Brussels, 22/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 22 November, the EU Court of Justice delivered three judgments specifying the rights and obligations of the different stakeholders in the rail and air transport sectors. Thus, in the field of:
- Rail transport, the Court rules (Case C-136/11) that rail infrastructure managers are under an obligation to provide all rail companies, in real time, with all information regarding connection services with other rail undertakings, in order to allow them to inform passengers of the effective departure times of trains and to ensure connections are made. The Court states that rail companies are under an obligation to provide passengers, in real time, with information on the main connecting services, i.e. in addition to normal departure times, information on delays and cancellations after departure. This obligation relates to all main connections, not only those ensured by the company concerned but also those ensured by the other rail undertakings, in order to provide passengers with information that is as complete and up-to-the-minute as possible at every stage of their journey. Infrastructure managers, for their part, with a view to ensuring fair competition between companies and providing travellers with a comparable quality of service, are under an obligation to make available, in a non-discriminatory manner, real time data on main connections with other undertakings, under their right of access to the rail infrastructure. In this context, the Court states, information posted up on boards in the various stations cannot be considered as confidential or sensitive. The Court's judgment came in answer to a request from the Austrian Schienen-Control Kommission called upon to rule on litigation between the rail company, Westbahn Management GmbH, and the Austrian rail infrastructure undertaking, OBB Infrastruktur AG.
- Air transport. In the first case (C/410/11), the Court ruled that a passenger can claim compensation from an air carrier for the loss of his belongings if they are in baggage checked in, in the name of another passenger, on the same flight. The judgment was made in reply to a Spanish court to which was referred the case of a family of four people, travelling on the airline Iberia, who claimed compensation for the loss of luggage divided into two suitcases which had been lost during a flight by that same company. The Court rules that, in the case in question, the company should pay compensation not only to the passenger who had individually checked in his own luggage but also to the person whose luggage was found registered under the name of another passenger on the same flight. The passengers concerned should, however, prove, subject to review by the national court, that items belonging to them had in fact been in baggage checked in under the name of another passenger on the same flight. The national judge may take into account the fact that those passengers are members of the same family, that they bought their tickets together or that they checked in at the same time, the Court states.
In a second case (C-139/11), the Court indicates that the time-limits for bringing actions for compensation for flight cancellation are determined in accordance with the national rules of each member state. The CJEU was answering a request put to it by the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona regarding the time-limits for bringing actions for compensation under EU law, as time-limits are not defined by the Union regulation on the compensation and assistance of passengers (Regulation No 261/2004). According to the Court, in the absence of provisions of EU law, its conclusion is not questioned by the provisions of the Warsaw or Montreal Conventions on air transport subscribed to by the EU, which fixes the time-limit at two years. On one hand, given the lack of EU regulations on the matter, it is for the domestic legal system of each member state to lay down the detailed procedural rules governing actions for safeguarding rights which individuals derive from EU law. Then, EU law establishes an autonomous regime for the standardised and immediate payment of compensation for damages caused by inconvenience due to delays or flight cancellations, upstream of the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions. Compensation under Regulation No261/2004 falls outside the scope of those two conventions. Over three years after the event, the Catalan court had been referred to by a passenger calling for the KLM company to pay compensation as the passenger had had to put off his flight till the next day further to flight cancellation. The company objected as the claim was made more than two years after the event, under the Warsaw and Montreal conventions on air transport, signed by the EU. (FG/transl.jl)