El Corte Inglés SA v Cristina Blázquez Rivero.

• Jurisdiction: European Union
• Celex Number: 61994CC0192
• ECLI: ECLI:EU:C:1995:427
• Docket Number: C-192/94
• Court: Court of Justice (European Union)
• Procedure Type: Reference for a preliminary ruling
• Date: 07 December 1995

OPINION OF ADVOCATE GENERAL
LENZ
delivered on 7 December 1995 (1)


Case C-192/94

El Corte Inglés, S.A.
v
Cristina Blázquez Rivero


(Reference for a preliminary ruling from the 10th Juzgado de Primera Instancia Sevilla)

((Effects of unimplemented directives – Council Directive 87/102/EEC concerning consumer credit))

A

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Introduction 1. This reference for a preliminary ruling from a Juzgado de Primera Instancia (Court of First Instance), Seville, is concerned with whether Article 11 of Council Directive 87/102/EEC for the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning consumer credit (2) ( the directive) is directly applicable in proceedings between a consumer and a grantor of credit where the date for implementing the directive (1 January 1990) had expired yet it had not been transposed into Spanish law. Consequently, these proceedings are concerned once again with the question of the direct applicability of a directive in relations between private persons, with which the Court has had to deal repeatedly, most recently in the judgment of 14 July 1994 in Faccini Dori . (3) However, to date the Court has refused to hold that directives have such so-called horizontal direct effect. 2. The origin of the dispute is a credit agreement which the defendant in the main proceedings entered into in order to finance part of the consideration for a travel contract, where there was an agreement between the travel agent with which the travel contract was concluded and the company granting the credit under which the latter had the exclusive right to grant credit. Because of shortcomings in the service provided under the travel contract, the defendant in the main proceedings ceased paying instalments on the loan. 3. The national court seeks a ruling on whether the directive may be directly applicable in the defendant's favour. By order of 30 June 1994, it referred the following question to the Court for a preliminary ruling:Is Article 11 of Council Directive 87/102/EEC of 22 December 1986 for the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning consumer credit, which has not been implemented in national law by the Spanish State, directly applicable in a case where a consumer seeks to rely, against a claim by the grantor of credit, on the defects in the service supplied by the supplier with whom the said grantor of credit has concluded an exclusive agreement for granting credit to his customers? 4. After the request for a preliminary ruling was received at the Court, the judgment in Faccini Dori (4) was delivered, in which the Court answered the fundamental question relating to the horizontal direct effect of directives. That judgment was forwarded to the national court, which, when asked whether a ruling from the Court was still necessary in the instant case, stated that it wished to maintain its request for a preliminary ruling. Although the judgment in Faccini Dori basically answered the question as to whether directives could also have horizontal direct effect, doubts still remained as to whether the case-law should not be amended as a result of the addition of Article 129a to the EC Treaty by the Treaty on European Union. Article 129a requires the Community to contribute to the attainment of a high level of consumer protection. 5. In the course of the proceedings, written observations have been received from the plaintiff in the main proceedings, the Spanish and the French Governments and the Commission. All those participating in the proceedings agreed that there should not be a hearing.

B

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Opinion 6. It appears from the order for reference that the national court has difficulty in assisting Community law to achieve practical effectiveness. The provision which it deems relevant had not been transposed into national law at the material time, even though the prescribed period for implementing it had expired.It would seem that there are no specific provisions of Spanish law to cover the material facts. It has to be assumed that there is a lacuna in Spanish law, which means that the national court could not give effect to the Community provision either by interpreting or by disapplying its national law. If the general rules of Spanish civil law were applied to the case, the outcome would conflict with the aims of the directive, since under national law a contract between two persons in principle cannot effect legal relations with a third party. Consequently, on the basis of the Court's case-law to date, the national court can see no way of securing the effectiveness of Community law, unless the provisions of an unimplemented directive on consumer protection could be applied to horizontal legal relations in conjunction with the recently introduced provision of Article 129a of the EC Treaty. 7. All those participating in the proceedings ─ the plaintiff in the main proceedings (the credit institution which brought the proceedings), the Spanish and the French Governments and the Commission ─ claim that the case-law to date should be adhered to. I. Whether Article 11 of the directive is sufficiently precise and unconditional 8. The essential requirement which a directive must satisfy in order to have direct effect is that it must be sufficiently precise and unconditional as to enable rights to be derived from it directly for individuals. Article 11 of Directive 87/102 ─ at issue in these proceedings ─ reads as follows: 1. Member States shall ensure that the existence of a credit agreement shall not in any way affect the rights of the consumer against the supplier of goods or services purchased by means of such an agreement in cases where the goods or services are not supplied or are otherwise not in conformity with the contract for their supply. 2. Where: (a) in order to buy goods or obtain services the consumer enters into a credit agreement with a person other than the supplier of them; and (b) the grantor of the credit and the supplier of the goods or services have a pre-existing agreement whereunder credit is made available exclusively by that grantor of credit to customers of that supplier for the acquisition of goods or services from that supplier; and (c) the consumer referred to in subparagraph (a) obtains his credit pursuant to that pre-existing agreement; and (d) the goods or services covered by the credit agreement are not supplied, or are supplied only in part, or are not in conformity with the contract for supply of them;...