| EUROPEAN COMMUNITY — Social security — Unemployment benefit — Condition of residence in member state — Whether contrary to EU citizens’ freedom of movement and residence — EC Treaty, art 18 EC
De Cuyper v Office national de l’emploi (Case C-406/04)
ECJ: President Skouris, Judges Jann, Timmermans, Rosas, Malenovský, Colneric, von Bahr, Cunha Rodrigues, Silva de Lapuerta, Arestis, Borg Barthet, Ilešič and Klučka: 18 July 2006
The rights of freedom of movement and residence flowing from citizenship of the European Union did not prevent a member state from making receipt of unemployment benefit conditional on residence in that state.
The Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Communities so held on a reference for a preliminary ruling by the Tribunal du travail de Bruxelles, Belgium.
The claimant, a Belgian national who had declared that he was unemployed, living alone and living in Belgium, was in fact resident in France, and when that was discovered during a routine inquiry by inspectors, his Belgian unemployment benefit was stopped and a demand made for repayment of benefit already paid, on the basis of a Belgian Law whereby eligibility for inter alia unemployment benefit was conditional on habitual and actual residence in Belgium. In the claimant’s proceedings contesting the defendant authority’s decision, the European Court was asked for a preliminary ruling on whether a condition of residence such as that in issue amounted to a fetter on the claimant’s rights under art 18 EC.
Art 17 EC provides: “… Every person holding the nationality of a member state shall be a citizen of the Union …” By art 18, “Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in this Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect…”
THE COURT said that by its very wording, art 18 EC was not unconditional. Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 on social security provided for only two situations where member states had to allow recipients of unemployment benefit to reside in another state (where the person went to another state to seek work (art 69) and persons whose last employment had been in another state (art 71)), and the present case was neither of those. However, national legislation such as that at issue placed certain of its nationals at a disadvantage simply because they had exercised freedom to move and reside elsewhere, and therefore constituted a restriction on the art 18 freedoms. But such a restriction was justifiable if it was based on objective considerations of public interest that were independent of the nationality of the person concerned and was proportionate. A residence clause such as that in question was based on such a consideration as it reflected the need to monitor the employment and family situation of the person—in the present case, to check eg whether the claimant was indeed living alone—, and it had not been shown that less restrictive, while stiff effective, monitoring measures were possible. A residence clause such as that applied in the case was therefore not precluded by the freedom of movement and residence conferred by art 18.
|
