Unilateral aggression against a sovereign state is in direct contradiction to the norms and social ethics of the 21st century. Protecting the rights and lives of people, as well as the future of the nation targeted by this extreme act, is a major challenge for the entire international community. Our sympathies are with all those directly affected by today's events and we deplore the unnecessary loss of life on both sides of the conflict. We stand with those who defend human rights anywhere in the world.

Ukrainian citizens living in the Czech Republic who are currently contacting the ombudsman office to resolve problems with their residency in the Czech Republic are advised to follow the website of the Ministry of Interior:

https://www.mvcr.cz/clanek/informace-pro-obcany-ukrajiny.aspx  

The Ministry is trying to respond to the rapid development of events in a helpful way.

It has set up a special email address ukrajina@mvcr.cz and a telephone hotline +420 974 801 802 where people can find out practical residence information.

The Ministry also thanks Czech people for their expressions of solidarity and says that they will be pleased to receive offers of catered mass accommodation.

es de en fr it

The loss of those rights is one of the consequences of the sovereign decision of the UK to withdraw from the European Union.

EP has resided in France since 1984 and is married to a French citizen. She has not acquired French nationality by marriage because, as a former official in the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, she took an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England. Upon the entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement, the INSEE1 removed EP from the electoral list of the Commune of Thoux (France). She was thus unable to participate in the municipal elections held on 15 March and 28 June 2020.

On 6 October 2020, EP filed an application for re-registration on the electoral roll for non-French citizens of the European Union. On the following day, the Mayor of the Commune of Thoux rejected that application. EP then referred the matter to the Electoral Commission of the Commune of Thoux. Since that body responded by stating that it was not due to convene until March 2021, EP treated that reply as an implicit confirmation of the Mayor’s decision of 7 October 2020. Accordingly, on 9 November 2020, EP brought an action to contest that decision before the Tribunal judiciaire d’Auch (Court of Auch - the referring court).

The referring court put forward four questions in the context of a dispute as to whether EP, a British national, continues to enjoy the rights to vote and to stand as a candidate in municipal elections in France. The first and second questions inquired as to whether British nationals, or a subset thereof, continue to be Union citizens and enjoy the benefits of that status. If that were not the case, the third and fourth questions request the Court to assess the validity of the Withdrawal Agreement2 , notably in the light of the principle of proportionality.

In today’s Opinion Advocate General Collins considers firstly that Union citizenship is additional to, and does not replace, nationality conferred by the Member States. The case-law of the Court of Justice, notably the judgments in Rottmann, 3 in Tjebbes 4 and, most recently, in Wiener Landesregierung, 5 explicitly recognises that Member States retain the power to determine who is a national and, in consequence, who is a Union citizen.

es de en fr it lt hu pt

The interest of protecting human health takes precedence over the right of the trader to sell tobacco products

Following an inspection, the Italian Customs Agency established that PJ, who holds a licence to operate a café in which tobacco products can be purchased, had sold cigarettes to a minor. Pursuant to national law, 1 the Customs Agency imposed on PJ an administrative fine of EUR 1 000 and an ancillary administrative penalty consisting of the suspension of his licence to operate a café in which tobacco products can be purchased for a period of fifteen days.

PJ paid the fine imposed on him. However, he challenged the ancillary administrative penalty, claiming that the national law was incompatible with EU law, in particular because the suspension of his trading licence was excessive and disproportionate.

The Consiglio di Stato (Council of State, Italy), hearing the case on final appeal, referred a question to the Court in order to obtain clarification as to whether the principle of proportionality precludes national legislation which, in the case of a first infringement of the prohibition on selling tobacco products to minors, provides for, in addition to the imposition of an administrative fine, the suspension of the trading licence for a period of 15 days.

