Luxembourg, 20/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - In a ruling issued on 17 April, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Finnish state could be held responsible for the actions of one of its officials, whose comments on television, challenging the safety of certain models of vehicle lifts, were alleged to have caused problems for a seller. The ruling in Case C-470/03 also stipulates that the court (the Tampereen karajaoikeus), which sent the case to the European Court of Justice, has the power to attribute personal liability to the official in question if it so desires.
During an interview with Finnish television channel TV1 on 17 January 2001, Tarmo Lehtinen, then an official at the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health ('sosiaali-ja terveysministerio'), said that some vehicle lifts of the brand A.G.M.-COS.MET Srl (AGM) put workers working under the load at immediate risk because the lifts had no locking system. In 2000, the safety lock on the G32 model lift rails collapsed under the weight of a camper van following side movements during work on the van. Nobody was killed or injured, but tests after the event revealed similar weaknesses in model G35 when under conditions of unusual strain, like loading a vehicle in the other direction from the recommended one.
This adverse publicity led to a fall in virtually all AGM's sales in Finland and elsewhere in Europe and the company took the Finnish state and Tarmo Lehtinen to the Tampereen karakjaoikeus court to have them both ordered to jointly pay compensation for the damages caused to the company (despite the fact that Lehtinen was removed from this area of work by the Finnish authorities shortly after the television interview).
The European Court of Justice was asked by the Finnish court to rule on several areas of law and the rulings do not augur well for the Finnish state. Tarmo Lehtinen's comments may be deemed to have been made by the state because they were prepared and given by an official operating in an official framework, as demonstrated by the use of official state letterhead and the fact the interview was carried out in the official's office at work. More importantly, no measures were taken to dissipate this impression, either during or after the programme. His comments were also an obstacle to free trade because they can have the same effect as a ban. Although under examination for technical failings, the lifts in question officially met EU safety legislation and it was therefore up to the Finnish authorities to not restrict circulation of the lifts in Finland (under Article 4, paragraph 1 of Directive 98/37/EC on machines). Finally, EU law does not rule that Lehtinen may not be held personally liable under Finnish law (in addition to his employer being held liable), despite the fact that this is not actually called for.
Is freedom of trade more important than worker safety?
Nobody is denying the safety issues with the vehicle lifts in this case, but as Mikko Humalainen, Director-General at the Department for Occupational Safety and Health (Tarmo Lehtinen's superior), explained, 'the Court didn't take an attitude to the technical points' and therefore the EC label for the machine was not officially challenged by the Finnish authorities, and the vehicle lift must be considered to be in conformity. According to the ruling, neither freedom of speech nor protection for worker safety would have justified the opposite. Some people, however, see this as challenging the importance of freedom of trade coming first. The presumption of conformity as interpreted by the European Court of Justice is becoming a kind of guarantee for manufacturers acting under bad faith, said Laurent Vogel, researcher at the European Trade Union Institute - Research, Education, Health & Safety. Vogel said the ruling ran the risk of discouraging other member states from drawing attention to real safety problems in cases where a formal ban, an exceptional and rather complicated case from the administrative point of view, was not a suitable approach. (cd)