Opinion of Mr Advocate General Tesauro

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. This request for a preliminary ruling is concerned with the definition of the scope of Articles 19 and 25 of Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 of the Council in a case whose facts are as follows: Mrs Twomey, a United Kingdom national who worked and resided for a time in the United Kingdom, terminated her employment and moved — for highly personal reasons it would seem — to Ireland where she has since lived without pursuing an activity.

2. Against that background the national court is asking the Court of Justice in substance to rule on the question whether the requirement of territoriality, to which Section 82(5) of the Social Security Act subjects receipt of the sickness benefit claimed, is valid as against the claimant. In particular, the national court wishes to ascertain whether a situation of that kind is governed by Article 19 or by Article 25 of Regulation No 1408/71.

3. In that connection, the Chief Adjudication Officer and the Commission have expressed widely differing views. The former maintains that only Article 25 is relevant for the purposes of this case and that the residence requirement prescribed by the contested legislation is justified by that provision.

4. Turning to the question itself, let me point out first of all that Article 25, which concerns specifically unemployed persons and their families, establishes with regard to sickness benefit a system essentially modelled on that for employment benefit referred to in Articles 69 and 71 of Regulation No 1408/71.

5. Bearing those factors in mind, it seems to me that the scope of Article 25 can be defined fairly accurately. That provision is designed to cater for a situation in which sickness benefit is claimed by persons who are affiliated to an unemployment scheme, who are therefore registered with the employment services and who qualify for the benefit in question.

6. That said, the question remains whether, in the specific circumstances of this case, the claimant can usefully rely on Article 19 of the regulation to defeat the application of the residence requirement provided for by the contested national legislation.

7. Having regard to that broad interpretation of the concept of worker elicited from the case-law, it seems to me that in the circumstances the disputed sickness benefit must be held to be governed by Article 19 of Regulation No 1408/71. The aforesaid precedents demonstrate — contrary to the contention of the Chief Adjudication Officer — that for the purposes of the application of Article 19, it is unnecessary for the contingency to have occurred while the worker was still in active employment; it is sufficient if, at the time when sickness supervenes, the person concerned, although unemployed, is covered by the insurance scheme of the competent State.

8. Finally, for the sake of completeness, it is necessary to deal with two objections raised by the Chief Adjudication Officer with regard to the solution suggested above.

9. In the light of those considerations, I propose that the question submitted by the national court should be answered as follows:

1 Original language: Italian.

2 Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 of the Council of 14 June 1971 on the application of social security schemes to employed persons and their families moving within the Community (OJ, English Special Edition 1971 (II), p. 416).

3 Judgment of 31 May 1979 in Case 182/79 Algemeen Zickenfonds Drenthe-Plaueland v Pierik [1979] ECR 1977.

4 Judgment of 22 May 1980 in Case 143/79 Walsh v National Insurance Officer [1980] ECR 1639.

5 Judgment of 12 January 1983 in Case 150/82 Coppola v Insurance Officer [1983] ECR 43.

6 See the judgment of 4 October 1991 in Case C-349/87 Paraschi v Landesvesicherungsanstalt Württemberg [1991] ECR I-4501, at paragraph 22.