of traffic…
Can the Dutch Data Protection Agency exert any control over companies based in the UK and the USA which conduct covert surveillance on Dutch territory? And in the event of an individual’s data processing law rights under Dutch law being … Continue reading → Continue reading →
On 8 September 2016 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2016:644) that posting a hyperlink to works published online without the rightholder's consent is a communication to the public where the poster knew or ought to have known of the illegality.
Canada and the EU have negotiated a new Passenger Name Record Agreement. A plank of the Agreement involves the transfer and processing of data. The European Parliament is asking the CJEU for a legal opinion on the compatibility of that … Continue reading → Continue reading →
By judgment of 14 July 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:563) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Article 1(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 2006 on nutrition and health claims made on…
By Grand Chamber judgment of 28 March 2017 (ECLI:EU:C:2017:236) the Court confirmed its jurisdiction to review the validity of CFSP restrictive measures by preliminary ruling — a constitutional first — and found nothing affecting the validity of the…
By judgment of 19 October 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:779) the Court held that a dynamic IP address registered by a website operator is personal data where the operator has legal means to have the visitor identified via the access provider.
By judgment of 8 November 2016 (ECLI:EU:C:2016:836) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Article 8(1) and Articles 25 and 29 of the Second Council Directive 77/91/EEC of 13 December 1976 on coordination of safeguards which, for the…
On 4 May 2016 the Court upheld the Second Tobacco Products Directive in full (ECLI:EU:C:2016:325): the menthol ban, the labelling and standardisation rules, the leeway for further national packaging measures and the specific e-cigarette regime of Article…
On 15 September 2016 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2016:689) that a shopkeeper offering free open Wi-Fi provides a "mere conduit" service and cannot be held liable in damages for users' infringements.
By judgment of 1 October 2015 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:638) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Articles 10, 11 and 13 of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995, on the protection of individuals with…
On 6 October 2015 the Grand Chamber declared the Safe Harbour adequacy decision invalid (ECLI:EU:C:2015:650): a regime permitting generalised access by US authorities to transferred data compromised the essence of Article 7 of the Charter, and the absence…
On 6 October 2015 the Grand Chamber declared the Safe Harbour adequacy decision invalid (ECLI:EU:C:2015:650): a regime permitting generalised access by US authorities to transferred data compromised the essence of Article 7 of the Charter, and the absence…
By judgment of 17 December 2015 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:823) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “1.
By judgment of 25 June 2015 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:420) the Court held that where an EU trade mark and a contested sign contain a dominant Arabic word in both Latin and Arabic script, and the relevant public has a basic knowledge of written Arabic, the meaning…
On 18 December 2014 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2014:2463) that EU law contains no general principle prohibiting discrimination on grounds of obesity as such — but that severe obesity can constitute a "disability" under Directive 2000/78 where it entails a…
By judgment of 11 June 2015 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:378) the Court ruled, in the words of the operative part: “Directive 2002/22/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 March 2002 on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic…
On 26 March 2015 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2015:200) that a person performing real and genuine activities in a French work-rehabilitation centre (CAT) is a "worker" for the purposes of the Working Time Directive and thus entitled to paid annual leave,…
When you use a telephone or go onto the internet a company registers and stores data about you. Companies are obliged to do this not for billing purposes but because of the EU’s data retention Directive 2006/24/EC. Can you access … Continue reading →
The reference was decided in the joined Willems judgment of 16 April 2015 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:238): the fingerprint obligation for passports stands (as upheld in Schwarz), and Regulation 2252/2004 does not govern any subsequent storage or use of the biometrics…
The reference was decided in the joined Willems judgment of 16 April 2015 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:238): Regulation 2252/2004 does not apply to identity cards at all, whatever their travel validity — so the fingerprint requirement for Dutch ID cards was a purely…
By judgment of 16 April 2015 in the joined Willems cases (ECLI:EU:C:2015:238) the Court held that Regulation 2252/2004 obliges the taking of fingerprints for passports (as upheld in Schwarz) but does not govern any subsequent use or storage of that…
French farmers have been nipping over the Spanish border to go shopping for their veterinary medicinal products. This is not allowed under French law, only French-authorised wholesalers can import veterinary drugs. The French farmers wonder if the internal market exists. Continue reading →
On 27 November 2012 the full Court upheld the European Stability Mechanism (ECLI:EU:C:2012:756): the simplified revision of Article 136 TFEU was valid, and the no-bailout clause of Article 125 TFEU does not prohibit a stability mechanism whose assistance…
On 17 October 2013 the Court upheld the validity of Regulation 2252/2004 (ECLI:EU:C:2013:670): taking and storing fingerprints in passports interferes with Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, but the interference is justified by the aim of preventing…
On 27 March 2014 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2014:192) that an access provider whose services are used to infringe copyright is an "intermediary" that may be enjoined, and that an outcome-based blocking injunction — leaving the choice of measures to the ISP…
On 8 April 2014 the Grand Chamber declared the Data Retention Directive 2006/24 invalid in its entirety (ECLI:EU:C:2014:238): blanket retention of everyone's traffic and location data, without differentiation, limits or objective access criteria, exceeded…
On 15 January 2014 the Court ruled (ECLI:EU:C:2014:2) that Article 27 of the Charter, whether alone or read with Directive 2002/14, cannot be invoked in a dispute between private parties to disapply conflicting national law.