Thank you Hélène Péroz for flagging 17-19.935 X v AS Monaco at the French Supreme Court, held December 2018. Claimant is a former physiotherapist employed by AS Monaco. His contract included choice of court ex-EU (not further specified in the judgment but one assumes, Monaco. Monaco is one of those micro-States with a complex arrangement with the EU).
The Supreme court first of all addresses the application of France’s jurisdictional rule R. 1412-1 of the Code du Travail. It assigns territorial jurisdiction in principle to the employment courts of the area where the employee habitually carries out the employment, with fall-back options which are similar to yet not quite the same as the provisions of Brussels I Recast:
Art. R. 1412- 1 L’employeur et le salarié portent les différends et litiges devant le conseil de prud’hommes territorialement compétent. Ce conseil est :
1 Soit celui dans le ressort duquel est situé l’établissement où est accompli le travail ;
2 Soit, lorsque le travail est accompli à domicile ou en dehors de toute entreprise ou établissement, celui dans le ressort duquel est situé le domicile du salarié.
Le salarié peut également saisir les conseils de prud’hommes du lieu où l’engagement a été contracté ou celui du lieu où l’employeur est établi. — [ Anc. art. R. 517- 1, al. 1er à 3.]
These provisions cast a slightly wider jurisdictional net than Brussels I Recast. That gap was even wider before Brussels I Recast had extended its jurisdictional reach to parties (the employer, or the business in the case of the consumer title) domiciled ex-EU. It is particularly its existence pre Brussels I Recast for which the provision is ranked among France’s exorbitant jurisdictional rules.
Now, coming to the case at issue. The Supreme Court first of all addresses the nature of the provision as lois de police and severely curtails same in the event of choice of court ex-EU: ‘ce n’est que si le contrat est exécuté dans un établissement situé en France ou en dehors de tout établissement que les dispositions d’ordre public de l’article R. 1412-1 font échec à l’application d’une telle clause.’ Only if the contract is performed in an establishment of the employer in France, or entirely outside such establishment (from the employee’s home or ‘on the road’) does Article R.1412-1 trump choice of court ex-EU. The lower court’s judgment had failed to assess these circumstances and therefore infringes the Article.
One suspects the Court felt it necessary to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on this issue for the natural order of analysis would of course have been to look at Brussels I Recast first: which the Court does after its analysis of the French law, thereby forgiving the lower court its incorrect application of French law. Reportedly the application of Brussels I to the issue is not something the Court has properly done in the past.
Article 21 Brussels I Recast requires assessment of the place of habitual carrying out of the work. Claimant worked mostly from the club’s training ground, which is in Turbie, France, and accompanied the club at fixtures. These however by reason of the football calendar clearly took place in Monaco only one out of two games (see the Count of Luxembourg for similar identification of the relevant criteria). Core of the employment therefore is France, notably in the Nice judicial area and therefore the lower court was right to uphold its jurisdiction.
Geert.
(Handbook of) EU private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.8.3.