ECJ, C-340/08 X and others v Her Majesty's Treasury, 2010
- 2010
- United Kingdom
Topics
Terrorism financingLegal bases
Treaty establishing the European Community (EC) Council Regulation (EC) No 881/2002Courts
European Court of Justice (ECJ)Laws
ProportionalityFacts
Considering that the social security and social assistance benefits – such as income support, child benefit, housing benefit – granted to the spouses of presumed terrorists appearing on the list of Regulation (EC) No 881/2002 were included under the funds frozen under this Regulation, the British Treasury imposed severe restrictions on the access to and the use of these benefits. The spouses concerned took legal proceedings, claiming that the benefits in question were not caught by the prohibition laid down in this Regulation. The House of Lords asked the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling to interpret the Regulation in question to ascertain whether these benefits are covered by its scope.
Legal grounds
Article 234 of the EC; Article 2(2) of Regulation (EC) No 881/2002.
Findings
Having examined the various language versions of the Regulation in detail, the Court stressed that the main objective of the rules freezing the funds at issue is to stop the persons designated in the Regulation from having access to economic or financial resources, whatever their nature, that they could use to support terrorist activities. In other words, the freezing of economic resources applies only to those assets that can be turned into funds, goods or services capable of being used to support terrorist activities. The Court found that, in the case at issue, there is no evidence of any danger whatsoever that the social benefits in question might be diverted in order to support terrorist activities; on the contrary, it appears that the funds in question are used by the spouses concerned to meet the essential needs of their households, especially because these benefits are fixed at a level intended to meet only the strictly vital needs of the persons concerned. The Court concluded that the benefit that a person appearing on the list of Regulation (EC) No 881/2002 might indirectly derive from the social payments made to his spouse cannot, therefore, compromise the objective pursued by the Regulation. The latter is not therefore applicable to the granting of social security and social assistance benefits at issue in the present case.