Segers. v. Bestuur van de Bedrijfsvereniging voor Bank- en Verzekeringswezen, Groothandel en Vrije Beroepen

Slenderose, Ltd. was a limited-liability company formed under the law of the United Kingdom (UK). Soon thereafter, Dutch national D. H. M. Segers (plaintiff) took over Slenderose. Segers incorporated his Netherlands-registered, one-person business as a Slenderose subsidiary and became a Slenderose director. All Slenderose’s business was conducted in the Netherlands through the Dutch subsidiary. Segers sought government health insurance by registering with the Bestuur van de Bedrijfsvereniging voor Bank- en Verzekeringswezen, Groothandel en Vrije Beroepen (association) (defendant). The association rejected Seger’s application on the ground that the law provided benefits only to persons who were subordinate to employers. Because Segers did not have an employment contract with Slenderose, the association argued, Segers was not a subordinate. Segers responded by suing the association. Upon Seger’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling for the association, the appellate court noted its precedents holding that a director who owned at least 50 percent of a company’s shares must be deemed to be a subordinate employee. But the appellate court also found merit in the association’s contention that those precedents applied only to Netherlands-registered companies because Netherlands- and foreign-registered companies were not comparable and that allowing different treatment for foreign-registered companies helped combat abuse. Accordingly, the appellate court stayed the proceeding and asked the European Court of Justice whether the freedom of establishment set forth in Articles 52 and 58 of the treaty (EEC Treaty or Treaty of Rome) that created the European Economic Community (EEC) prohibited discrimination between companies registered in the Netherlands and companies registered in other EEC member states that exclusively did business in the Netherlands. The advocate general opined that the denial of health benefits to a company director solely because the company was registered in another member state violated Articles 52 and 58.