Raad van bestuur van het Uitvoeringsinstituut werknemersverzekeringen v. H. Akdas e altri, Case C-485/07, CJEU, 12 May 2011

Cancellation of the supplementary allowance of the invalidity pension paid by the host Member State to guarantee beneficiaries the minimum subsistence requirements for the beneficiary's move of residence outside the territory of the Member State concerned. Discrimination based on citizenship.

Decision No. 3/80 of the Association Council of 19 September 1980 on the application of the social security schemes of the Member States of the European Communities to Turkish workers and their families.

1. Art. 6, of decision no. 3/80 of the EEC-Turkey Association Council, concerning the application of the social security schemes of the Member States of the European Communities to Turkish workers and their families must be interpreted as having direct effect, so that the Turkish citizens to whom apply this provision, have the right to make use of it directly before the courts of the Member States in order to have the rules of domestic law which are contrary to it not applied. This rule, in fact, dictates a specific obligation of result, namely the prohibition of any limitation imposed in relation to the export of the rights acquired by the Turkish citizens concerned under the legislation of a Member State. Such an obligation, therefore, can be asserted by an individual before a national court so that it disapplies the contrary provisions of the legislation of a Member State, without the adoption of additional implementing measures being necessary for this purpose.

2. Art. 6, of decision no. 3/80, mentioned above, precludes legislation that abolishes the provision of a benefit such as the supplementary invalidity pension to former Turkish migrant workers, when the latter have returned to Turkey after having lost the right to stay in the host Member State having become disabled in the host Member State.

3. The finding that Turkish citizens can validly rely on Community law to demand that the supplementary allowance be paid to them in Turkey is not affected by the fact that, as regards a social security benefit such as the supplementary allowance, the current scheme provided for by regulation no. 1408/71 differs from that implemented by the aforementioned decision, nor from the fact that, on this basis, the Member State in question proceeded with the abolition, for Union citizens, of the payment of the supplementary allowance, if the beneficiaries they do not reside in the territory of the Member State. This situation cannot be considered incompatible with the requirements of art. 59 of the additional protocol annexed to the EEC-Turkey Association Agreement, according to which Turkish citizens must not be placed in a more advantageous situation than that of Union citizens.