On 29 April 2021, the Court of Justice handed down its judgment in Case C‑47/20, F. v Stadt Karlsruhe, on the interpretation of Article 2(1), the second subparagraph of Article 7(3) and Article 11(4) of Directive 2006/126/EC. The request has been made in proceedings between F., a German national who holds a driving licence issued in Spain, where he has a residence since 1992, and the Stadt Karlsruhe (City of Karlsruhe, Germany), concerning a decision of the competent German authorities refusing him the right to use his driving licence in Germany.

After his German driving licence was withdrawn in 1990 for drunk-driving, on 21 October 1992 F. was issued with a driving licence in Spain for categories A and B. After having driven again a vehicle while intoxicated in Germany in 2008, F. was made to pay a fine by an enforceable penalty order by which i) he had his right to drive motor vehicles in Germany using his Spanish driving licence withdrawn, ii) he was prohibited from applying for a new driving licence for a 14-month period, and iii) the driving licence that had been issued in Spain 2007 was confiscated and sent to the competent Spanish authorities. During that 14-month prohibition period, however, the Spanish authorities issued F. with a new driving licence, whose period of validity corresponded to that of the original Spanish driving one. Therefore, in January 2014 F. lodged an application with the City of Karlsruhe for recognition of the validity of his Spanish driving licence in German territory, which was refused on the ground that it had been withdrawn in Germany for drunk-driving, a measure depriving him definitively of the possibility of driving in German territory until his fitness to drive had been checked again.

Since his action for annulment against that decision was dismissed both at first instance and on appeal, F. brought an appeal on a point of law before the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (German Federal Administrative Court; the “referring court”) which, in light of the need to interpret the relevant European legislation, decided to stay the proceedings and to ask to the Court of Justice whether Article 2(1) and the second subparagraph of Article 11(4) of Directive 2006/126 must be interpreted as precluding a Member State, in the territory of which the holder of a driving licence in categories A and B issued by another Member State has been deprived of the right to drive on account of unlawful conduct, which occurred during a temporary stay in that territory after the issue of the licence, and of the resulting lack of fitness to drive under the legislation of the first Member State, from subsequently refusing to recognise the validity of that driving licence, after that licence has been renewed, pursuant to Article 7(3) of that directive, by the Member State where the holder of that licence normally resides, within the meaning of the first paragraph of Article 12 of that directive.

According to the Court, the authorities of a Member State in whose territory the holder of a driving licence in categories A and B issued by another Member State has been deprived of the right to drive on account of an unlawful conduct occurring after the issue of the licence can refuse to recognise its validity after it has been renewed by the Member State where the holder concerned normally resides. Furthermore, despite the first Member State is competent to lay down the conditions with which the holder of the driving licence must comply in order to recover the right to drive in its territory, it is for the referring court to examine whether, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, they do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary to attain the objective pursued by Directive 2006/126 of improving road safety.

Marco Stillo