OPINION OF MR TRABUCCHI — CASE 32/75 CRISTINI v SNCF

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The widow of an Italian immigrant worker in France, where he died as the result of an industrial accident, leaving her with four dependent children, who are minors, continued to reside in that country and applied to the Société nationale des chemins de fer for the reduction which, pursuant to the Law of 29 October 1921, it grants to families with three or more dependent children under age. The application was rejected for the sole reason that the applicant did not possess French nationality.

2. The Court is now called upon to give a ruling of principle clarifying the meaning and application of the actual safeguards recognized as applying to the freedom of movement for workers. The present case obliges us, in effect, to define the social advantages which should be made available to migrant workers in the Community. It provides us with the opportunity to give a sharper definition to the tenor of a series of precedents evolved between the judgment of 15 October 1969 in Case 15/69 (Ugliola, Rec. 1969, p. 368), and the latest decision in Case 20/75 (D'Amico). In view of decisions which might, prima facie, appear to be based on conflicting points of view, it is desirable to clarify the essential meaning of the principle laid down in the third ground of judgment in Ugliola, itself an interpretation of Article 7 of Regulation No 1612/68 of the Council, in which the Court, returning to Article 48 of the EEC Treaty, declared that the law of each Member State must ensure that nationals of every other Member State employed within its territory receive all the benefits which it grants to its own nationals.

3. Now that the advantage in question has been established as coming within the category of social advantages referred to under Article 7 (2) of Regulation No 1612/68 and that, accordingly, the worker is recognized as being entitled to it, attention must be directed to the question whether, under that article, the members of the worker's family are also entitled to it.

To conclude, I submit, that, in its reply to the question referred by the Paris Cour d'appel, the Court should rule that the grant of a railway reduction card provided for under a national law for the benefit of large families constitutes a social advantage within the meaning of Article 7 (2) of Regulation (EEC) No 1612/68 of the Council.

1 Translated from the Italian.