European Court of Justices judgment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

European Court of Justices judgment - Essay Example The complainants presented the issue before the Belgian Constitutional Court in an effort to inspire the annulment of the Belgian law that transposed the directive. It is from this perspective that the Belgian Constitutional Court asked the Court of Justice for appropriate assessment on the validity of the derogation with respect to higher-ranking legal rules, and with reference to the principle of equality of genders enshrined in European Union law (Europe Log, 2011). The directive provided that the Member States had the authority to permit exemptions from the rule of unisex premiums and benefits for as long as they could prove that underlying actuarial and statistical data were reliable, available to the public and regularly updated. Under Belgian insurance law, the insurance contract must have an element of uncertainty. An insurance contract under Article 1A of the Insurance Contract Law, 1992 states:A contract according to which, in return for the payment of a fixed or variable p remium, a party, the insurer, commits itself towards another party, the policyholder, to provide the benefit stipulated in the contract in case an uncertain even emerges, that depending on the circumstances, either the insured or the beneficiary does not wish to emerge.Insurance disputes are brought before any court although the domicile of the policyholder has jurisdiction. Regulation of the Belgian insurance sector is also under Europe's highest court, the ECJ, which issues directives to member countries.