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La loi allemande sur la cogestion des salariés est compatible avec le droit de l’Union

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La Commission ne peut pas refuser de donner accès aux mémoires des États membres qu’elle détient, au seul motif qu’il s’agit de documents afférents à une procédure juridictionnelle

Expect a series of blog postings in the next few weeks on developments which occurred a few weeks or even months back. I have been squirreling away a series of judgments and other developments, with a view to exam season. Some of them I did use in my exam papers – some of them I did not.

Cooper v. Tokyo Electric Power [plaintiffs in the case are a group of service members in the U.S. Navy who were deployed to Operation Tomodachi, a relief effort in the immediate aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami; they allege they were exposed to radiation during the deployment] by the US Court of Appeals, ninth circuit, is a direct (and rare in its directness) example of how jurisdictional rules are used to help co-ordinate a country’s diplomatic efforts. In this particular case, the Court gives direct support to the State Department’s view that in order for others to be encouraged to accede to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (“CSC”), its main jurisdictional rule (granting exclusive jurisdiction to the country of the locus delicti commissi) must not be achievable via an application of comity in the US courts. For further background and overview see  Elina Teplinsky, and Meghan Claire Hammond here.

That plaintiffs are US citisens plays a major role in the court ruling out forum non conveniens.

In some of the corporate social responsibility /alien tort statute cases that I have reported on in the blog (particularly, Rio Tinto), foreign policy openly plays a role, too, and in Kiobel itself, in the lower courts, the impact of jurisdiction on US foreign policy was debated, too. It is always refreshing to see courts highlight the issue openly. For in many jurisdictions, such obvious impacts are brushed under the carpet.

Geert.

 

 

 

The European Court of Justice held last week in C‑368/16, Assens Havn. It confirmed privity of choice of court in the event of subrogation of the victim in the rights of the insured. The victim is not bound by choice of court between insurer and tortfeasor:

At 41: ‘The extension to victims of the constraints of agreements on jurisdiction based on the combined provisions of Articles 13 and 14 of Regulation No 44/2001 could compromise the objective pursued by Chapter II, Section 3, thereof, namely to protect the economically and legally weaker party.

That the CJEU confirms privity of contractual choice of court is no surprise: see most recently Leventis. In the case of insurance contracts the issue is slightly less obvious for unlike in the case of consumers and employees, the legal presumption of weakness often does not represent commercial reality.

Whether the subrogated party can make use of the choice of court clause in the underlying contract was not sub judice in the judgment.

Geert.

(Handbook of) EU private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2.

 

This post by Prof. Christopher Kuner was published last week at the European Law Blog. The hearing of the Schrems case at the CJEU will take place next Wednesday; for this reason (but not only: the post is worth reading) I decided to reproduce it here. 

Introduction

Much discussion of foreign law in the work of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has focused on how it deals with the rules, principles, and traditions of the EU member states. However, in its data protection judgments a different type of situation involving foreign law is increasingly arising, namely cases where the Court needs to evaluate the law of third countries in order to answer questions of EU law.

This is illustrated by its judgment in Schrems (Case C-362/14; previously discussed on this blog, as well as here), and by Opinion 1/15 (also discussed on this blog, part I and part II), a case currently before the CJEU in which the judgment is scheduled to be issued on 26 July. While these two cases deal with data protection law, the questions they raise are also relevant for other areas of EU law where issues of third country law may arise. The way the Court deals with third country law in the context of its data protection judgments illustrates how interpretation of EU law sometimes involves the evaluation of foreign legal systems, despite the Court’s reluctance to admit this.

The Schrems judgment

The Schrems case involved the validity of the EU-US Safe Harbour arrangement, a self-regulatory mechanism that US-based companies could join to protect personal data transferred from the EU to the US. Article 25(1) of the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC allows transfers of personal data from the EU to third countries only when they provide an ‘adequate level of data protection’ as determined by a formal decision of the European Commission. On 26 July 2000 the Commission issued such a decision finding that the Safe Harbour provided adequate protection.

The plaintiff Schrems brought suit in Ireland based on the data transfer practices of Facebook, which was a Safe Harbour member. Schrems claimed that the Safe Harbour did not in fact provide adequate protection, and that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) should reach this conclusion notwithstanding the Commission adequacy decision.

On 18 June 2014 the Irish High Court referred two questions to the CJEU dealing with the issue of whether the DPC could examine the validity of the Safe Harbour. In its judgment of 6 October 2015, the CJEU invalidated the Commission’s decision and held that providing an adequate level of data protection under EU law requires that third country law and standards must be ‘essentially equivalent’ to those under EU data protection law (para. 73). A more detailed, general analysis of Schrems can be found in my article in the current issue of the German Law Journal.

Third country law under Schrems and Opinion 1/15

As far as third country law is concerned, the Schrems judgment requires an individual to be allowed to bring a claim to a data protection authority (DPA) that a Commission adequacy decision is invalid, after which he or she must be able to contest in national court the DPA’s rejection of such a claim, and the national court must make a preliminary reference to the CJEU if it finds the claim to be well-founded (para. 64). Thus, the Court practically invites individuals to bring claims to DPAs regarding the adequacy of protection in third countries, and requires national courts to refer them to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling.

Under the judgment, the standard for determining the validity of a Commission decision is whether third country law is ‘essentially equivalent’ to EU law, which by definition must involve an examination of the third country law with which EU law is compared.

