President of Court, acting as Judge of Third Chamber K Lenaerts,
Judges LS Rossi (Rapporteur), F Biltgen, N Wahl
Advocate General M Campos Sánchez-Bordona
The defendant, a resident of Austria, was required under German law to pay maintenance to his mother (“the maintenance creditor”), who lived in a care home in Germany. However, the creditor also regularly received benefits provided in place of maintenance from the applicant, a German local authority body. That body argued that it was subrogated to the claims of the creditor against the defendant in respect of the benefits that it had paid in her favour over a certain period. Accordingly, the body brought an action for recovery of maintenance against the defendant before the German courts on the basis of article 3(b) of Council Regulation (EC) No 4/2009, which provided that the court for the place where the creditor was habitually resident was to have jurisdiction. The first-instance court held that the German courts did not have international jurisdiction to rule on the action, since jurisdiction based on article 3(b) could be invoked only by the individual to whom maintenance was owed. The appellate court allowed the body’s appeal and, on the defendant’s appeal, the Federal Court of Justice, Germany stayed the proceedings and referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling, the question, in essence, whether a public body, such as that in issue, had the right, in the circumstances of the case, to bring an action before the court for the place where the creditor, namely the defendant’s mother, had her habitual residence, thereby invoking the special jurisdiction in matters relating to maintenance under article 3(b) of Regulation No 4/2009.
On the reference—
Held, the wording of paragraphs (a) and (b) of article 3 of Council Regulation (EC) No 4/2009 did not specify that an action relating to maintenance obligations had be brought by the maintenance creditor herself before the courts identified in that article. It followed from various articles in the Regulation that, although a public body to which a maintenance creditor’s claims had been transferred by way of statutory subrogation could not itself rely on having the status of a “creditor” in order to establish the existence of a maintenance obligation, it had, however, to be given an opportunity to bring an action to that effect before the court of the place where the maintenance creditor had her habitual residence under article 3(b). Once a decision had been issued by that court in the state of origin, such a public body would be entitled to be granted the status of creditor for the purposes of an application for recognition, declaration of enforceability or enforcement of that decision in the requested state, pursuant to article 64 of the Regulation. Accordingly, a public body which sought to recover, by way of an action for recovery, sums paid in place of maintenance to a maintenance creditor, and to which the claims of that maintenance creditor against the maintenance debtor had been transferred by way of subrogation, could validly invoke the jurisdiction of the court for the place where the creditor was habitually resident, as provided for by article 3(b) of Regulation No 4/2009 (judgment, paras 31, 32, 42, 44, operative part).
J Möller, M Hellmann, U Bartl and E Lankenau, agents, for the German Government.
L Aguilera Ruiz, agent, for the Spanish Government.
M Wilderspin and M Heller, agents, for the European Commission.