C-57/96

Minister van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en Visserij

on the interpretation of Article 4 of Council Regulation (EEC) N o 1408/71 of 14 June 1971 on the application of social security schemes to employed persons, to self-employed persons and to members of their families moving within the Com- munity, as amended and updated by Council Regulation (EEC) N o 2001/83 of 2 June 1983 (OJ 1983 L 230, p . 6), and of Article 7 of Regulation (EEC) N o 1612/68 of the Council of 15 October 1968 on freedom of movement for workers within the Community (OJ, English Special Edition 1968 (II), p. 475),

* Language of the case; Dutch.

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MEINTS v MINISTER VAN LANDBOUW, NATUURBEHEER EN VISSERIJ

T H E C O U R T (Fifth Chamber),

after hearing the oral observations of the Netherlands Government, represented by M. Fierstra, Deputy Legal Adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, acting as Agent; the French Government, represented by C. Chavance, Foreign Affairs Sec- retary in the Legal Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, acting as Agent; and the Commission, represented by H . van Vliet, at the hearing on 29 May 1997,

after hearing the Opinion of the Advocate General at the sitting on 16 September 1997,

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JUDGMENT OF 27. 11. 1997 — CASE C-57/96

gives the following

Judgment

4 The first recital in the preamble to Regulation N o 1612/68 states that 'freedom of movement for workers should be secured within the Community by the end of the transitional period at the latest; ... the attainment of this objective entails the aboli­ tion of any discrimination based on nationality between workers of the Member States as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment, as well as the right of such workers to move freely within the Com­ munity in order to pursue activities as employed persons subject to any limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health'.

5 The third and fourth recitals state that 'the right of all workers in the Member States to pursue the activity of their choice within the Community should be affirmed' and that 'such right must be enjoyed without discrimination by perma­ nent, seasonal and frontier workers and by those who pursue their activities for the purpose of providing services'.

6 Article 7 of Regulation N o 1612/68 then provides:

' 1 . A worker who is a national of a Member State may not, in the territory of another Member State, be treated differently from national workers by reason of his nationality in respect of any conditions of employment and work, in particular as regards remuneration, dismissal and, should he become unemployed, reinstate­ ment or reemployment.

2. H e shall enjoy the same social and tax advantages as national workers.'

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n Article 4(e) of the Compensation Rules makes it a condition for payment that the worker must be entitled to benefit under the Werkloosheidswet (Unemployment

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MEINTS v MINISTER VAN LANDBOUW, NATUURBEHEER EN VISSERIJ

Law). Under Article 19(l)(f) of the Werkloosheidswet, a worker who lives, temporarily or permanently, outside the Netherlands other than for holidays has no entitlement to unemployment benefit.

12 Under Article 6 of the Compensation Rules, entitlement to the benefit lapses if the recipient is reemployed by his former employer within 12 months following the termination of his former contract of employment. The Commission has stated in that regard, without being contradicted, that in such cases the benefit must in prin- ciple be repaid.

i3 Under Article 13 of the Compensation Rules, the total amount of the benefits paid out in any one year may not exceed H F L 1 000 000. The Netherlands Government has, however, informed the Court that the budgetary resources appropriated for the benefit in issue have never yet been exhausted in the course of any one year.

i7 That application was rejected by decision of 28 August 1991 on the ground that, not being resident in the Netherlands, Mr Meints was not entitled to any benefit under the Werkloosheidswet and thus did not meet the condition laid down in Article 4(e) of the Compensation Rules.

is O n 16 September 1991, Mr Meints lodged an objection against that decision with the Board of the Fund, which dismissed it by decision of 9 July 1992. H e then lodged a further objection against that decision with the Minister for Agriculture, Nature Conservancy and Fisheries, which was likewise dismissed on 2 March 1994.

i9 M r Meints then brought proceedings contesting the last-mentioned decision before the Arrondissementsrechtbank (District Court), The Hague, which, by judgment of 15 February 1995, ruled that his action was unfounded.

20 Finally, on 6 March 1996, Mr Meints appealed against that judgment to the Nederlandse Raad van State. In his appeal, he submits, essentially, that the refusal to grant him the benefit in issue on the ground that he is resident in Germany is incompatible with either Regulation N o 1408/71 or Regulation N o 1612/68.

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MEINTS v MINISTER VAN LANDBOUW, NATUURBEHEER EN VISSERIJ

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JUDGMENT OF 27. 11. 1997 — CASE C-57/96

23 The Court has held that the distinction between benefits excluded from the scope of Regulation N o 1408/71 and those which fall within its scope is based essentially on the constituent elements of each benefit, in particular its purposes and the con- ditions on which it is granted, and not on whether it is classified as a social secu- rity benefit by national legislation (see, in particular, Case C-l 11/91 Commission v Luxembourg [1993] E C R 1-817, paragraph 28, and Case 249/83 Hoeckx v Open- baar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn Kalmthout [1985] ECR 973, para- graph 11).

