Interest and costs on MIB awards

Evans v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions and another ECJ TLR 9 December

Interest

The Fifth Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Communities held that compensation paid by the Motor Insurance Bureau to a victim of injury or damage caused by an unidentified or insufficiently insured vehicle had to be such as to take account of the effluxion of time before actual payment of the amount awarded. Such an award should therefore take into account interest on the payment from the date of the injury to the date of payment. It was incumbent on the national court (if examination of the existing compensation system disclosed a defect in transposition of Council Directive 84/5/EEC which had adversely affected the applicant) to determine whether the breach of that obligation of transportation was sufficiently serious for the UK to be liable to the applicant under the established principles.