Opinion of Mr Advocate General Tesauro

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. In this request for a preliminary ruling, the Politierechtbank (Petty Sessional Court) of Hasselt (Belgium) is asking the Court to interpret Article 15(7) of Council Regulation (EEC) No 3821/85 of 20 December 1985 on recording equipment in road transport, which provides that Whenever requested by an authorized inspecting officer to do so, the driver must be able to produce record sheets for the current week, and in any case for the last day of the previous week on which he drove.

2. While some language versions of the provision, such as, for example, the Dutch (the text to which the national court is referring) and the Italian, may at first sight give rise to some perplexity, I do not think, bearing in mind the general scheme and purpose of the rules in question, that the provision gives rise to serious problems of interpretation.

3. The expression last day in Article 15(7) of Regulation No 3821/85 can, therefore, refer only to the last driving day, since there can be no record sheet for a day on which the driver did not drive.

4. The same considerations apply to the concept of the previous week, which must be understood as the last week before the inspection in which the driver drove a vehicle subject to Community rules.

5. I therefore suggest that the Court reply as follows to the questions referred by the national court:

1 Original language: Italian.

2 OJ 1985 L 370, p. 8.

3 These versions refer to the last day of the previous week in which he drove, whereas the French and English versions refer more specifically to the last day of the previous week on which he drove.

4 For the principle according to which the different language versions of a Community text must be given a uniform interpretation and hence, in the case of divergence, the provision must be interpreted by reference to the general scheme and purposes of the rules of which it forms a part, see the judgments in Case 30/77 Bouchereau [1977] ECR 1999, at paragraph 14, and in Case 9/79 Koschniske v Raad van Arbeid [1979] ECR 2717, at paragraphs 5 to 8.

5 OJ 1985 L 370, p. 1.