ABSTRACT
The European Court of Justice laid down the three conditions for establishing state liability. On the first condition, the Court held that both Articles 34 and 49 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union were intended to confer rights on individuals. The Court stated that the second condition was a matter for national courts, whilst the third condition was exclusively a matter for the national courts. The test for determining the second condition, a 'sufficiently serious' breach, is whether the Member State 'manifestly and gravely disregarded the limits on its discretion'. Where a Member State has broad discretion under EU law, it will be more difficult to prove that a breach has occurred at all, let alone that it was a serious breach. The principle of equivalence means that national rules on the recovery of damages via civil litigation are deemed to be also applicable in state liability actions.
