Hôpital local Saint-Pierre d'Oléron and Others v. France

Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi

Karar Metni

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 223

November 2018

Hôpital local Saint-Pierre d'Oléron and Others v. France - 18096/12, 53601/12, 23542/13 et al.

Judgment 8.11.2018 [Section V]

Article 6

Civil proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Legislative intervention clarifying a law that was the subject of ongoing proceedings: no violation

Facts – The twenty-four applicants are residential care facilities for the elderly (“EHPADs”). They all applied to the social-security contributions collection agency (“the URSSAF”) for reimbursement of the employer’s share of the contributions paid in respect of their employees, arguing that they provided their residents with home help services which were exempt under Article L. 241-10 III of the Social Security Code. According to that provision, the salaries of home helpers employed under the conditions referred to in the Code were exempt from employer contributions “in so far as they relate[d] to tasks carried out at the residence of the persons referred to in paragraph I” of the same Article.

Having had their reimbursement claims dismissed, the applicants appealed to the social security courts, which found that the exemption applied to the salaries of employees who worked in an elderly person’s private home and not to those of staff working in the EHPAD facilities, which were a form of collective housing not regarded as a person’s home for the purposes of Article L. 241-10 of the Social Security Code. While the first appeal was pending before the Court of Cassation, the legislature enacted the Law on Social-Security Funding for 2011 (“the Law of 20 December 2010”), section 14 of which stated that “in the first sub-paragraph of paragraph III of Article L. 241-10 of [the Social Security Code] the words ‘chez les’ [at the residence of the] shall be replaced by the words ‘au domicile à usage privatif des’ [at the private home of]”.

In a judgment of 22 September 2011 the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal, finding that the exemption could apply only to the salaries of employees working in the “private home” of an elderly person, a term similar to that used in the new legislation.

Law – Article 6 § 1: The replacement of the words “at the residence of the” by the words “at the private home of” had been liable to reduce the prospects for the applicants, as collective facilities, of obtaining satisfaction in their actions against the URSSAF.

However, on the date of enactment of the Law of 20 December 2010, only one of the twenty-four applicants had obtained a judgment recognising its right to reimbursement of the contribution in question. Furthermore, only a handful of isolated first-instance decisions and one judgment on appeal had recognised that a collective housing facility for the elderly constituted the residents’ home for the purposes of the third paragraph of Article L. 241-10 of the Social Security Code, and thus qualified for exemption in respect of its employees’ salaries. Lastly, the official aim of the impugned provision had been to make clear that the exemption was designed to facilitate the provision of home help for elderly people continuing to live in their own homes and to “prevent any dispute”.

The debate in Parliament preceding the enactment of the Law of 20 December 2010 showed that section 14 had not been intended either to take a stance in favour of the URSSAF or to correct an interpretation of the text which would have favoured the applicants. The reasons advanced by the authorities stressed that the aim of the legislature’s intervention had been to remedy a technical legal defect brought to light by litigation, by clarifying with the use of more precise wording the meaning of Article L. 241-10 III of the Social Security Code, in order to restore and reaffirm the legislature’s original intention to exempt the salaries of home helpers for dependent persons from the payment of employer contributions, in order to allow the persons concerned to continue to live independently in their own homes. EHPAD facilities, unlike sheltered accommodation, were not intended to come within the scope of application of that exemption. Accordingly, the applicants could not rely in proceedings on a technically flawed “legal entitlement” without the legislature having an opportunity to intervene, in the interests of the fairness of the proceedings, to clarify the conditions of that entitlement and its limits. In that connection the debate in Parliament highlighted the fact that the applicants had sought to circumvent the spirit of the law and could not discount the possibility that the legislature would intervene to clarify the conditions for reimbursement of the contributions in question.

In sum, the legislature’s intervention had been foreseeable and had been justified on compelling public-interest grounds. Accordingly, the applicants could not complain of an infringement of their right to a fair hearing.

Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).

The Court also held unanimously that there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1 since the Court of Cassation had not failed in its obligation under that Article to give reasons for its decisions, given that the specialised lawyers who had represented the applicants before the Court of Cassation had duly received notice of the decisions finding the appeals inadmissible owing to the absence of arguable grounds of appeal.

(See also Stran Greek Refineries and Stratis Andreadis v. Greece, 13427/87, 9 December 1994; National & Provincial Building Society, Leeds Permanent Building Society and Yorkshire Building Society v. the United Kingdom, 21319/93 et al., 23 October 1997; Zielinski and Pradal and Gonzalez and Others v. France [GC], 24846/94 et al., 28 October 1999, Information Note 11; and OGIS-Institut Stanislas, OGEC Saint-Pie X and Blanche de Castille and Others v. France, 42219/98 and 54563/00, 27 May 2004, Information Note 64)

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