International agreements – EC/Switzerland Agreement on the free movement of persons – Equal treatment – Access to self-employed activity and the exercise thereof – Self-employed frontier workers
(EC/Switzerland Agreement on the free movement of persons, Annex I, Art. 15(1))
The principle of equal treatment laid down in Article 15(1) of Annex I to the Agreement between the European Community and its Member States, of the one part, and the Swiss Confederation, of the other, on the free movement of persons precludes legislation of a Member State under which the competent authority of that Member State may object to an agricultural lease – relating to land located in a given area of the territory of that Member State and concluded between a resident of that Member State and a frontier-zone resident of the other contracting party – on the grounds that the land leased is used for producing agricultural products intended for export, free of duty, outside the internal market of the European Union and so gives rise to distortion of competition, if the application of that legislation affects a much greater number of nationals of the other Contracting Party than nationals of the Member State on whose territory that legislation applies. It is for the national court to determine whether that latter situation in fact exists.
(see para. 36, operative part)