The Court has stated that it does not pass judgment on the law of third countries. In the interview he gave to the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed the Schrems judgment, CJEU President Lenaerts said that ‘We are not judging the U.S. system here, we are judging the requirements of EU law in terms of the conditions to transfer data to third countries, whatever they be’. Advocate General Mengozzi also reiterated this point in para. 163 of his Opinion in Opinion 1/15.

However, it is surely disingenuous to claim that the Schrems case did not involve evaluation of US legal standards. First of all, the need to review third country law is logically inherent in the evaluation of a Commission decision finding that such law provides protection essentially equivalent to that under EU law. Secondly, the CJEU in Schrems did indeed consider US law and intelligence gathering practices and their effect on fundamental rights under EU law, as can be seen, for example, in its mention of studies by the Commission finding that US authorities were able to access data in ways that did not meet EU legal standards, in particular the requirements of purpose limitation, necessity, and proportionality (para. 90). Indeed, whether US law adequately protects against mass surveillance by the intelligence agencies was a major issue in the case, as the oral hearing before the Court indicates.

Opinions of Advocates General in data protection cases also illustrate that the CJEU sometimes examines third country law when answering questions of EU law. For example, the opinion of Advocate General Bot in Schrems contains an evaluation of the scope of the supervisory powers of the US Federal Trade Commission (paras 207-208). And in Opinion 1/15, Advocate General Mengozzi indicated that provisions of Canadian law had been brought before the CJEU (para. 320), and that some of the parties’ contentions required interpretation of issues of Canadian law (para. 156). As a reminder, Opinion 1/15 is based on a request for an opinion by the European Parliament under Article 218(11) TFEU concerning the validity of a draft agreement between the EU and Canada for the transfer of airline passenger name records, which shows the variety of situations in which questions of third country law may come before the CJEU.

Future perspectives

It is inevitable that the CJEU will increasingly be faced with data protection cases that require an evaluation of third country law. For example, the Commission indicated in a Communication of January 2017 that it will consider issuing additional adequacy decisions covering countries in East and South-East Asia, India, Latin America, and the European region. In light of the Schrems judgment, challenges to adequacy decisions brought before a DPA or a national court will often result in references for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU. Furthermore, the interconnectedness of legal orders caused by globalization and the Internet may also give rise to cases in other areas of law where evaluation of third country law is necessary to answer a question of EU law.

Since in references for a preliminary ruling the determinations of national courts will generally be accepted by the CJEU, and a request to intervene in a preliminary ruling procedure to submit observations on third country law is not possible, there is a risk that a judgment in such a case could be based on an insufficient evaluation of third country law, such as when the evidence concerning such law is uncontested and is presented only by a single party. In fact, the evidence concerning US law in the Schrems judgment of the Irish High Court that resulted in the reference for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU was in effect uncontested. By contrast, in the so-called ‘Schrems II’ case now underway in Ireland, the Irish courts have allowed oral and written submissions on US law and practice by a number of experts.

Scholarship and practice in private international law can provide valuable lessons for the CJEU when it needs to evaluate third country law. For example, situations where evidence concerning foreign law is presented by a single party and is uncontested have been criticized in private international law scholarship as a ‘false application of foreign law’, because such evidence can prove unreliable and result in unequal treatment between foreign law and the law of the forum (see the excellent 2003 lectures of Prof. Jänterä-Jareborg in volume 304 of the Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law regarding this point).

If the CJEU is going to deal increasingly with third country law, then it should at least have sufficient information to evaluate it accurately. It seems that the CJEU would view third country law as an issue of fact to be proved (see in this regard the article by Judge Rodin in the current issue of the American Journal of Comparative Law), which would seem to rule out the possibility for it to order ‘measures of inquiry’ (such as the commissioning of an expert’s report concerning third country law) under Article 64(2) of its Rules of Procedure in a reference for preliminary ruling for the interpretation of Union law. However, the Court may order such measures in the scope of a preliminary ruling on the validity of a Union act, which would seem to cover the references for a preliminary ruling mandated in Schrems(see para. 64 of the judgment, where the CJEU mandates national courts to make a reference to the Court ‘for a preliminary ruling on validity’ (emphasis added)). Thus, the CJEU may have more tools to investigate issues of third country law than it is currently using.

It would also be helpful if the Commission were more transparent about the evaluations of third country law that it conducts when preparing adequacy decisions, which typically include legal studies by outside academics. These are usually not made public, although they would provide useful explanation as to why the Commission found the third country’s law to be essentially equivalent to EU law.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the CJEU should accept and be more open about the role that third country law is increasingly playing in its data protection judgments, and will likely play in other areas as well. Dealing more openly with the role of third country law and taking steps to ensure that it is accurately evaluated would also help enhance the legitimacy of the CJEU’s judgments. Its upcoming judgment in Opinion 1/15 may provide further clarification of how the CJEU deals with third country law in its work.

La Cour européenne des droits de l’homme (CEDH) souligne que l’absence de précédent jurisprudentiel applicable à la situation des requérants accompagnée de doutes quant aux perspectives de succès d’un recours donné ne justifie pas la non-utilisation des voies de recours internes. 

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Selon l’avocat général de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne Szpunar, le service UberPop n’est pas un service de la société de l’information et relève du domaine des transports. La France pouvait interdire et réprimer pénalement l’exercice de cette activité sans notifier préalablement le texte de la loi à la Commission.

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