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On October 20, 2021 the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania ruled that national legal acts failed to ensure a level of protection enjoyed by an injured party in case of any loss or injury caused by vehicles, contrary to the provisions of the Directive 2009/103/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 September 2009 relating to insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles, and the enforcement of the obligation to insure against such liability (hereinafter – the Directive).

Claimant has sued the state, represented by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania, asking for 54 200 EUR as a compensation for non-material damage.

After a collision of three vehicles, claimant suffered injuries that amounted to grievous bodily harm. Even though the insurance company compensated 3 800 EUR for non-material damage, claimant’s request for more has been dismissed due to the rules of national law. In particular, Article 11(3) of the Law on compulsory insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles capped 5 000 EUR as a maximum limitation of non-material damage, regardless of the number of third parties who have suffered during the incident.

The court of first instance agreed that the state has failed to implement Article 9 of the Directive but did not find evidence to support causal link between non-material damages and inappropriate implementation of the Directive on state’s behalf.

The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania decided to return this case back to the court of first instance for further investigation. The Court has emphasized that the Directive obliges each Member State to require the insurance referred to in Article 3 to be compulsory at least in respect of the following amounts: in the case of personal injury, a minimum amount of cover of 1 000 000 EUR per victim or 5 000 000 EUR per claim, whatever the number of victims. If necessary, Member States may establish a transitional period extending until 11 June 2012 at the latest within which to adapt their minimum amounts of cover to the amounts provided for in the Directive. However, until 11 December 2009 at the latest, Member States shall increase guarantees to at least a half of the levels mentioned before.

Both the text of the Directive and the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union indicate that the goal here is to ensure, among other things, a comparable treatment of victims of the accident, regardless in which geographical location of the EU it occurred. Furthermore, the notion of damages covers non-material damage as well. Therefore, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania held it was clear that the Directive’s aim to reimburse victims of accidents cannot be curtailed by national law’s introduction of lower sums. In contrary, Member States have a right to set an even higher protection standard by increasing the sums mentioned in the Directive, but not a single norm of the Directive empowers Member States to limit it in a way that would deny the very effectiveness of such notion.

As Lithuania’s national law explicitly limits compensation for non-material damages suffered during an accident up to 5 000 EUR and such limitation obviously clashes with the Article 9 of the Directive and duties imposed thereof, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania found such national rule incompatible with the EU law.

Flawed implementation of provisions foreseen in the Directive (in particular its Article 9) is directly linked to damage suffered by claimant. In absence of such failure claimant would have received a considerably larger compensation than the one he had been awarded. Such finding allows to clearly link damage suffered by the claimant and a flawed implementation of the Directive.

Administrative Case No. eA-3411-556/2021.

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