C-158/90

OPINION OF MR TESAURO — CASE C-158/90

OPINION OF MR ADVOCATE GENERAL TESAURO delivered on 30 April 1991 *

Mr President, referring) and the Italian, may at first Members of the Court, sight give rise to some perplexity, I do not think, bearing in mind the general scheme and purpose of the rules in question, that the provision gives rise to serious problems 3 of interpretation.

1. In this request for a preliminary ruling, the Politierechtbank (Petty Sessional Court) of Hasselt (Belgium) is asking the Court to interpret Article 15(7) of Council Regu­ lation (EEC) No 3821/85 of 20 December 1985 on recording equipment in road transport, ' which provides that 'Whenever requested by an authorized inspecting officer to do so, the driver must be able to produce record sheets for the current week, As regards the legal context, it should be and in any case for the last day of the remembered that Council Regulation (EEC) previous week on which he drove'. No 3820/85 of 20 December 1985 on the harmonization of certain social legislation 4 relating to road transport lays down certain rules on rest and driving periods for drivers. Regulation No 3821/85, adopted the same day, provides in Article 3(1) for the use of recording equipment in all More specifically, the national court asks vehicles subject to Community rules. The whether the expression 'last day' means the record sheets for insertion in this equipment last calendar day, the last working day or are designed to record, automatically or the last driving day, and also whether semi-automatically, data on the running of 'previous week' means the one immediately the vehicles and the working periods of the before the inspection or the previous week drivers, so as to allow the competent auth­ in which the driver drove a vehicle subject orities to monitor compliance with the to Community rules. driving and rest periods prescribed by Regu­ lation No 3820/85.

Article 14 of Regulation No 3821/85 which is precisely to allow monitoring of requires the employer to issue record sheets compliance with the provisions on driving to the driver, who must then use them every and rest periods. day he drives (Article 15(2)), entering certain compulsory information such as his name, the date and the registration number It is clear, furthermore, that, to check of the vehicle (Article 15(5)). whether the record sheet produced really is the sheet for the last driving day, recourse can be had if necessary to other means of 3. The expression 'last day' in Article 15(7) inspection, such as examination of the firm's of Regulation No 3821/85 can, therefore, accounts. refer only to the last driving day, since there can be no record sheet for a day on which the driver did not drive. 4. The same considerations apply to the concept of the 'previous week', which must be understood as the last week before the Such an interpretation, moreover, is inspection in which the driver drove a consistent with the purpose of the provision, vehicle subject to Community rules.

5. I therefore suggest that the Court reply as follows to the questions referred by the national court:

Article 15(7) of Council Regulation No 3821/85 is to be interpreted as meaning that the driver must produce the record sheet for the last driving day of the week preceding the inspection in which that driver drove a vehicle subject to Community rules.

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