The CJEU is back after the summer holidays and we are as well. One of the judgments issued today was in the Polish case Delfly (C-356/19), in which a Polish court asked for clarification of the provisions on the payment of compensation for cancelled/delayed flights pursuant to Regulation No 261/2004.
The consumer in this case had a flight delayed for more than 3 hours from a third country to Poland, which entitled her to 400 Euro compensation pursuant to Article 7(1) Regulation No 261/2004. The question raised in this case was whether the consumer could claim the amount of this compensation in another currency than Euro, namely in Polish zloty (PLN). Polish law - Article 358 Civil Code - specifies that for obligations denominated in foreign currency without an agreed conversion to PLN, the creditor may demand only payment in that foreign currency and it is up to the debtor to choose/agree to a payment in PLN instead. Polish procedural law prevents the consumer further from adjusting the claim that has already been made in PLN to the one expressed in EUR. Unsurprisingly, the air carrier used these legal provisions to reject the passengers' claim.
The CJEU is asked whether Polish law complies here with the provisions of Regulation No 261/2004 and the answer also does not come as a revelation: national law should not stand in the way of passengers claiming their compensation pursuant to Regulation No 261/2004 in national currencies of their place of residence, not just in Euro.
It is worth noting that Regulation No 261/2004 determines the compensation amounts in Article 7(1) Regulation 261/2004 in Euros, without further addressing a possibility of passengers making claims in other currencies, methods of conversion etc (para 20). This should not lead to a contrario reasoning, however, that without an express mention of claims calculated in other currencies such claims are prohibited (para 21). As the CJEU has many times observed Regulation intends to award a strong protection framework to air passengers and their rights should be interpreted broadly (paras 22-24). The CJEU is of the opinion that considering the standardised character of the compensation, and that it is supposed to apply to passengers irrespective of their nationality and place of residence, if it were limited to payment in Euro it could restrict the way this right was exercised (para 26) and it could lead to different treatment of passengers in comparable situations (para 30). The principle of equal treatment could be infringed if compensation could only be paid out in Euro, as only for some passengers that would be the currency of their place of residence. It is for the national law to determine how the conversion from Euro to national currency should take place (para 33).
