Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Preliminary rulings ° Jurisdiction of the Court ° Limits ° Request for interpretation not manifestly unrelated to the subject-matter of the proceedings ° Obligation to give a ruling

(EEC Treaty, Art. 177)

2. Social policy ° Men and women ° Equal pay ° Difference in pay between two jobs of equal value, one carried out almost exclusively by women and the other predominantly by men ° Burden of proof of no discrimination

(EEC Treaty, Art. 119)

3. Social policy ° Men and women ° Equal pay ° Difference in pay between two jobs of equal value, one carried out almost exclusively by women and the other predominantly by men ° Justification based on the fact that pay is decided by separate collective bargaining processes ° Not permissible where two groups with the same employer and the same trade union are treated differently

(EEC Treaty, Art. 119)

4. Social policy ° Men and women ° Equal pay ° Difference in pay between two jobs of equal value, one carried out almost exclusively by women and the other predominantly by men ° Assessment by the national court of the existence of economic grounds constituting objective justification

(EEC Treaty, Art. 119)

Summary

1. Article 177 of the Treaty provides the framework for close cooperation between national courts and the Court of Justice, based on a division of responsibilities between them. Within that framework, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume the responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of each case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the question which it submits to the Court.

Consequently, where the Court receives a request for interpretation of Community law which is not manifestly unrelated to the reality or the subject-matter of the main proceedings, it must reply to that request and is not required to consider the validity of a hypothesis which it is for the referring court to verify subsequently if that should prove to be necessary.

2. The burden of proving the existence of sex discrimination, which in principle lies with the worker who, believing himself to be the victim of such discrimination, brings legal proceedings against his employer, may shift when that is necessary to avoid depriving workers who appear to be the victims of discrimination of any effective means of enforcing the principle of equal pay.

Where therefore statistics which the national court considers significant disclose an appreciable difference in pay between two jobs of equal value, one of which is carried out almost exclusively by women and the other predominantly by men, Article 119 of the Treaty requires the employer to show that that difference is based on objectively justified factors unrelated to any discrimination on grounds of sex.

3. The fact that the rates of pay for two jobs of equal value, one of which is carried out almost exclusively by women and the other predominantly by men, are decided by collective bargaining processes conducted separately for each of the two professional groups concerned, without any discriminatory effect within each group, does not, where the results of those processes show that two groups with the same employer and the same trade union are treated differently, preclude a finding of prima facie discrimination requiring the employer to prove that there is no infringement of Article 119 of the Treaty.

If the employer could rely on the absence of discrimination within each of the collective bargaining processes taken separately as sufficient justification for the difference in pay, he could easily circumvent the principle of equal pay by using separate bargaining processes.

4. It is for the national court, which has sole jurisdiction to make findings of fact, to determine, if necessary by applying the principle of proportionality, whether and to what extent the shortage of candidates for a job and the need to attract them by higher pay constitutes an objectively justified economic ground for the difference in pay between two jobs of equal value, one of which is carried out almost exclusively by women and the other predominantly by men.