International Law

Case C-427/06, Bartsch

In this case, the referring court asked whether the application of the prohibition under Community law of discrimination on the ground of age was mandatory where the allegedly discriminatory treatment contained no link with Community law.

The Court of Justice reiterated that where national rules fell within the scope of Community law and reference was made to the Court for a preliminary ruling, the Court must provide all the criteria of interpretation needed by the national court to determine whether those rules were compatible with the general principles of Community law (see Case C?144/04 Mangold [2005]).

The application, which the courts of Member States must ensure, of the prohibition under Community law of discrimination on the ground of age was not mandatory where the allegedly discriminatory treatment contained no link with Community law.
Neither Directive 2000/78 nor Art. 13 EC enabled a situation such as that in issue in the main proceedings to be brought within the scope of Community law.

Article 13 EC could not, as such, bring within the scope of Community law, for the purposes of prohibiting discrimination based on age, situations which, like that in the main proceedings, did not fall within the framework of measures adopted on the basis of that Article, specifically Directive 2000/78 before the time-limit provided therein for its transposition had expired.

Text of Judgment

Full post as published by ECJBlog.com on September 30, 2008 (boomark / email).