03/02/2020 CURIA - Documents In particular, the referring court wishes to know whether, in addition to providing access to a communication network, it is necessary, first, for there to be a contractual relationship between the recipient and provider of the service and, second, for the service provider to advertise the service. In that regard, in the first place, it is clear from the wording of Article 12 of Directive 2000/31, headed ‘Mere conduit’, that the provision of the service referred to in that article must involve the transmission in a communication network of information. Furthermore, the provision states that the exemption from liability laid down in that provision applies only with regard to information transmitted. Finally, according to recital 42 of Directive 2000/31, the activity of ‘mere conduit’ is of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature. It follows that providing access to a communication network must not go beyond the boundaries of such a technical, automatic and passive process for the transmission of the required information. In the second place, it does not appear either from the other provisions of Directive 2000/31 or the objectives pursued thereunder that providing access to a communication network must satisfy further conditions, such as a condition that there be a contractual relationship between the recipient and provider of that service or that the service provider use advertising to promote that service. The Court recognises that it may appear from the use in Article 2(b) of Directive 2000/31 of the verb anbieten in its German language version that that article refers to the idea of an “offer”, and thus to a certain form of advertising. However, the need for uniform application and accordingly a uniform interpretation of the provisions of EU law makes it impossible for one version of the text of a provision to be considered, in case of doubt, in isolation, but requires, on the contrary, that it be interpreted and applied in the light of the versions existing in the other official languages (judgment of 9 June 2011, Eleftheri tileorasi and Giannikos, C‑52/10, EU:C:2011:374, paragraph 23). The other language versions of the Article 2(b), inter alia those in Spanish, Czech, English, French, Italian, Polish or Slovak, use verbs which do not imply the idea of an ‘offer’ or of advertising. In the light of the foregoing, the answer to the second and third questions is that Article 12(1) of Directive 2000/31 must be interpreted as meaning that, in order for the service referred to in that article, consisting in providing access to a communication network, to be considered to have been provided, that access must not go beyond the boundaries of a technical, automatic and passive process for the transmission of the required information, there being no further conditions to be satisfied. The sixth question By its sixth question, which it is appropriate to consider in the third place, the referring court asks, in essence, whether Article 12(1) of Directive 2000/31 must be interpreted as meaning that the condition laid down in Article 14(1)(b) of that directive applies mutatis mutandis to Article 12(1) of the directive. In that regard, it follows from the very structure of Directive 2000/31 that the EU legislature wished to distinguish between the regimes applicable to the activities of mere conduit, of the storage of information taking the form of ‘caching’ and of hosting in so far as those activities are governed by different provisions of that directive. Against that background, it appears from a comparison of Article 12(1), Article 13(1) and Article 14(1) of the directive that the exemptions from liability provided for in those provisions are governed by different conditions of application depending on the type of activity concerned. In particular, Article 14(1) of Directive 2000/31, headed ‘Hosting’, provides, inter alia, that, in order to benefit from the exemption from liability laid down in that provision in favour of internet website hosts, such hosts must act expeditiously upon obtaining knowledge of illegal information to remove or to disable access to it. However, Article 12(1) of Directive 2000/31 does not subject the exemption from liability that it lays down in favour of providers of access to a communication network to compliance with such a condition. Moreover, as the Advocate General has stated in paragraph 100 of his Opinion, the position of an internet website host on the one hand and of a communication network access provider on the other are not similar as regards the condition laid down in Article 14(1) of Directive 2000/31. It appears from recital 42 of Directive 2000/31 that the exemptions from liability established therein were provided for in the light of the fact that the activities engaged in by the various categories of service providers referred to, inter alia providers of access to a communication network and internet website hosts, are all of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature and that, accordingly, such service providers have neither knowledge of, nor control over, the information which is thereby transmitted or stored. Nevertheless, the service provided by an internet website host, which consists in the storage of information, is of a more permanent nature. Accordingly, such a host may obtain knowledge of the illegal character of certain information that it stores at a time subsequent to that when the storage was processed and when it is still capable of taking action to remove or disable access to it. However, as regards a communication network access provider, the service of transmitting information that it supplies is not normally continued over any length of time, so that, after having transmitted the information, it no longer has any control over that information. In those circumstances, a communication network access provider, in contrast to an internet website host, is often not in a position to take action to remove certain information or disable access to it at a later time. In any event, it follows from paragraph 54 above that Article 12(1) of Directive 2000/31 does not provide for any further condition other than for the service at issue to provide access to a communication network which does not go beyond the boundaries of a technical, automatic and passive process for the transmission of the required information. In the light of the foregoing, the answer to the sixth question is that Article 12(1) of Directive 2000/31 must be interpreted as meaning that the condition laid down in Article 14(1)(b) of that directive does not apply mutatis mutandis to Article 12(1). curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=183363&doclang=EN&mode=lst&occ=first 6/10