In that regard the Court observes that the Framework Convention, 2 having been approved on behalf of the European Union, is an integral part of EU law, and that Directive 2014/40/EU 3 leaves it to the Member States to establish rules on penalties designed to prohibit tobacco consumption by minors. Against that background, the Court points out that the national provision at issue must, in principle, be assessed in the light of the requirements laid down by the FCTC as regards the sale of tobacco to minors. It is apparent from Article 16 of the FCTC that each party to that convention is required to adopt and implement effective measures to prohibit the sale of tobacco products to persons under the age set by domestic law, national law or 18, including penalties against sellers and distributors.
 

from en fr it pl

The Polish consumers A (Case C-143/20) as well as G.W and E.S (Case C-213/20) acceded to, as insured persons, open-ended group endowment and life assurance contracts, so-called ‘unit-linked’, concluded between an assurance undertaking and the undertaking which is the policyholder.

By their accession, that had been offered and was managed by the undertaking which is the policyholder, those consumers agreed to pay assurance premiums, in return for services in the event of death or survival at the end of the assurance period. Those premiums were converted into units of an investment fund, then invested in financial instruments on which their value depended, that constituted the ‘underlying assets’ of the ‘unit-linked’ contracts.

Consequent on the significant loss in value of those units, those consumers brought an action seeking the recovery of all the monies that they had invested, claiming that they were not informed to the required level of detail of the characteristics and risks of those assurance products.

It is in that context that the Sąd Rejonowy dla Warszawy-Woli w Warszawie (District Court for Warszawa-Wola, Warsaw, Poland) requested that the Court of Justice clarify the scope of the pre-contractual information disclosure obligation laid down by the Life Assurance Directive in respect of a life-assurance policy holder 1 and the effects of a failure to make such a (full) disclosure.

In today’s judgment, the Court of Justice states, first of all, that the assurance relationship between the assurance undertaking and the consumer who acceded to a ‘unit-linked’ group contract falls within the concept of ‘assurance contract’, within the meaning of Directive 2002/83, even if the consumer who became a party to that group contract comes under the concept of ‘policy holder’ under that same directive. Accordingly, that consumer must receive, prior to his or her accession to the ‘unit-linked’ group contract, the information required to be communicated by that directive before signing a life-assurance contract, enabling him or her to make an informed choice of the assurance product which best meets his or her requirements. (82)

es de en fr it pl pt sl

That exclusion constitutes indirect discrimination on grounds of sex as regards access to social security benefits

The protection afforded by the special social security scheme for domestic workers under Spanish legislation does not include protection in respect of unemployment.

A domestic worker who is the employee of a natural person has been registered with that special scheme since January 2011. In November 2019, she applied to the Tesorería General de la Seguridad Social (General Social Security Fund, Spain, ‘the TGSS’) to pay contributions in respect of unemployment protection in order to acquire the right to those benefits. The TGSS rejected that application on the grounds that the Spanish legislation expressly prevented her from contributing to that scheme in order to obtain protection from unemployment.

The worker then appealed to the Juzgado de lo Contencioso-Administrativo No 2 de Vigo (Administrative Court No 2, Vigo, Spain) claiming in essence that the national legislation places domestic workers in a situation of social distress when their employment ends for reasons which are not attributable to themselves. That prevents them from obtaining not only unemployment benefit but also the other types of social assistance which are dependent on entitlement to unemployment benefit having come to an end.

In that context, the Spanish court emphasizes that the category of workers in question consists almost exclusively of women, which is why it asks the Court to interpret the directive on equality in matters of social security, 1 in order to determine whether there is indirect discrimination on grounds of sex, which is prohibited by that directive. In today’s judgment, the Court holds that the directive on equality in matters of social security precludes a national provision which excludes unemployment benefit from the social security benefits granted to domestic workers by a statutory social security scheme, since that provision places female workers at a particular disadvantage compared with male workers and is not justified by objective factors unrelated to any discrimination on grounds of sex.

The Court recalls at the outset that indirect discrimination on grounds of sex occurs when an apparently neutral provision places persons of one sex at a particular disadvantage compared with persons of the other sex, unless that provision is objectively justified and proportionate.

While noting that it is for the Spanish court to examine whether that is the situation in the present case, the Court of Justice provides guidance to it in that regard.