24 A benefit may be regarded as a social security benefit in so far as it is granted, without any individual and discretionary assessment of personal needs, to recipi- ents on the basis of a legally defined position and provided that it relates to one of the risks expressly Usted in Article 4(1) of Regulation N o 1408/71 (Case C-66/92 Acciardi v Commissie Beroepszaken Administratieve Geschillen in de Provincie Noord-Holland [1993] E C R 1-4567, paragraph 14).

25 A benefit such as that in issue in the main proceedings cannot be regarded as relat- ing to one of the risks expressly listed in Article 4(1) of Regulation N o 1408/71.

26 Of the branches of social security Usted in that article, only that relating to unem- ployment benefits could be relevant here.

3i Thirdly, the benefit in issue is not a recurrent payment but is paid as a single fixed sum varying only in relation to the age of the applicant.

32 Fourthly, that benefit is paid in addition to the unemployment benefits provided for under the national social security scheme, the right to which is merely one of the conditions for payment.

33 It is clear, moreover, from the documents before the Court, that the main purpose of the benefit in issue is to provide support with regard to the social consequences of the structural reorganization made necessary by the Community legislation, in this case the setting aside of arable land. It is thus intended as a redundancy payment made from public funds in the context of support measures relating to cessation of economic activities.

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JUDGMENT OF 27. 11. 1997 — CASE C-57/96

34 The benefit in issue cannot, therefore, be classified as an 'unemployment benefit' within the meaning of Article 4(1 )(g) of Regulation N o 1408/71.

MEINTS v MINISTER VAN LANDBOUW, NATUURBEHEER EN VISSERIJ

38 The Netherlands Government and the Commission rightly consider that a benefit such as that in issue in the main proceedings does constitute a 'social advantage' within the meaning of Article 7(2) of Regulation N o 1612/68.

39 The reference to 'social advantages' in Article 7(2) cannot be interpreted restric- tively (Case 32/75 Cristini v SNCF [1975] ECR 1085, paragraph 12). It has con- sistently been held that 'social advantages' should be interpreted as meaning all advantages which, whether or not linked to a contract of employment, are gener- ally granted to national workers because of their objective status as workers or by virtue of the mere fact of their residence on the national territory, and whose extension to workers who are nationals of other Member States therefore seems likely to facilitate the mobility of such workers within the Community (Case C-310/91 Schmid v Belgian State [1993] ECR 1-3011, paragraph 18).

40 Furthermore, as the Court held in Case 39/86 Lair v Universität Hannover [1988] ECR 3161, paragraph 36, migrant workers are guaranteed certain rights linked to the status of worker even when they are no longer in an employment relationship.

4i A benefit such as that in issue, the payment of which is dependent on the prior existence of an employment relationship which has recently come to an end, meets those conditions, since entitlement to the benefit is intrinsically linked to the recipients' objective status as workers.

42 The answer to the first part of the second question must therefore be that a benefit which, like that in issue in the main proceedings, takes the form of a single pay- ment to agricultural workers whose contract of employment has been terminated as a result of the setting aside of land belonging to their former employer is to be classified as a social advantage within the meaning of Article 7(2) of Regulation N o 1612/68.

46 This is true of a residence condition such as that in issue in the main proceedings, which can be more easily met by national workers than by those from other Mem- ber States.

47 The Netherlands Government stresses that the Compensation Rules do not explic- itly lay down the residence condition but refer to the Werkloosheidswet, which contains that condition. The purpose of the condition that the recipient be entitled to unemployment benefit under that Law is not to Umit entitlement to the benefit

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MEINTS y MINISTER VAN LANDBOUW, NATUURBEHEER EN VISSERIJ

in issue only to those resident in the Netherlands but to incorporate into the Compensation Rules another condition, contained in the Werkloosheidswet, to the effect that no applicant laid off as a result of his own action may receive the benefit concerned.

48 That justification cannot be accepted. It is neither necessary nor appropriate, in order to achieve the aim of excluding persons laid off as a result of their own action from entitlement to the benefit, to include a residence condition in the Compensation Rules. The applicant's place of residence is irrelevant to determin- ing whether he was laid off as a result of his own action.

52 The costs incurred by the Netherlands Government and by the Commission of the European Communities, which have submitted observations to the Court, are not recoverable. Since these proceedings are, for the parties to the main proceedings, a step in the action pending before the national court, the decision on costs is a mat- ter for that court.

O n those grounds,

T H E C O U R T (Fifth Chamber),

in answer to the questions referred t o it by the Nederlandse Raad van State by interlocutory decision of 22 February 1996, hereby rules:

1. Council Regulation (EEC) N o 1408/71 of 14 June 1971 on the application of social security schemes to employed persons, to self-employed persons and to members of their families moving within the Community, as amended and updated by Council Regulation (EEC) N o 2001/83 of 2 June 1983, does not apply to a compensation scheme under which agricultural workers, whose contract of employment has been terminated as a result of the setting aside of land belonging to their former employer, receive a benefit in the form of a single payment, the amount of which is determined solely by the age of the recipient and which must be repaid if the recipient is reemployed by his former employer within 12 months following the termination of his con- tract of employment.

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R. Grass C. Gulmann

Registrar President of the Fifth Chamber

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