Official Journal of the European Union

C 114/13

(Case C-427/11) (<span class="super">1</span>)

(Article 141 EC - Directive 75/117/EEC - Equal pay for men and women - Indirect discrimination - Objective justification - Conditions)

2013/C 114/18

Language of the case: English

Referring court

High Court (Ireland)

Parties to the main proceedings

Appellants: Margaret Kenny, Patricia Quinn, Nuala Condon, Eileen Norton, Ursula Ennis, Loretta Barrett, Joan Healy, Kathleen Coyne, Sharon Fitzpatrick, Breda Fitzpatrick, Sandra Hennelly, Marian Troy, Antoinette Fitzpatrick, Helena Gatley

Defendants: Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Minister for Finance, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána

Re:

Request for a preliminary ruling — High Court (Ireland) — Interpretation of Article 157 TFEU and Council Directive 75/117/EEC of 10 February 1975 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women (OJ 1975 L 45, p. 19) (replaced by Directive 2006/54/EC) — Concept of objective justification in the context of apparent indirect discrimination between male and female workers within the civil service — Criteria

Operative part of the judgment

Article 141 EC and Council Directive 75/117/EEC of 10 February 1975 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women must be interpreted as follows:

—employees perform the same work or work to which equal value can be attributed if, taking account of a number of factors such as the nature of the work, the training requirements and the working conditions, those persons can be considered to be in a comparable situation, which it is a matter for the national court to ascertain;

—in relation to indirect pay discrimination, it is for the employer to establish objective justification for the difference in pay between the workers who consider that they have been discriminated against and the comparators;

—the employer’s justification for the difference in pay, which is evidence of a prima facie case of gender discrimination, must relate to the comparators who, on account of the fact that their situation is described by valid statistics which cover enough individuals, do not illustrate purely fortuitous or short-term phenomena, and which, in general, appear to be significant, have been taken into account by the referring court in establishing that difference, and

—the interests of good industrial relations may be taken into consideration by the national court as one factor among others in its assessment of whether differences between the pay of two groups of workers are due to objective factors unrelated to any discrimination on grounds of sex and are compatible with the principle of proportionality.

(<span class="super">1</span>) OJ C 311, 22.10.2011.