Luxembourg, 14/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - With its judgements last week, the Court of Justice ruled on the following cases:
- Thelen. The President of the sixth chamber, Claus Gulmann (Denmark) turned to the fate of Mr. Tehlen, an unemployed Austrian who was demanding the application of an Austrian-German convention of 1978 that he found more advantageous to him than the 1971 European "social security" regulation, applicable in Austria since its accession to the EU. A technical answer provided to a question raised by the Bundesgerichtshof and that will enable the German court to deal with the case in substance.
- Josef Plum. President Gulmann recalled that a construction company established in the Netherlands, set up solely for the purpose of sending its employees to Germany to German sites, must be affiliated to the German security system and not in the Netherlands where social charges are not as high. The German, Belgian, French, Dutch and Portuguese governments (EU) and that of Liechtenstein (European Economic Area), as well as the Commission had pleaded along these lines: a construction company that sends its workers to another Member State in which it exercises all its activities, may not invoke the "1971 social security" regulation that allows for an affiliation in the country of origin in case of work limited in time.
- Coreck Maritime. The fifth chamber presided by Judge David Edward explained that the Brussels Convention does not require, in any contract, that a jurisdiction attributive clause be formulated is such a way that it is possible to identify the competent jurisdiction by its name alone. Suffice it that the clause identifies the objective elements on which the parties agreed to choose the court (…) to which they intend submitting their dispute. The case concerns a goods transport contract concerning the carrying of goods from Quingdao (China) to Rotterdam on a Russian boat belonging to a Russian ship-owner of Murmansk (Russia).
- Hitesys. The third chamber presided by Judge Gulmann sentences the Italian company Aprilia to refunding the European commission the sum of 135,000 euro (plus interest) in the framework of a research programme that was not carried out.
- United Kingdom vs / European Commission. Judge Edward, presiding over the fifth chamber, annulled the Commission decision of 3 February 1999 that excluded from Community funding expenditure amounting to £870,000 committed by the United Kingdom to help British flax producers. The European Commission only refunded 100 hectares of this aid, covering a surface of two thousand hectares.
